Might be the car….

 

Did you test the cables on another car, as you say if its Type 2 then it should work, sadly your problem is pointing towards it being a car fault rather than a cable fault.

Can you borrow a cable from someone else to test it works, some public chargers have Type 2 tethered cables.

 

The 3-pin to Type 2 charging cable that came with my 2018 530e died recently and rather than shell our for an official replacement, I thought I'd get one off eBay for half the price. It's old tech now, after all, how complicated can it be?

Suffice to say, neither of the two cables I've bought so far will charge the car. On paper they should be fine, but I've tried the second one (which has adjustable ampage) on 8, 10 and 13 amps with the car set to Max, Reduced and Low charging rates with no luck. The green light on the brick comes on for 1 second and then turns red. The car says nothing.

Can anyone recommend a cable that actually works? I didn't think my BMW would be as fussy as an iPhone when it came to off-brand cables but here were are.

Welcome to the forum.

TBH, if you buy something with no form of safety approval from Ebay and it doesn't work I think it may well be your lucky day. Apart from the fact that a 13A capable granny lead cannot be safe (given that the safe continuous maximum current from a 13A outlet is 10A) there's also the fact that the majority of stuff like this sold on Ebay and Amazon doesn't come close to meeting any UK safety requirements (hence the fires being reported caused by Ebay/Amazon supplied scooters, ebikes etc that have killed people and badly damaged homes).

My guess is as mentioned above, the problem lies within the charger in the car. It sounds as if it's not commanding the charge point to turn on. Someone with a fault code reader might be able to take a look at any codes stored from attempted charges, and they may give some clue as to where the fault lies.

 

Sorry, but I have to ask out of curiosity. You say that your OEM cable failed. But did it? Could it be that in fact it's still OK, and that it was the car that stopped charging from it? I only ask because it seems odd to me that three cables failing to work is too much of an unlucky coincidence.

As mentioned earlier, given these circumstances it's worth checking if the fault is actually in the car's charging hardware. In which case you may now have three perfectly sound cables. But a car requiring attention instead.

 

As per @Hitstirrer, I'd find someone locally with a bev or phev and ask to test the original BMW cable.

 

I appreciate all the replies here. Thank you for the advice. I will check the car and the cables with other cars and cables and see if it's the car that's the problem.

But to answer one question, yes the cable was definitely dead. it flipped the house fuse in a rainstorm a couple of weeks ago and is now inert. The brick won't light up, even with a new fuse in the 3-pin plug. That doesn't mean the car isn't also a problem of course, but it's not giving me any error messages so far.

 

When you say the "house fuse", could you possibly be a little clearer? The main fuse is typically a 100A, maybe 80A, fuse located at the incomer, the cable coming into the house, and can only be replaced by the DNO, the local Distribution Network Operator. and it's extremely unlikely that this blew, so that suggests it was something else.

There should be over current protection on the outlet that you are using, if it's part of a ring final circuit that should be a 30A fuse or a 32A circuit breaker, but neither of those should operate, as the 13A fuse in the plug top should fail way before they do.

Is it possible that the device that tripped was an RCD? A resettable residual current device? If so, that indicates that there is an earth leakage fault, in either the circuit, the charge point or the charger in the car. Hot favourites for that type of fault is most probably the car, although given that the granny lead charge point doesn't seem to be powered that does suggest that maybe the plug fuse has blown.

Have you checked the fuse in the plug on the granny lead charge point that isn't powering up?

I think with a bit of patience and a process of elimination we can probably narrow down the cause of the problem for you. Might need some photos at some point just to be clear what sort of protective devices you have,

 

I hope its the brick only and not the brick failing perhaps from water ingress and damaging the cars charger before the trip caught it. The bricks (and chargepoints ) can send mains along the control wire (CP) if they fail badly, its very unlikely but @HandyAndy had this happen to him.

 

The extra little detail that this happened when the granny brick was flooded tends to suggest that the event damaged the car as well as the granny brick and an inline fuse. Incidentally, does the 13 amp socket that was being used still work with an ordinary appliance plugged in there? Just another elimination point really, but worth checking. Also, is the earthing still present at that socket, because one of the checks made by the granny brick and car handshake is that there is an adequate earth before it allows power to flow. If there was a large spike when the granny let smoke out it could have caused cable damage anywhere in the circuit as well.

A program of cross-checks with different cars, cables, and sockets to eliminate or confirm what works and what doesn't is now needed to narrow down the source of this issue. It could still be anything from the house CU trip through to the car, and then anything in between.

At this stage, my bet is that if you are able to check with another EV, using another house's 13 amp socket, you will find that your new cables both work with their car, and that their cable doesn't work with yours. Pointing to a car issue. Happy to be wrong though as that can be expensive.

 

The 3-pin to Type 2 charging cable that came with my 2018 530e died recently and rather than shell our for an official replacement, I thought I'd get one off eBay for half the price. It's old tech now, after all, how complicated can it be?

Suffice to say, neither of the two cables I've bought so far will charge the car. On paper they should be fine, but I've tried the second one (which has adjustable ampage) on 8, 10 and 13 amps with the car set to Max, Reduced and Low charging rates with no luck. The green light on the brick comes on for 1 second and then turns red. The car says nothing.

Can anyone recommend a cable that actually works? I didn't think my BMW would be as fussy as an iPhone when it came to off-brand cables but here were are.

Sounds like it could be a problem with the socket (lack of earth?). I think many charge bricks check for an earth and maybe other things. I noticed that issue on a Leaf many years ago which I had on test drive and I foolishly tried to charge it using a 2 core extension lead made up from an old garden tool and it wasn't having any of it.
Does the charge brick turn red when it isn't connected to the car?
You should also try and charge off a 7kW public charger to see if that works. If it does then you'll know it's not the car that has a problem.

 

The socket worked for a year. It's possible this new cable has changed that somehow, but the cable lights up with a green light and allows me to select different charging rates before it is connected to the car. The fault appears when I plug it into the car.

 

Where are you based, @Rebel73 ? I've a known-good granny charger, and a known-good type 2 cable, happy to let you try both out if you're in/near Manchester.

 

I appreciate your kind offer but I'm in north London!

 

Will the car charge on public AC chargers at all? Or does it now only work on DC chargers?

 

IIRC the BMW 330e and 530e only have diddy batteries, so don't support any DC fast charging. It's type 2 AC only.

 

Good idea to check on a known to be good AC charge point, though, just in case the damaged BMW granny cable has inadvertently damaged the charger in the car. I hope it hasn't, but the fact that a replacement granny lead doesn't work does suggest that may be a possibility.

If the damaged charge point (the one that tripped the supply) had water ingress then there's no telling where the earth leakage fault may be internally. It's possible that the mains side managed to short with the low voltage Control Pilot signalling cable to the car, and if that managed to accidentally stuff 230VAC into the terminal on the car that only expects to see 12V DC that could, unfortunately, result in the magic smoke escaping.

Hopefully this isn't what has happened, but a test charge on a known to be working AC charge point would rule that out and narrow things down to being just the house wiring and replacement granny lead as being the cause.

 

If the new ones light up as ready to connect it suggests the car is what is faulty.

 

Now there is also a mention of an extension cable being involved in the chain, as well as the heavy rain, the possibility of water shorting across somewhere and causing a major spike is much higher. Don't forget that it wasn't just the trip on the circuit to the socket but there was also another snippet of info dropped in there that the house lights all went out as well. So it was the main CU trip that was thrown. That speaks to a major event. And as such suggests a carry over to the car itself. I would be very surprised now that a lot more info has been revealed if the car will charge at a known working outlet using a proven cable.

 

Many houses have a single or dual RCD arrangement (RCBOs are a relatively modern requirement) so leakage on a granny charger could easily cause most of the house to lose power, even if it was just 30mA leakage.