You’d expect the rebuild of the 26 kWh battery by Imecar in Turkey to be dead in the water with the announcement of the 41 kWh user-available battery for the ZOE Q90 and R90 models. However……….. They are now making a 56 kWh raw capacity version, in the standard ZOE battery for factor. I would expect that to give 375 km true range minimum.
The receptacle of the charge plug is sometimes problematic.
And then there are the real failures. On one of the English forums, two users seem to have the same problem being that the cable is locked, but the car doesn’t recognize it and keeps retrying. It can lead to endless “Ongoing checks” or even BCIs. Pete disassembled the locker mechanism and the micro-switch detecting the locked position is indeed of a bit dubious design. He fixed his car temporarily by removing the locker mechanism altogether from the receptacle so now the pin is entirely free. It’s an easy removal using just two screws. This is of course no permanent solution but as always, if you can save yourself from a nasty situation…… knowledge is power! Enjoy the pictures and thank you Pete.
Edit: see also this post: http://canze.fisch.lu/the-charge-plug-locking-mechanism-4/
This is how it looks like when looking under the bonnet. Notice the orange cable coming from the BCB, splitting in 3: the main part goes to the receptacle, one thin strand is the cable to this locker mechanism going over then making a U-turn into the connector and the nose opening motor, and the third strand popping forward towards the blue-red LED assembly.
All the hype has been over the new R90 an Q90 and there has been written so much about it, that we didn’t feel the need to add to that. Of course we would love to get our hands on a ZOE with a big battery, because we probably need to change at lot of graphs and most certainly the battery prediction model.
Speaking about the that, there is a release upcoming with major improvements in the prediction model. As a consequence, the car selection in the Settings screen will change to also distinguish between a Q210 and an R240, as the latter will top charging at 22 kW even when it is connected to a more potent charger. If you do own a R240, please do check the settings screen after the next release. Also, expect the Q90 and R90 to be included too pretty soon, which will use the exact same mathematical model, but with a bigger capacity. We have no idea if this is correct and time will tell.
Actually, we don’t even know if the ’90 models speak the same language on the CANbus, but we do expect that to be the case. Stay tuned. As always, once we’re ready to roll, we’ll publish an update note here, drop a new release in the play store and publish an APK file.
Well, we had to discuss it one day: charged timing and the TCU. While I am not a proponent of doing that based on the car’s (TCU) logic, there are many drivers using this and it DOES have quirks. One was a UK base driver that had it’s timed charger not only stuck (the icon it was on timed kept re-appearing even when he disabled it), it even refused to charge when it was inside the charging time slot. That is basically a 100% disabled car.
Pull/push the F31 fuse seems to do the trick. documentation says 10A, Body Control Module (which controls most non-drive-train related functions), Telematics Control Unit. It is the second row counting from the left, second fuse counting from the bottom up in the fusebox in the cabin.
Another driver advised to carefully pry open the R-Link bezel, and disconnect the white connector to the TCU unit. Reconnect after a minute or two and with some luck, the TCU is as if it were reborn.
My guess is that a disconnect of the 12 volt battery would do exactly the same, but I cannot confirm this. That sure is easier and avoids the risk of breaking plastic hooks. Open the bonnet, end disconnect the minus cable boom from the battery, that is the one not having the red fuse box on top.
My advice would be to try pull/push F31 first, then the 12 volt battery, and if it doesn’t work, go for the white connector.
From a friendly driver, I got this picture. No, not his ZOE.
The most interesting part in my opinion was the location of the TCU. It is that black box on the far right side of the picture. Wrong. It is not in this picture, situate behind R-Link and in front of the windshield vents. Damn hard to replace!
The open bracket under it is the mount for the radio module, you can see the white coaxial connector dangling just next to the insulation mat. Think of it like a traditional car radio form factor but without a front. Lots of unidentified stuff, such as the black box under the center ventilation vent. Maybe it’s the climate computer. From what I understand the two boxes under the ventilation panel area are the fragrance / ionisation controller and a multimedia gateway.
ZOE falls in a deep sleep about 6 minutes after she’s closed up. I have written about this before in the context of resetting the BCB. For delayed charging under charger control this can be problematic: if you connect ZOE to an unpowered charger, i.e. one with a timer in its power line, she will fall asleep and nothing but opening the doors will waker her up.
However, my charger, a KEBA P20 has a control line where you can disable charging without powering it down. I use this for timed charging, which has somewhat complicated schedules in my country: economy rates are active at night and during weekends and during some bank holidays. Easter Monday (variable date!) being one of them. I was curious how the charger kept ZOE awake enough to start charging after hours in a disabled state.
Here is how the protocol works.
If however the charger is disabled, it will not close the contactors and it will not change the CP signal to a pilot, but just keep it at a steady 12 volt, minus the drop over the 1K resistor of course caused by the car requesting a charge. ZOE stays awake enough now to recognize the transition to charging later on. I am pretty sure you need to connect your car to the powered, but possibly disabled charger before she falls asleep.
Bottom line: if you have a chargepoint that cannot be disabled but you want it to do so, insert a relay in the CP line, common to the car side, NC to the chargepoint side. The NO side should be wired through a 1K resistor to +12 volt, which you need to find somewhere in the chargepoint. The chargepoint will not see the car being connected, the car will see the keep awake signal. As always, be very careful. Live wires close by.
It’s remarkably hard to find pictures of just the PEB (the inverter and DC/DC converter) of the Q210 as a single unit. I came across this single one though. I am the first to admit it is not a very interesting picture, but it’s all we have at the moment. Note that the box is upside down in this picture. Imagine the orange connectors on the left side when facing the car, and the entire module upside down, so the square black block, which I suspect is the 12 volt connector from the DC/DC converter being on the right bottom side.
The visible orange connector feeds the rotor coil for excitation. Tucked away under that metal ridge at the far right side (so in reality, on the top left side) are the 3 connectors to the stator coils.
I got a few pictures from a friendly mechanic of the inside of part of the BCB. I must admit I was suprised!
First, for reference, the buildup. The left sub-box contains the Filter Module, the right sub-box is the main power interconnect.
Cover removed. See image above for the connectors. The Neutral point connector goes directly into the motor. What is marked as signal connector are two smaller ones, the top one going to the charge connector lock motor, the other probably the CANbus. What they call the Converter, is technically known as the PEB. Note the 40 amp fuses between the battery wires and the heat pump connector, snugged away against the forward wall. Also note the orange bus-bars connecting the battery and the interconnect to the inverter against the aft wall. I suspect the third connector is for the high power rheostats, that are only installed in the cold climate versions of the ZOE.
Upper half, containing plugs and wiring removed. The blue box is a triple smoothing capacitor. The left one is a smoothing coil, and the right one is the rectifier. From there on the energy flows to the PEB where it is further controlled / processed to charge the battery.
The removed upper half. The cable to the charging plug in the nose is connected to the other, closed half of the BCB, left bottom. In this part the Filter Module is located that filters and measures the incoming power, switches between single and three phase operation, etcetera (no pictures yet).
Re-applying heat conducting paste to the rectifier module.
Nicely cleaned bottom, ready to accept the modules covered in heat conducting paste again.
Note: The rotor cable, as well as the three phase cables to the motor come directly from the PEB.
In one of the UK fora, there was quite a discussion about the 12 volt battery. I did some investigation and here is what I have found so far.
As for charging and jump-starting, this is all verboten by the manuals. With that disclaimer in place:
The instruction manual on the fuses really is off. Here is the real thing, in German though. In all fairness, I got this from the first reply in this thread.
Zoe_Sicherungsbelegung The English version is here, kindly translated by SpeakEV user @Sandy Zoe_Fu
Note that there are also fuses in the red box op top of the 12 volt battery, a HUGE 250 amp fuse inside the battery pack, and probably a few more in the USM box under the hood.
Edit: shortcut most requested ones:
