iMiev wont start

[Plankton]

Went to go to work this morning, attempt to start car and it starts "Ready" for a few seconds then shuts down with the "car with !" symbol and the RBS light.

Battery's fully charged, secondary battery seems fine.

Anyone have a similar issue?

 

[JoeS]

Plankton, OUCH! I don't recall anyone on this list having this issue, and I can't think of anything off the top of my head which may cause this. Perhaps time to have the dealer tow the car and do the diagnosis.

Please do let us know what happens. Good luck!

 

[Plankton]

Plankton, OUCH! I don't recall anyone on this list having this issue, and I can't think of anything off the top of my head which may cause this. Perhaps time to have the dealer tow the car and do the diagnosis.

Please do let us know what happens. Good luck!

Tow truck is on the way now. I'll post back once I find out whats up

 

[PV1]

RBS light is for the regenerative brake system. I would think there is a problem with the motor controller.

How many times did you try starting?

 

[Malm]

A similar thing happened to me 5 days ago. Car wasn't fully charged. Then I put it at charge and remove the OBD from the Can Bus. Charged for a minute and put the OBD in place again. Then when I tryed to star the car everything was fine. Not sure what fixed it. I wish it was the OBD that wasn't correctly placed. What a scare. Let see if it doens't it again. In the last four days everything right.

 

[Plankton]

RBS light is for the regenerative brake system. I would think there is a problem with the motor controller.

How many times did you try starting?

I tried starting it a bunch of times over 4-5 hours while waiting for the tow truck. Some times it wont start at all other times starts up shuts down in seconds.

I connected the charger out of curiosity and it looked like it would start charging but then stop and display the "car + !" symbol.

Its on its way to the dealer now, an hour and half away

 

[JoeS]

Plankton - a few details about your car, if I may ask - how many miles on it, where are you located, which EVSE have you been using, what has been your usual charging regimen, and I seem to recall you had an issue with the Remote once upon a time? Anything out-of-the-ordinary before this failure? What was your RR of your fully-charged car at the time of this incident?

Here's an example of wishing that Canion could display error codes...

 

[Plankton]

Plankton - a few details about your car, if I may ask - how many miles on it, where are you located, which EVSE have you been using, what has been your usual charging regimen, and I seem to recall you had an issue with the Remote once upon a time? Anything out-of-the-ordinary before this failure? What was your RR of your fully-charged car at the time of this incident?

Here's an example of wishing that Canion could display error codes...

- About 65k kms

- I have a evse upgrade I've been using for 2+ years

- My typical charging regimen is M-F leave with full charge, get to work less than half, plug-in and leave work with full charge. Charge to full Fri night and dont charge again until Sun night

- Nothing since the remote issue which I've stopped using out of fear

- I believe this morning it had a RR of 117km

-I'm in Windsor Ontario

 

[MLucas]

Is that London Mitsubishi that you are taking your car to? I'm trying to think what is an hour and half away from Windsor? I'm surprised that Windsor doesn't have a Mitsubishi dealership. Good luck with your car. I'm about 10k kilometers less than you, I hope I don't have to go through that.

I did have an experience similar to Malm's though. I was toying with the ObdLink MX adapter because the CanIon kept locking up. So, I switch the tablet over to the ObdLink supplied software and then tried to connect while I was driving. That shut my car down completely with the exclamation/car symbol. I had to pull over, disconnect the OBDLink adapter and restart. Fortunately, everything was alright and I was able to proceed. I removed the ObdLink software from my tablet and never used that again.

 

[Plankton]

Is that London Mitsubishi that you are taking your car to? I'm trying to think what is an hour and half away from Windsor? I'm surprised that Windsor doesn't have a Mitsubishi dealership. Good luck with your car. I'm about 10k kilometers less than you, I hope I don't have to go through that.

I did have an experience similar to Malm's though. I was toying with the ObdLink MX adapter because the CanIon kept locking up. So, I switch the tablet over to the ObdLink supplied software and then tried to connect while I was driving. That shut my car down completely with the exclamation/car symbol. I had to pull over, disconnect the OBDLink adapter and restart. Fortunately, everything was alright and I was able to proceed. I removed the ObdLink software from my tablet and never used that again.

Yup London Mitsubishi. I wanted to take it to Michigan which is within range but they wouldnt tow it there

 

[MLucas]

That is where I bought my car from. The Hamilton Mitsubishi wasn't i-MiEV certified at that time and I had an appointment in London for my son. I went there to buy it and had them tow it to Grimsby. It felt kind of nefarious, signing paperwork in a rest stop parking lot and swapping cars. :shock:

 

[Plankton]

That is where I bought my car from. The Hamilton Mitsubishi wasn't i-MiEV certified at that time and I had an appointment in London for my son. I went there to buy it and had them tow it to Grimsby. It felt kind of nefarious, signing paperwork in a rest stop parking lot and swapping cars. :shock:

HAHA, I did the exact same thing at an OnRoute between Windsor and London

 

[Plankton]

I just got a call from Mitsubishi service and they are replacing the charger which is covered under warranty

 

[JoeS]

Plankton, thank you for the update. I hope that takes care of it.

Strange that the i-MiEV's software would shut down and thus immobilize the fully-charged car when it detected a problem with the charger… whatever happened to graceful degradation and the ability to still drive the car despite a non-life-threatening problem?

 

[Plankton]

Plankton, thank you for the update. I hope that takes care of it.

Strange that the i-MiEV's software would shut down and thus immobilize the fully-charged car when it detected a problem with the charger… whatever happened to graceful degradation and the ability to still drive the car despite a non-life-threatening problem?

Totally agreed but at least I was at home at the time.

I'm not sure if its related but for about a week or so before this took place I wasn't getting the range I would have expected. Full bars after each charge still though but they seemed to drop off faster. I would have 10-20 kms RR less than I was used to when I got to work/home

 

[PV1]

There could have been a serious problem with the charger that couldn't have high voltage present without causing major damage. Something like a stuck relay/contactor in the charger or a short circuit somewhere inside. The charger was probably tripping over-current protections, hence the momentary READY.

A noticeably shorter range would suggest something in the charger was letting current through that shouldn't have, and now it could have just failed completely and causing a short circuit big enough to trip over-current protections.

 

[Plankton]

There could have been a serious problem with the charger that couldn't have high voltage present without causing major damage. Something like a stuck relay/contactor in the charger or a short circuit somewhere inside. The charger was probably tripping over-current protections, hence the momentary READY.

A noticeably shorter range would suggest something in the charger was letting current through that shouldn't have, and now it could have just failed completely and causing a short circuit big enough to trip over-current protections.

Do you think this could have caused any damage to the battery?

 

[PV1]

I wouldn't think. The i-MiEV pulls 154 amps at full throttle (or somewhere close to that), which is approximately a 3C discharge rate. I've read that the cells in the i-MiEV battery can handle 6C continuous. If there was a 300 amp drain, there wouldn't be anything left of the charger, or the cables going to it. Highly doubt it harmed the battery.

I've read on here that the i-MiEV will stop charging if it senses more than ~5 kW coming from the charger, so it would make sense that it would shut down if it saw that much going to the charger.

 

[Plankton]

Just a follow up. I got my iMiev back. They replaced the charger and the EV-ECU all under warranty.

 

[PV1]

Glad you got your car back. 9 days isn't bad, especially when getting parts from overseas.

Interesting that we've seen more charger failures than battery failures, though I guess that's a good thing.