Hi Geri,
What prompted me to join is that my EV has been out of a charge for a couple of weeks.
Completely dead. My 120 volt portable charger doesn't work. It may be the cables need to be replaced from
overuse from the previous owner. Nice to be here and hope to solve my problem soon.
Completely dead. My 120 volt portable charger doesn't work.
When you say the EV is "completely dead", are you saying the car doesn't unlock by key fob, all the lighting in the vehicle cabin stays dark or does not illuminate brightly, and the screens in your dash, as well as the center console, do not turn on?
If this is the case, the 12V battery is dead. In order to charge your EV, your 12V AGM battery under the hood must not be fully discharged. The portable EVSE (charger) can not revive the 12V battery because it is locked out from the 12V system.
You must charge the AGM battery yourself in this case, manually. The car needs sufficient power from the 12V battery to run computers and relay switches for 5-10 seconds until the LED light goes green on the dashboard near the middle of your front windshield, telling you the car has finished its handshake with the portable charger.
Under normal circumstances, the 12V battery is charged while the EV is charged, while waiting on standby during "departure" mode, or while you are driving. However, if this battery is old or degraded from dying more than a few times, it may lose a charge faster than expected.
If the 12V battery is NOT dead, can you confirm a few things about the condition of the portable charger?
- When you plug in the charger into a 120V outlet, do you see solid or flashing red indicator lights, yellow lights, or green lights on the body of the unit?
- Are you able to charge at a public station, or with a neighbor's J1772-style charger, anything besides the portable charger you got with the car?
- Is there any visible physical damage on either end of the connectors? Does the latch and button lever still function on the big J1772 connector that plugs into the car? When you press on it, does it feel springy and return to its original position? I ask because if the button stays pressed in, the portable charger (EVSE) will not allow charging, because it thinks a person is attempting to unplug.
If the spring inside the button-latch is worn out or damaged, you can still use the portable charger as long as the button is pulled out of the body. It must not remain in the pressed-in state if you want to charge. You can pull it out with your fingers most of the time.
It's common for the button latch mechanism to fail on this style of EV plug.
