Level 2 charges never end... green light slow blink

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bob

Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2016
Messages
5
I've got a Spark EV that I bought about a month ago.

I've noticed that sometimes when I use the ChargePoint chargers at work the car will charge at 3.3 kW, then stop when it's full and I'll get notified by the charging station to go unplug my car.

Other times, I'll never get notified, and it seems the car drops from a 3.3 kW charge rate to something like a 0.9 kW rate. The charge never seems to end... see chart below.

https://goo.gl/photos/uwGcQSJBpXJYLrv28

During these scenarios, when I get back to the car I see the charge status light is doing a slow green blink, which I understand from the manual means that it's "delayed".... though my charge mode is set to immediate and I can't understand what the car's doing.

Any advice?

Thanks,

Bob
 
This sounds like yet another case of the battery thermal management system continuing to cool, (or warm in the winter), the battery pack.
There seems to be some owners posting about this issue.
It is definitely a bug.

Good luck getting GM EV Tech Support to listen to owners with this bug.

It would seem the battery pack would be freezing cold with hours of cooling at ~900 watts of cooling. The pack is insulated.

Mine will give me the onstar txt that 'charge complete', then 15-25 mins later I'll get the txt from Chargepoint that 'car is drawing little power and probably done'.
I'll see the same graph on the chargepoint app that you posted only the TMS power draw stops after ~20 minutes.
 
Thanks for the reply.... I'll search for some other threads about this to read more, and I'll call chevy.
 
I brought the car into the service department, but they didn't find anything.

They charged it on their charger, got a "fast blink"... and were kinda done. They offered to go drive around in the car for a while to drain the battery then put it on a different model charger, but that seemed unlikely to be worth the time.

They wondered if it's the charger. Do chargers actually do anything intelligent, or do they just put out power like a normal wall socket?

Thanks,

Bob
 
Just read about EVSEs... apparently there is communication between the car and charging station. interesting.
 
I just upgraded from a 2014 sparky without DCFC to a 2016 Sparky and have noticed two differences with the battery performance...

1) on the new 2016, the battery will be fully charge le and continues to pull the same kind of power as described in this thread. The 2014 would not do that and both were charged with the same Juicebox Pro 40 level 2 EVSE.

2) on the 2014 Spark, I rarely saw any battery conditioning and with the new 2016 Spark, I see anywhere from 3-8% of battery conditioning used every day.

Both issues are pretty frustrating and doubt that Chevy will have any answers or solutions. And who knows, they may be related to each other
 
I have an EVI EVSE with a display. After the charge is complete on my 2016 EV with DCFC, it continues to show .2-.3a draw at 240v (around 50-75w), apparently forever. Perhaps that's just the maintenance level for the battery-monitoring hardware and such?
 
jerb2k said:
I just upgraded from a 2014 sparky without DCFC to a 2016 Sparky and have noticed two differences with the battery performance...

1) on the new 2016, the battery will be fully charge le and continues to pull the same kind of power as described in this thread. The 2014 would not do that and both were charged with the same Juicebox Pro 40 level 2 EVSE.

2) on the 2014 Spark, I rarely saw any battery conditioning and with the new 2016 Spark, I see anywhere from 3-8% of battery conditioning used every day.

Both issues are pretty frustrating and doubt that Chevy will have any answers or solutions. And who knows, they may be related to each other

Interesting observation. I have both a 2014 and 2015 Spark EV and I have been recording the display usage information for both cars prior to starting each charging event since March. I rechecked my data and, for the 2014 Spark EV, I have 0 / 25 events logged with 1% or more of battery condition. For my 2015 Spark EV, I have 8 / 28. I know the cooling plates are different between the two model years but I do not know what the data is telling me other than possibly the 2015 is doing a better job of keeping the battery pack cool.
 
My '14 in hot weather will continue to draw ~0.8 kw for 15-25 minutes after the green light starts flashing and the onstar "Done charging" msg has been sent.
Then it drops to zero and if I'm on a chargepoint public charger I'll get the "Drawing little power and probably done..." msg.
When at home my L2 has a display and it is ZERO after the TMS 15-25 minute period.

Dang, what did Chevy do to the SW in the '16's?
Even if it is drawing only '50-75 watts' when full, an insulated battery pack will be incredibly cold if TMS is cooling it all night long.
And if this is 'BMS', as in 'balancing the cells', that should stop at some point and shouldn't be needed nightly.
 
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