Category: ZOE

As the original head lights are what we call “glowing nails”, I decided to replace the bulbs with HID (“xenon”) types last summer at the Zoe drivers meeting. It does entail some cutting in the rubber cap and a small metal clip, but all in all it was rather doable, about 10 minutes work per lamp. I must say it is something I would never want taken away anymore. Visibility is so much better. And the white-blue light fits the Zoe pretty good. Recommended.

Still it wouldn’t be fair not to state the drawbacks.

• Sometimes one of the HIDs won’t start. It is a rather common problem. I always check the reflection. Switching off for 20 seconds usually solves the problem.
• HIDs have a start-up time of roughly 30 seconds. As the Zoe has projector lamps with mechanical shutters, flashing during daytime is impossible.

Development of LEDs has been going at a crazy pace. Temperature management seems to have been the most serious issue. A few fellow drivers have installed these types of LEDs and are reporting good results. The fanned out copper mesh wire seems to cool the thing quite effectively. I am not 100% convinced of the longevity but the light is comparable to the HIDs and the two mentioned issues are non-existent.

Edit: Harm Otten posted his experience with two LED headlight systems in his ZOE here (in Dutch but google translate is your friend). Based on that, if I had to do it again, I’d use the ones he installed instead of the HIDs.

BTW, the tail lights are LEDs and integrated in the lamp holder. Braking and Turn-signal are colored traditional bulbs.

A few pictures of the battery pack of the Zoe opened up. Enjoy!

In the Dutch Renault forum, the issue came up that the maximum regenerative power allowed is higher than what CanZE reports as the Max battery charge / regen kW power. Based on a few experiments of my own only, it seems the Zoe will allow double the reported power for regeneration, capped at 40 kW DC of course. After all, it is supposed to be a short burst and the amount of energy, by definition, has already been taken from the battery.

I would appreciate your findings. Just open CanZE on the driving screen and whenever the Max battery charge / regen kW is substantially below 20 kW, try to do a serious regenerative brake (from a high speed works best, i.e. a motorway exit) and see how far the DC Power kW (or if it refreshes too slow, the blue kW in the dash) shows please. Thank you!

Edit: based on my own testing it seems there is indeed a short over-power possible. The rough formula is max_charge_power * 1.65 + 3.5. More testing by Borut suggests this seems sustainable for either roughly 40 seconds, or until the total battery voltage reaches 390 volts (4.06 volts per cell), see the comments.

It should be possible to calculate the max regen power by taking the max_regen_torque (the blue bar in the driving and consumption screen) and multiply that by the wheel speed (in rad/sec). I might implement this in a test screen.

The Zoe has a crawling mode that cannot be disabled (which is unfortunate I think, but I know others differ). It needs a bit of braking to counter this crawling when at a traffic light. When the brake pedal is pressed only a bit, the motor will still push and you’re spoiling a couple of hundred watts in the motor. So, when at a red light, either press the brake a bit firm, or switch the gear to N.

The R240 is the Zoe with the new, more efficient, air-cooled motor that Renault developed in-house. There is some consensus that the battery of the R240 is exactly the same as the Q210, but given the different characteristics of the motor, and the fact that the motor coils are used by the charger (very smart design!) it is capped to charge at a rate of 22 kW maximum. A UK based Zoe driver noticed the “Max battery charge” nicely went up way above 22 kW and asked how that could be.

Today, user Crf supplied us with this CanZE graph when charging his R240 at a 43 kW charger, and I believe it confirms what we were thinking. The Zoe simply caps the incoming pilot and fakes it’s value towards the other systems involved. Notice how it reports 32A and 22 kW available power. Those numbers are both off and way too neatly rounded.

The battery itself (the LBC’s) reports it’s willingness to take the full 40 kW DC power load, and as the SOC goes up it starts it’s capping at roughly 11 kWh. Again, the little jumps we believe is caused by the temperature rising. 2 kWh per degree Celsius is ballpark right. The very rapid capping near the end is kinda interesting.

So yes, it seems like the R240 has the same battery as the Q210. The BCB is tweaked a bit to simply ignore anything above 22 kW and the rest of the car simply behaves as if a 22 kW charger is attached.

I would be interested if any of you have a screen shot of a charging graph where an R240 is being charged at a 43 kW charger, preferably starting at a low SOC (30% or lower). Your help is much appreciated.

So, loosing that little shelf for the dongle was a bit annoying right? Here is what I did. First, get yourself an ultra-flat OBD2 extension cable, such as this one www.ebay.com.au/itm/181765630282. You also need two RJ-45 connectors, an RJ-45 connection block and a crimp tool for the connectors.

Now that male plug is still not flat enough to fit under the shelf, so carefully shave off it’s top like this. Also, cut the cable 10 cm from the female end and crimp RJ-45 connectors on both ends, fitting the colors of the strands in the same sequence in both RJ-45 connectors. Be wise and check if the dongle still works with the two ends connected through the block before continuing.

Next, widen the hole so a standard RJ-45 connector can be pushed through.

Push a piece of stiff electical wire through to either side of the console. It works best if you pry the plastic of the console a bit away from the carpet.

Use the electrical wire to pull the long part of the extension cable (with the male connector) through from the top, RJ-45 end first. Because of the locking clip of the RJ-45, this will be a once-only operation, unless you are prepared to widen that hole substantially more. Or simply cut the wire at the RJ-45 end when you need to remove it. Connect the two parts using the connection block. Finally, push the dongle into the female end of the now rejoined extension cable.

Connect the male end to the car’s SAE 1962 connector and carefully wrap the cable so it won’t push up the shelf. Check again if everything works.

Reseat the shelf.

I tucked the cable under the console. I like this setup, as I can switch it off. Of course you can put it elsewhere or even hide it entirely if you don’t care about switching it off (you should care!).

Done!

PS: Later on (no picture) I moved the dongle a lot more to the aft side. That got it out of the way of careless feet, and because of the shape of the floor it is pushed flush against the console instead of sticking out like you can see in the picture. Finally, it makes the LED’s far easier to see. Much better.

Most of you know the situation. For one reason or the other, you end up with the dreaded RNOD (Red Nose Of Death) and the dash indicates “Battery Charging Impossible”. Worst case that can leave you stranded, and best case you end up with a disabled cruise control / speed limiter and a that blinding orange light in your face. In most cases this is caused by a grounding fault, and these are often edge cases. The natural response is to simply try again and sometimes this works, but very often it doesn’t.

Unfortunately, the CC/SL will only return after a successful charge, however short. There is not much we can do there (maybe reset the BCB or LBC through CanZE, I never tried).

There are two things that you really need to know, however strange they might sound.

First, remove the charger cable, lock up the car and wait until the car completely powers down. You can sit in the car if you want. Pay attention to the power down sequence. After about 3 minutes, you will hear a soft click and the little LED in the lock button on the top side of the R-Link will go off, as will the auxiliary power. Then, after about another minute or two, you will hear a second, soft relay click. Then, wait another minute. Then CANbus will go to sleep, but there is no indication for that, just wait out that minute. Don’t touch a thing during this wait. Of course you can simply walk away and time a minimum of 6 minutes, but the key is: no cable, everything locked. After this, the computers, and possibly a few big capacitors in the BCB will be in a cleaner state and charging will often be possible. If there is no real grounding problem, you should be able to start the charger normally. I should stress that simply driving to another charger and not going through this “rain dance” usually does not solve the problem.

Second, in some rare edge cases after above procedure, everything will seem to be fine, no errors, but still, the charging process itself will just not start. In the rare cases I had this, I had walked away and retried without opening up the car. Just opened it’s nose, connected the cable, activated the charger. If this happens, unlock the doors. This will wake up all computers, the dash, etc, and that usually makes it realize that indeed it should be charging. The reassuring “clunk” from the charger and the “click – wheeeeeee” noises from under the bonnet will hopefully make you breathe again.

Another problem might be that by accident a scheduled charge is set. So, if the car refuses to charge, look for that little clock icon in the top row of the dash display.

Finally, as was mentioned in one of the comments, a long press on the start button may help, but I cannot confirm this.

We do our best to make things as intuitive and clear as possible, but sometimes that doesn’t work, or the idea presented simply needs some explanation. The blue aiming bar shown in the driving and braking screens, and soon to be released in the consumption screen too, might be one of those. So, here goes……

The Aiming Bar is always displayed under a Braking Torque bar. Braking Torque is the force of braking. It does not correspond to power, as power is proportional to torque multiplied by speed. In most cars, Braking Torque corresponds to the position of the braking pedal. For the Zoe, this is almost true. Lifting your foot from the accelerator pedal already induces a bit of Braking Torque. Pressing the braking pedal increases that torque.

The Blue Aiming Bar is the maximum braking torque the car can apply using only regeneration. Ideally, you should never brake more than the blue bar indicates: every braking beyond the Blue Aiming Bar is applied through friction braking and the corresponding energy is lost. As I explained earlier, the Blue Aiming Bar is a bit counter-intuitive: at very low speed, the motor cannot regenerate so the bar disappears. At high speed, even a little bit of torque will make the regeneration hit the maximum charging limit of the battery. When the battery is full, there is almost no regeneration at all.

For that reason, avoiding friction braking requires a bit of getting used to. It feels unnatural to “feather-brake” at speed and then apply more and more while speed bleeds off, and it certainly needs stricter anticipation.

Note: this does not apply to the Fluence and the Kangoo, as these cars only use the accelerator to control regeneration. Using the braking pedal applies friction braking only.