Failed to Charge

BMW i3 Forum

Help Support BMW i3 Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

fenlander

Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2014
Messages
22
Has anyone else had issues with the i3 failing to charge overnight during off peak hours?

It has been fine, charging exactly as expected, but last night something didn't work right and it didn't draw any power. This morning when unlocking the charging flap flashed red and there was a message about failing to charge on the dashboard display.

Plugged it back in now and it is charging fine on 'immediate charge'.

What could have upset it last night? Has anyone else seen this? Is the car playing a cruel April fools joke?

[Using a BMW Wallbox.]
 
BrianStanier said:
Problem with adjusting to summer time?

Don't think so.. the iPhone app did send me an alert on Sunday saying that the estimated charge completion time had changed, which was nice, but it did complete the charge anyway, and yesterday was fine.

If it happens again I'll call the dealer.
 
fenlander said:
Has anyone else had issues with the i3 failing to charge overnight during off peak hours?

It has been fine, charging exactly as expected, but last night something didn't work right and it didn't draw any power.

[Using a BMW Wallbox.]

It happened to me as well day before yesterday.
I had departure time as 7pm night.
Pluged the car at 1am.

Next day it has only charged me 50%.

So changed the departure time at 6am and pluged the car at 10pm last night. It has fully charged today.

I am not sure what is going on.

2.
Also my car does not follow off-peak charging rule even though the option is clicked.
It starts to charge the moment it is connected.

:?
 
Ken,

I have read in other posts that it will always immediately charge if the charge level is below 30%, my understanding is it then stops and picks up again at the off-peak time.

Apparently BMW like to see a minimum of 30% for good battery care.....

Don't know if any of this is true as I don't get mine until Saturday. :)

Paul
 
I've said it elsewhere but the rule set for charging isn't as simple as the two user settings would imply (charge immediately and charge off peak according to a time window).

In particular I think the car uses the following parameters when deciding if it should charge.

State of charge - if below a certain figure it charges
Set departure time/off peak window - if peak charge window falls after the next departure time it charges.
Set rate of charge - not sure about this I need to do more testing.

Bill
 
Must say I love this car
but had a similar experience today.
Plugged the i3 (rex) in last night at 21.15 ( for immediate charge) (BMW pure charger)
plug in, lock, and leave... anyway I noticed in the morning it only has 50% charge - via Iphone app -(that's what I left it with last night - I think)
ie it hadn't charged,

when got to the car
I Noticed the flash red round the 'electric filler point' __ _ _ _ __

I unlocked the car removed the plug
re plugged it back in
re locked and it began to charge and 'filled' as expected

The trick here is to make sure its charging before you leave

I had previously programed the car (this was turned off a week ago and before this event) to start charging at low rate (1.30- 5.00) with preconditioning for departure at 8:00am
any have turned all that off now... although I think I left the precondition program enabled - now its turned off because the charger woke me up as it turned on with a "Clonk"

I have just been told (by the supplying and helpful dealer) as long as the car is plugged in it will keep the batteries at the right temperature
the precondition (on the REX model) only warms the cabin for comfort sake .... a misunderstanding on that point

We are exploring uncharted waters here
Dealers don't live and depend with the car - so very shortly we will know more than them
 
BasilHead said:
I Noticed the flash red round the 'electric filler point'
This indicates that there's been an error rather than a mix-up with the timer settings ? Was the light on the wallbox button also also flashing red or just the socket on the car ? Did you get any message in car about it ?

BasilHead said:
I have just been told (by the supplying and helpful dealer) as long as the car is plugged in it will keep the batteries at the right temperature
This might explain why I can hear it clonking at night before charging is due to start on the 'cheap tariff'.
 
I'm fairly certain I've had a red charge port in the morning (I think I mentioned here). It seemed to be related to setting a pre-condition time and not having sufficient time for the car to charge before I wanted to leave.

Since I've binned all the pre-set departure times and use the app to pre-warm I've not been puzzled by mysterious charging patterns.
 
SanSerif said:
I'm fairly certain I've had a red charge port in the morning (I think I mentioned here). It seemed to be related to setting a pre-condition time and not having sufficient time for the car to charge before I wanted to leave.
Strange, there's been two times where I've been very late plugging my car in so it didn't have enough time to fully charge by the time it got to my departure time and I didn't see the red flashing light although I have doubts about how consistent everything is so it wouldn't surprise me if that did happen at some point.

The handbook isn't that helpful, it just says "Light red: error with charging".

If the wallbox light is also flashing red you can hold it down for 5 seconds and it will start flashing a different colour code to give more info about what caused the fault.
 
A bit of searching and I've found my post which mentions a red charge port:

http://www.mybmwi3.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=710&hilit=red+charge
 
Thanks SS. I didn't get the "High Voltage Battery Not Fully Charged" message when mine didn't reach 100% before the departure time. I wonder what the difference was ? I've not been using pre-heating though, maybe that's in the mix like you inferred.
 
This just happened again to me.

Charge port light was white, but the car didn't take any charge at all over night. (I checked the power logs from the house meter.) No red lights anywhere, Wallbox was happy and blue.

Turn the car on and the main display says:

"High voltage battery not fully charged. Charging time too short or climate setting pre-programmed. Please note reduced battery charge."

No changes in settings or use from all the previous days where it has worked ok.

Emailing screen shots to BMW. It's a bit worrying if the car can't be relied on to charge. Never had a problem like this in three years of owning a Leaf, now twice in a few weeks of owning an i3.
 
This is getting worrying, though being retired failure to charge overnight is not a total disaster - and it'll be Rex anyway. Like you our Leaf has never failed to charge overnight in three years.
 
I'm keeping an eye on this thread because I'm experiencing some charging oddness too which I haven't posted about as I'm still not sure if it's just me misunderstanding how it works. I'm starting to suspect a problem so have contacted BMW.
 
MikeS said:
May be a stupid question but did you lock the car - given that it will only charge when locked?

Yes, it was locked and the light was definitely blue when I plugged in last night.

I agree that's what it looks like - at some point the car decided it didn't have a cable attached and went back to the white mode. Odd.
 
This has now happened twice more, both last night and the night before it failed to take any charge at all.

On walking up to the car, pressing 'unlock' on the remote shows a white light, but if you sneak up on it and press 'lock' to get to show the current charging status then it's as if it suddenly wakes up and notices it should be charging, and starts immediately. Never shows any red error lights on either the wallbox or the car, it's as if it just forgot.

Car was definitely locked last night, I have a screen shot of the iPhone app that confirms it was locked and plugged in with charging paused yesterday evening.

Both nights have had a gentle drizzle, but I can't think of any other common factor. Has anyone else seen this behaviour?
 
I had the same issue last night and then once last week. The car was set to charge between midnight and 6am with a scheduled departure of 7:30am. Got in to go to work and the charge never started. I'm very concerned seeing that others are having a similar issue. In my case, no red lights indicating a problem. Would love to hear from anyone who has managed to figure out what causes this issue. Thanks!
 
The car will charge without the vehicle being locked, at least in the USA it works that way. Locking the car does lock the actual plug into the socket in the car, again, in the USA.

Keep in mind when you set a departure time, that is what causes the vehicle to warm up the battery pack. That can take up to about 3-hours. If you also ask it to precondition, that warms (or cools) the passenger compartment - that's a separate thing than departure time. To maximize your battery capacity when leaving, do both. Then, you aren't trying to condition the cabin on battery power, at least to start out. Both of these functions can take a fair amount of power, and can make it appear that the batteries had not been fully charged if it is outside of your low-cost window since it needs to happen before your departure, otherwise, it is likely a total waste of energy.

While the vehicle will work fine without setting a departure time OR preconditioning the cabin, it does need to be plugged in when asking for that to happen for maximum battery range. You can precondition the cabin, regardless of whether you're plugged in, but the car will not warm up the batteries unless plugged in and you set a departure time.

You're right, though, the manual does not describe this adequately, or help you out with using the app which has no built-in help functions, either.
 
Back
Top