Was this car from a dealer? That would be my first call. The car is likely out of Renault warranty. If it is, you can, before it lapses, buy an annual insurance to cover this eventuality. It costs around £300.

 

Just charge at 7kw until you save up?

 

What is the date of its first registration?

 

If you dont want to go the dealer way, it might be worth try out one of the hevra garages, they might be able to sort the part out, or get one from a donor car. Was watching a youtube with ashley neal today he talked about a bmw(ice car) fault that would have costed him £10500 to fix, luckily he was within warranty.

 

I don't know if the BCB unit counts as the powertrain, but you would have a 5-yr warranty on the electric powertrain:

https://cdn.group.renault.com/ren/gb/insurance/ze-warranty-terms-and-conditions-before-february.pdf.asset.pdf/1576169018580.pdf

 

A new diode or two would probably fix it, but that is not how they do things. It is probably the extra phases, rather than the extra current from a rapid that it does not like.

 

It may be the stuck relay that occurs when you charge from an incorrectly wired single phase charger. If it is that issue then the BCB is repairable by a specialist.
To diagnose this check the resistance between L1 and L3 with the car fully off. If it open circuit then you are in luck ?.
There is more from the expert @yoh-there on this thread here.

 

Hi there,

Whereabouts in the country are you? There are some good EV specialists around, i've fixed some fairly major issues on my Zoe with help from a really good guy in Kent.

This sounds like component failure within the BCB as suggested above - taking the BCB out is fairly major work (its heavy for a start !) but doable and most likely the faulty component inside can be replaced.

I've worked on a Zoe that had issues inside the PEB (basically under the bonnet of a Q210 the big metal box on top is the BCB, then PEB is the smaller box under that) and I believe the BCB is vin-locked to the vehicle the same as the PEB. This means you can't just get a salvage BCB and swap it but you could harvest parts from a salvage one, though that is a fair job to crack them both open and reliably redo the connections that take 32A at 240v.

Best of luck.

Cheers.

 

Hello Gary, first of all, thanks a lot for your message, since I have the same problem and this has been the most accurate and clarifying message out of all the forums I have been reading. I have already checked that my car has continuity between N and L3.
However, I still have some questions since I want to get into the process of repairing it myself.
When you finally got to the welded relay, how did you procceed exactly? And, where did you buy the exact same relay? Is it a typical one and easy to obtain?
Was it enought to change the relay or did you have to change the electronic dashboard? I guess that Renault does not sell this pieces as one part.
What if once I got to the same step you got on the last picture, where you see the welded relay, I decide to send it to an electronics repair workshop?
I will appreciate a lot your clarifications or from anyone who has gone through the process, and thank you very much.
Cheers from Spain.

 

Cheers all I now have a way forward.
I did not know about the 5 year power train warranty and this I may have some luck with. Although on this recent garage visit I was two days out of warranty when I first visited the garage (and they said it was ok , when it was still faulty) I was still within this warranty period. So the dealer is escalating this above customer services at main UK Renault. I will see if this works. To help the case I contacted the charge point suppliers and got evidence that the charge points I tripped (Their internal relays) were in a similar fashion from before and after the first.

otherwise I will try an independent near Guildford and see what can be done.

Thank you all for the help. Very useful and much appreciated.

 

Good luck. Let us know how you get on and what the fault actually is.

Did you check the resistance between L1 and L3 to eliminate the "stuck relay" issue? If it is significantly below that between L1 and L2 then it may be that Renault will say that your car was damaged by a badly wired charging post and that this is not a manufacturing fault.

 

Renault Uk customer services said nope. But the Renault dealership then spoke to the factory in Romania directly and they okayed the repairs. So definitely worth chasing up the 5 year warranty aspect and the dealer being onside.
Cheers all
Peter

 

Great result. Here's to trouble free motoring

 

Oh and nope unsure if dealer did that test. I did ask though.

 

Great to hear has worked out OK for OP but another good example why extending the Zoe warranty is strongly recommended. The Renault one can't be added afterwards and some 3rd party ones have low limits on repair costs and would not have covered this example.

 

Yup, Always extend with manufacturer if you can.

 

Although the Renault warranty is not run by Renault (its 3rd party) and I am having a lot of problems with getting them to connect and cover some things. So far it has taken me two weeks without a car.

 

Hi all,
I’m working on a Zoe with this issue, basically won’t rapid charge. This is actually caused by a fault rapid charger although the car should really handle it better.

The issue is caused when a rapid charger has a fault - if one of the 3 phases trips but the others are present it causes the Zoe to believe it’s a single phase charger when it actually has 2 live phases. The Zoe tries to configure itself for single phase charging but since its not single phase it causes a short between live and neutral inside the BCB and welds one of the charging relays permanently closed. The relay is on the left side of the BCB in the charging unit.

It is possible to buy the charging unit only for around £900 from Renault (I was advised by a Hevra garage that this is most likely how they would repair it), but I am currently trying to fix this by replacing the actual relay which costs £30. It is quite a bit of disassembly to get to it, since the BCB has to come out then be taken apart to get to the charging unit, then this again has to be taken apart to get to the board with the relay but I got this out today and ordered the replacement relay, so will attempt repair when it arrives.

My soldering equipment may not be powerful enough so I may have to get a friend to do the soldering for me.

If you want to confirm if your car has this exact fault you need a multimeter, check for continuity (zero ohms) between pins N and L3 on the car’s charge port. The car I’m working on would drive fine, just the charging issue.

Charging unit out

Disassembly of charging unit

This is the board with the stuck relay.

And this is the relays with the covers off, top one is stuck closed and cannot ope, bottom one open as it should be.

Cheers

 

Rule number 1 of owning A Zoe is to never own one out of warranty or extended warranty

 

Some interesting posts, but bear in mind that OP reported their fault 10 months ago and hasn't been back since then, so they aren't looking for suggestions on how to repair. Hopefully they were still under 5 year drivetrain warranty and got fixed under that.

 

Looks like this might be repairable away from Renault parts swapping centres in due course.

Lots of people out there that can make effective repairs to electronics modules. They just need the volume.

 

Yes, we just need some of the arches type garages to shift from oil changes and clutches to electronics.

Perhaps some grants for mechanics to retrain would be a good post pandemic stimulus?