A Minor Journey dot com.

Maybe it was the fact that I went to test-drive the petrol version of Mitsubishi’s i, which is due to come out in electric version later this year.

Maybe it was because it felt it needed a day off after being driven for more than 200 miles last week.

Or maybe it was just having PMS

But after getting back from my test-drive and subsequent City El trip my El decided that it wasn’t going to charge. Oh-no. It didn’t want to do anything like that. It was just going to sit there and look pretty.

Coming back yesterday, with the pack at about 40 degrees C, I plugged the El in.

Me: “Okay, now time to charge”
El: “Meh… charging… ”
Car’s BMS: “One of your cells is getting very low. Voltage Low”
Me: “Okay, okay.” pulls back of battery compartment and checks each cell in turn. Lowest is 2.9 Volts, well within the required spec. Resets BMS…. “Okay, let’s charge now eh?”
El: “Yes, Charger plugged in. Hummmmmmm…….”
BMS:”Nope, not charging here”
El: “Yes, charger connected and yes, charger switched on, but I’m not charging. I feel ill”
Me: “Okay… what’s up???”

Anyway… you get the idea. It took half of yesterday to deduce that it wasn’t the transformer in the charger, and yes, the BMS was working just as it should (and always has). It seemed that the problem lay in my charger circuit under the seat, which was point-blank refusing to do anything.

After getting rather upset about the fact that the charger was broken, and deciding that there was nothing left but to disconnect everything and leave the car for the night I spent a good 24 hours brooding. I even had to borrow Kate’s Prius this morning to get to work - a fact I’m still not entirely happy with.

Discover my joy then when a few moments ago I decided that with nothing left to loose I should go and plug everything back together.

“Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm”
“Whiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”
“Charggggeeeeeeee”

Yes folks, the charger sprung into life like nothing was ever wrong. My only diagnosis is that there was some bizzare hardware latch which the charger needed to recover from. The latch would have been reset by a few hours without power to it. Still, good to know that the car can be back on the road tomorrow. I really didn’t want to spend any more money fixing the thing.

(I’m wanting a Think or an i )