Sometimes power on and power off don't work.

Hello there. I bought a low milage Spark EV in California in May and had it shipped out to Las Vegas, NV. So far, Zip Zap has been great and makes my daily commute across town much easier. However, in the past two weeks or so, I've had a weird problem where the power off doesn't work right or I come out to the car and it's like the battery is disconnected.

The first time I noticed a problem was when I stopped and tried to turn the car off. When I pushed the big blue button, everything in the car suddenly shut off. The radio didn't continue to play and the main speedometer didn't give me the normal milage summary. Then (within a few seconds) the car turned back on and it wouldn't turn off when I pushed the button. I tried for about a minute, and finally got out of the car with the keys hoping it would trigger something. When I got back in, the button worked, so I turned it off.

Since then, I've had 2 or 3 incidents where, when I come back out to my car after going somewhere, the car acts like it doesn't have any low voltage power. It doesn't respond to button presses on the keyfob and the lights and displays on the inside don't turn on. It's usually short lived, after a minute or two, it will suddenly boot up (I was inside with the door open and the alarm started going off once).

Has anyone else had any problems like this? I'll probably get into the dealership later this week to get it looked at, but it's an intermittent problem and I probably have the only one of these in Nevada so I'd like to try to get a little bit of a handle on what could be causing it. Seems like a software bug, maybe a flakey relay (although surely automotive relays are fairly reliable these days), or something else with the low voltage system.

-Nathan

P.S. This is a 2014 LT1 without quick charging. It has about 5000 miles on it.

Sounds like your key fob needs a new battery or has gone bad. Have you tried another fob?

Bryce

The battery in my fob is at 3.02V, so it should be fine. I do need to find and test the other fob, but like I said, the dome light doesn't even come on when this happens.

There have been a few posts of Spark EV owners having problems with the 12 volt battery. Check the voltage on your 12 volt battery and make sure it isn't below 12 volts. You might also try cycling the car on and off while measuring the battery voltage to see if it drops below 12 volts.

Voltage on the 12 volt battery?

I had that thought yesterday (re the 12V battery), but it started working, so I didn't measure it. I'll look at it later today and get back.

I believe the battery used in the Spark EV is a 12 volt AGM sealed battery. Here is some info I have regarding a battery's state of charge after a few hours of rest with no current draw:

100% - 12.70 volts
90% - 12.50 volts
80% - 12.42 volts
70% - 12.32 volts
60% - 12.20 volts
50% - 12.06 volts
40% - 11.90 volts
30% - 11.75 volts
20% - 11.58 volts
10% - 11.31 volts
0% - 10.5 volts

For best battery life the battery should operate between 40 to 80% of full charge.

What is Zip Zap !?!

Those voltages look high to me, even for deep cycle AGM batteries. I found these values via Phillips Industries for AGM:

100% 12.8 volts
75% 12.4
50% 12.2
25% 12.0
0% 11.8



my last experience with an expired AGM (Odyssey) battery was that 11.9 volts is "game over"

bespoke said:

What is Zip Zap !?!

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Zip Zap is my car.

Today, I sat in the parking lot listening to the radio for a minute and none of the power worked after opening the door. 12.5V on the battery. I went inside the store for a few minutes and came back out. There was still no power and 12.8V on the battery. Battery voltage sags under load and it can take a bit of time for the chemistry to produce a stable voltage when the load is removed (though 0.3V seems like a lot to recover). Seems like the battery is OK either way. I also had both key fobs with me the entire time. Hopefully the dealership will have have some ideas.

Disconnecting and reconnecting the negative 12v battery terminal (rebooting the car) made the symptoms instantly go away again. I'm kind of curious to see if the problem disappears. It started the day after I did an OnStar remote start for the first time in a long time (maybe ever).

I took it in and the dealer pulled some low voltage codes (probably from when I disconnected the battery terminal) but couldn't find anything else. It hasn't had any problems since I disconnected the 12V battery. Maybe one of these days, I'll try another OnStar remote start to see if I can recreate the problem.

One easy thing you might try if it happens again is to cycle the Infotainment Sytem's power by holding it's power bottom down for around 5 seconds. A dialog will come up asking if you want to power down. This seems to turn off more than just the radio and has definitely cured weird issues I have had with the climate control system and possibly with onStar not doing notifications. Note the climate control system issue was not cured by cycling the ignition (main power) as other weird anomalies have been, although maybe I didn't wait long enough with it off for the 'automation' to clear its brains.

I've read but can't verify that the Infotainment Systems is Windoz CE based. If that is the case and with all the can-bus communications going on between systems, restarting Windoz regularly would be recommended.

bicycleguy said:

One easy thing you might try if it happens again is to cycle the Infotainment Sytem's power by holding it's power bottom down for around 5 seconds. A dialog will come up asking if you want to power down. This seems to turn off more than just the radio and has definitely cured weird issues I have had with the climate control system and possibly with onStar not doing notifications. Note the climate control system issue was not cured by cycling the ignition (main power) as other weird anomalies have been, although maybe I didn't wait long enough with it off for the 'automation' to clear its brains.

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I would be interested in knowing what kinds of climate control issues you have encountered.

The one I had yesterday was the desired temperature display was stuck on 61degF. I could rotate the temp dial and the car was clearly changing the intended set point, increasing fan speed down low and shifting to heat when setting it high; but the display never changed from 61. It was in the 90s outside and it resolved itself after turning the car off and on again.

MrDRMorgan said:

I would be interested in knowing what kinds of climate control issues you have encountered.

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Don't remember how it started but the end result was kind of like Zoomit's where you could tell stuff was still working but the display wouldn't show it. In this particular case ALL the touch buttons in the climate display wouldn't highlight or accept touches, but the enderlying function would happen. Pushing the recirculate button on the fan knob would change the recirculation but not the indicator.

Note that the climate interface is poorly setup. To turn off all the auto but leave settings more or less where they are you must press the temp button on the temp knob, turn the auto knob to where you want air blowing, hit the recirculate button twice and finally change the fan speed back and forth. Failure to do all this keeps control of the fan speed, direction and recirculate with the computer. You can verify this by looking at the little icons on the auto button in the climate control settings. When those little icons are lit the computer has its control.

One touch of the auto button and everything is back to what the computer wants with your set temperature. If only turning auto off was this easy.