Zoe not charging / DRM of the battery

There is always a risk of listing the bad things, which could easily lead to the false impression things are “wrong”. On the other hand, it is nice to have some sort of repository of issues and their solutions. One of them is this one.

Both a neighbour of mine as well as a driver in the UK had the problem that the car refused to charge. Her “nose” gave a double blue flash. From what I have understood there are two possible issues:

• the car is accidentally in timer mode. Check your R-Link for the timer settings (though there should be a clock symbol in the display), and your app;
• the TCU is defective.

In both cases mentioned, replacing the TCU by the dealer solved the issue. It is kind of interesting as it suggests that Renault implemented the battery’s “DRM” through a mechanism that it will still work, but not charge anymore. It sounds as a rather safe approach as you’d stop somewhere on a safe spot to charge anyway. What is not very very OK is that the car does not indicate in any way that the car disable charging because of a signal from Renault, or lack thereof. Now you’re basically clueless. The whole thing also suggests (yes, speculation mode!) that the battery needs to be unlocked on a regular basis and if it’s unable to contact big brother, the battery will refuse to be charged. On the other hand, I had a communication failure for weeks without additional problems. My TCU was not defective/replaced though. It’s an interesting subject and there is no clear cut answer yet.

Seems like I was wrong on the “DRM” as user Harm suggested in the comments.