Ran my BEV down to ZERO!

...and lived to tell the tale.

After some unplanned trips and bad math gymnastics, a missed CCS charging opportunity, and the extra current draw of toting the whole family in the car, I arrived at home Wednesday night with a 2 or 3% SOC on the display.

"Home" in this case is the duplex we're renting while I remodel the house. Home = no charge, house (& work) is where I charge during the day.

So I figured I'd get the kids up early and we would charge downtown on a Level 2 station while getting breakfast, putting enough juice in the box to get the i3 to the house and get the kids to school.

Wouldn't you know that the bank of Blink chargers downtown had some sort of communication breakdown with Blink HQ and were therefore "on the blink" (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) -- they couldn't authorize my charging session.

There are other chargers nearby but none I've been to, and the clock was running. So I trudged back up the hill the "home" and crept the final few blocks effectively on E -- I think it was 0% and 1 mile remaining when I parked.

Thankfully I have a backup vehicle, so I wasn't really sweating it (though untested until now, this post gave me reassurance: https://www.mybmwi3.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1918).

Thursday night I brought home a 100' extension cord and nourished my depleted battery. Friday morning's drive was no drama, and I visited a CCS charger after starting the day.

I'll say this: I appreciate that the i3's state of charge is stable. If this were my phone, I would have been stranded at 5 to 7%!

WOW...that would have freaked me out. Being that my '19 is my first all electric vehicle, I had to have a non-electric, LOL, back up....so I got the REX. My next car will be 100% electric, but I will say that I do love the peace of mind having REX & it operates the i3 flawlessly!

eNate –

Blink sent a few emails saying they would be having an outage window that would prevent app users from charging, but RFID cardholders would be unaffected.

Wonder if this is when you caught those inoperative Blink EVSEs?

Doh!

But I just checked my email and didn't receive that notification.

Though I did find the Blink email I never replied to to verify my email address so they would send me a card. So maybe I'm not worthy of a notification in their system.

Just a note . For those not yet aware , anyone who received a ChargeNow RFID (or 2) when they purchased their i3 , you can add the RFID to your 'Wallet' in your iPhone . This would be , I think , after you associate the ChargeNow card to an account that you create within the ChargePoint app .
In the case of this topic above , if 'Blink' accepts ChargePoint RFIDs then you would only need your iPhone . ChargePoint is the only app that has allowed this as far as I know so far . I'm in Vancouver , B.C. .

I believe I've successfully used my Android's NFC on Blink as a proxy RFID card. I've also used Blink code. That may have been the reason I didn't seek out the card.

But I'd figure, with or without the card, the charger either way needs to communicate with a central system somewhere to verify / authorize. Wouldn't I have had the same problem using the RFID card?

In my case I did this on purpose the next day after resetting the adaptation values of my 2015 BEV. That’s to check the true level of degradation and if the battery calibration was still accurate. Drove it down to zero SOC and 0.1 kWh in Batt.Ladung menu, covered 160 km (back in the end of August).

I was circling within 2 km from home for the last 7%, closely monitoring ePOWER gauge on the dash. According to a video by my fellow Ukrainian owners, there’s no “turtle” mode in i3, but the power bar on the dash begin to fade starting 1.5 SOC, and you still have about 2-3 km “in the tank” once the first bar fades out. This guidance proved to be correct, helped me a lot.

But I'd figure, with or without the card, the charger either way needs to communicate with a central system somewhere to verify / authorize. Wouldn't I have had the same problem using the RFID card?

Click to expand...

I can't find the email (though they sent it twice), but it was very specific that the RFID cards would work during the outage.

Perhaps an RFID card is directly recognized over a Blink EVSE's network connection but an NFC chip / mobile device gets validated through another partner service? One that was getting an upgrade that weekend?

Regarding no notifications, maybe your account wasn't fully set up and you're not subscribed to system maintenance emails...