System failure

[Keith Harris]

Did my first long journey today 300 miles, everything fine apart from a problem after an instavolt rapid charge. Charged up fine , stopped the charge , tried to reverse out and nothing wouldn’t move, system failure appeared on the dash, with battery failure, at this point I had a battery volts reading at 12.3 . Tried a few times and still nothing, just about to phone AA tried one last time and everything returned to normal and continued a further 140 miles without any incident, any thoughts guys before I take it to the nearest dealer.

 

[Adee]

Did my first long journey today 300 miles, everything fine apart from a problem after an instavolt rapid charge. Charged up fine , stopped the charge , tried to reverse out and nothing wouldn’t move, system failure appeared on the dash, with battery failure, at this point I had a battery volts reading at 12.3 . Tried a few times and still nothing, just about to phone AA tried one last time and everything returned to normal and continued a further 140 miles without any incident, any thoughts guys before I take it to the nearest dealer.

I think the general consensus, Keith, (from what I have gleaned myself on the forum), is that the main battery gets hot when is undergoing a rapid charge and shuts the system down for safety's sake. My guess is that they have under-engineered the battery cooling system slightly so that a full rapid charge, causes it to get too hot. 50kW or thereabouts in one hour is a lot of heat to dissipate from a stationary vehicle. Once the battery temperature recovers everything is back to normal. This is just my take on it and I haven't used rapid-charging myself at all or even looked into it. From the number of reports I would say it's not uncommon. Maybe the problem is less prominent in Winter when heat can be dissipated more quickly during charging - so maybe there will be an increase in the number of reports as the weather temperatures increase during the Summer? Also, maybe some rapid chargers are a bit slower than others in which case the temperature increase would be slower during charging and thus not trigger the overheat problem - might be worth researching that avenue?

 

[Adee]

I should probably have added that the dealer recommended to me that rapid charging should only be used occasionally for the sake of battery longevity and not as the default method of charging. I suppose if you were planning a journey of 300miles as you were, it would be better not to fully deplete the battery for the first 200miles and then fully recharge it at a rapid charger, but rather to stop a couple of times after say 100miles and after 200miles, so that you are only half-charging the battery at each stop. Hence the battery would be less likely to overheat. Slightly less convenient though, maybe!

 

[Keith Harris]

Thank you Adee for that information, sound very plausible to me, I will probably only use a rapid charger maybe 10 times a year so you would expect no problem there. If its just a case of waiting a while before I move after a charge then it’s no biggey . As we are away in Devon at the moment I’m going to try again today so I will let you know the results later.

 

[Ranger]

We shouldn't need to mollycoddle the car, it should just be fine with this normal use case, else it is not fit for purpose and should be fixed.

 

[Keith Harris]

Yes I’m sort of with you, especially as they seem to think they will make good taxis

 

[Adee]

I guess we'll find out how problematic this is as time goes by. Hopefully it won't be a major issue. They would make great taxis. I think the local authorities should start installing chargers on the taxi ranks to encourage taxi drivers to invest?

 

[ensmith007]

See the thread which I believe is the same thing.

Mg5 HV shutdown​

 

[Keith Harris]

Thanks , yes that appears to be the problem.

 

[Aceselect]

We shouldn't need to mollycoddle the car, it should just be fine with this normal use case, else it is not fit for purpose and should be fixed.

Exactly, you should be able to plug them in, charge and go anything else is unfit for purpose and a case for rejection. They need to sort this, there clearly is something going on as I have read to many reports now. Will be interested to see what my MG5 will be like when I get it tomorrow, never had charging issues with my Leaf.