In the post about the braking system, we referred to the dealer mechanic introduction document, which has a bunch of very informative images. Here are two more about the climate system which I think are worth sharing. Pretty smart. From myrenaultzoe.com.
Dutch forum member OlafH dissected the pedestrian horn a bit and posted this picture.
The horn is a bit hard to get to, one has to remove the front bumper to get to it. I tried to analyse it a bit. Here is a summary of the most important components. Prepare to be amazed.
SPC5602: A generic processor, though aimed at the car industry, made by NXP. It’s current id is MPC5602P. It has 64KB data flash, 20KB RAM, 256KB code flash, and a PMW generator. MPC5602P
TPA3111Q1: A 10 Watt D-class (PWM) mono audio amplifier by Texas instruments. No real surprises on this one. TPA3111D1-Q1
UJA1076A: CAN transceiver, a nifty little chip, made by NXP. It can also acts as a power supply and watchdog. UJA1076A
25P16vpa: 16Mbit (2MB) flash memory, made by ST Microelectronics. I bet the sound files are stored here. Enough for 2 minutes mp3 encoded data or 12 seconds of raw sound files. 25P16vpa
1334A: Stereo DAC. Hell, this horn is CD quality, they didn’t even use the PMW output of the main processor!!!! Also NXP. 1334A
7342: Dual hexfet. Basically an on-off switch, by International Rectifier, now Infineon: 7342
The horn resells for about 180 Euros. It is hooked up to the Electro CANbus, power, and a few more wires. While I haven’t touched it myself yet, I bet the sound selector push-button is wired directly to it.
By the way. Another name for a Pedestrian Horn is Vehicle Sound for Pedestrians or VSP, though this is officially a Nissan name and developed system.
Edit: Matthew posted a link to an in depth description of ZOE’s VSP in the comments. I’ve copied the file here on the CanZE blog should the link go dead. Thank you Mathew.
Edit: Thanks you Rudi42 for the additional picture of the location, and of course the custom project.
Renault has been selling the official Zoe granny charger for a while. The official name is AFAIK the “Flexi charger”. It retails for a bit over 700 euro’s. Charging current is fixed to 10 amps. Slovenian forum member “pirpy” dissected it (partly) and noticed there is a control wire to the Schuko plug to change the maximum power setting to 13 amps. It is done by using a “special socket”, that is coded to supply that current using….. a strong magnet!!
See this forum entry and a few posts down. “pirpy” decided to use this knowledge to recode the flexi charger to 13A permanently.
In all fairness user “Crf” in the UK SpeakEV forum pointed me to this and I fully admit I thought he was pulling off a pretty decent April 1st joke, but it is really true!
Edit: as expected the Flexi charger has two relays so it can switch polarity. That was impossible to do in my granny charger, simply because there was no room for it.
More teasers. Frédéric is still working on quite a few screens, but as you can see there has been a lot of progress!
Since Renault started giving out some Europe maps for free (and those not fitting on the standard non-Europe TomTom SD card), a couple of people have stepped up the work to try and clone & resize these cards. SpeakEV User Sandy posted this tedious but awesome procedure to get it done. It’s unverified, but it seems we’re getting there. See the 7th post in this thread.
Edit: I created a more detailed step by step instruction here. All credits to Sandy though!
The Zoe (and as far as I know, all Z.E. models) have at least three CANbusses: The main bus (Renault calls this the Vehicle bus), which is what the dongle connects to, a Multimedia bus, which is also wired to the SAE J1962 connector, but on pins 12 and 13 which are not wired in a cheap dongle, and the Electro CANbus, which connect the BCB, EVC, LBC’s and even the pedestrian horn computer. More on that last one in another post, but as a teaser, it is a serious (and expensive) computer!
The Electro bus is gatewayed to the Vehicle bus through the EVC but of course this hides the goodies from priers like us. But don’t despair. In the Zoe, the Electro bus is wired to the cabin and there is a small connector.
EDIT DECEMBER 2016: EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE IS WRONG. THAT CONNECTOR IS NOT THE ELECTRO CANBUS BUT A WIRE TO A SENSOR IN THE AIR CONDITIONER. I WILL POST AN UPDATE WITH NEW PICTURES IN A NEW POST SOON.
It is located to the right of the accelerator pedal against the middle console, and snugged in a blind (un-wired) connector. Here is a picture and we are looking up and a bit to the right from the accelerator pedal.
Diagnostic commands send to those ECU’s are passed on by the EVC, but we know nothing about the traffic on this bus, other than what is clearly passed on by the EVC, which is probably just the information that is needed by the rest of the car. Anyone taking up the challenge? 🙂
There is a Zoe recall for inspection of the rear front wheel well lining. It can come loose and damage the flexible hydraulic line to the brake.
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:
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.
Frédéric is working on an IOS version of CanZE. It will take some more time before a first very alpha version will be released. Until then, here some screenshots if the new app.
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.
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.
