10 October 2009

I have continued to have trouble getting Mini E #458 to start charging from the 240 volt wall box when the battery is below 30%, which happens every work day. The small 120 volt portable charger always works, and after running it for a while I can switch to the 240 volt unit. So something is wrong and tomorrow the car goes in for a checkup.

Then something new a couple days back. My wife took the "spirit powered" Mini E to work so I could take her conventional "fire and brimstone" powered car in for service, since her dealer is near my work place. Her drive is one tenth of mine, which is as it should be. So she got home with over 80% charge remaining on the Mini E, and she still had trouble getting it to start charging. I turned the setting down to 12 amps with the 240 volt charging box and this time it kept charging, but that might be coincidence.

Often what happens is that it will start charging but then stops after the blinking charge lamp on the dash has blinked 6 times. Sometimes it will go for ten blinks and stop. But once it blinks for more than 12 times, it will keep going until the battery is at 100%.

Maybe my little experiment awhile back running the battery way down weakened some of the battery modules? We will know soon. The "flying doctors" at the dealer are good, I'm sure they will fix it pronto. And I'm sure the production electric vehicles to come will not have this issue. Which is why we are doing this, after all. For the future! (Can you tell we are having fun?)

Update:  I recently found several more blogs from other Mini E drivers (I hope I have them all linked on the right side now) and I read that several others have run the battery "below zero".  Nobody mentioned ill effects from it.  So I assume that my charging issue (which mysteriously disappeared for a few days) is unrelated.  Service appointment was postponed until tomorrow...

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