Hi Dominic, sorry to hear of your issue with Zoe, if you haven't come across it there is a thread about this issue here .... STOP Electric Failure DANGER

 

Hi - yeah, I read the thread - so are the two faults ("STOP Electric Failure DANGER" and "STOP Electric Motor Failure") caused by the same underlying issue? Do we know what the issue is?

 

Seems it is a fault in the PEB or PEC depending which model you have .....STOP Electric Failure DANGER

 

Failed repair opens up the rejection avenue. I'd at least threaten that you will move to reject if they do not fix it. You cannot have a car that conks out as you can't trust it. The ultimatum is they either repair it for good or you reject the car. It's not even a year old.

It's not an unusual fault either.

Does it throw up the fault doing the pre warm thing and opening the door? That seems to be a way of forcing some of these errors.

 

Does it throw up the fault doing the pre warm thing and opening the door? That seems to be a way of forcing some of these errors.

I had prewarmed the car that morning - it was -2 outside- (and indeed did open the door mid pre-warm) but no error at that point - it drove me without issue to work and most of the way home.

 

Insist that Renault Liverpool call in the expert technician from France. Until he turns up they don't have the authority to do the proper repair (replace the PEC) as it costs in the region of £4k and involves taking the motor out of the car.

 

What I don't understand is why the excuse "we can't reproduce the problem" or "it's working when we tried it" means they can get away with not fixing it and hand it back to the customer and wait for it to happen again ?

What is the point of fault logs in ECU's if they don't make use of them as part of a diagnosis ? Are they trying to suggest that there are no usable faults logged in any of the ECU's to both (a) confirm that the problem the customer reported did in fact happen (surely if the dashboard displayed a major fault like this it is logged ?) and (b) help point the finger of blame at a particular system in the car.

Fault logs are not just a fault code - they usually provide a snapshot of a wide array of "freeze frame" data at the time the fault occured. So factors such as road speed, temperature, voltage, etc and dozens of other pieces of information will have been logged together with the fault code each time the fault occured. This can be massively useful in performing a diagnosis even if you can't see the fault occurring in front of you.

This seems to be a relatively common problem with the Zoe, so it's not as if they've never heard of it before and don't have any prior experience fixing it. If it's as common as it appears to be there should be a bulletin out from Renault to service departments warning them of the issue, the usual cause(s) and advice on what to replace to resolve the issue.

I've been privy to internal service bulletins from other manufacturers like PSA for issues far less serious than this, so I know what these kind of bulletins look like, and I think its extremely unlikely that there isn't a bulletin on this issue.

If the car was not under warranty and they were going to charge for the repairs then I can understand their reluctance to jump to conclusions about what unit might be faulty without being 100% certain and end up charging the customer for a unit that doesn't actually fix the problem.

But it's under warranty! Surely if a car comes in with a major intermittent fault that can cripple the car, a fault that seems to be relatively common, and ECU fault logs concur with the cause of the problem, they should be falling over themselves to replace the units that are "probably" causing the fault, and erring on the side of caution if there is more than one unit that could cause the issue. Replace all the likely culprits and ship the suspect ones back to Renault for analysis in their own time!

Don't send your customer back out on the road with half a fix to let them break down again, surely that is just bad customer service, and also bad PR both for Renault and EV's in general. Don't give people like @donald any more ammunition that EV's are unreliable!

I really do despair sometimes at how atrociously bad the diagnostic abilities of car dealers is - and this is not EV specific by a long shot - I've seen loads of examples of really really poorly diagnosed ICE cars over the years that have been back multiple times for the same fault and they just can't seem to figure it out despite being main dealers.

I have sympathy for your situation and hope they do finally get it resolved 100% fairly soon, otherwise if I was in your shoes I would be rejecting the car.

 

The problem is the same matter I raise in my basic thesis that EVs cannot yet be considered as reliable as ICE.

Part of that is sufficient understanding of the very complex interactions in a car between working and non-working systems.

In ICE, a lot of those are already well understood.

In EV, not only is there less understood, it is also becoming less intuitive, instead buried behind burgeoning lengths of software code.

Just because someone/some company makes something doesn't mean they understand it completely. They build a thing to do X, they don't build it NOT to do X'. [at least, to some extent it is covered, this is getting into the field of safety and reliability, which is not necessarily given the same level of importance as getting product out]

 

Sure. I work in software (with some really gnarly code) and half the problems we come up against on a day to day basis are knock on side effects of other things. So I understand... What baffles me is how something where the knock on effects are so potentially serious how that isn't flagged up as a priority one fix... If this happens ONCE, the car should be replaced. A "suck it and see" approach seems almost criminally negligent when the fault can cause the car to completely shut down (impacting vital systems such as steering and braking as well as motive power) without any warning

 

ECU fault logs concur with the cause of the problem,

There seems to be some slight evidence that these codes have a habit of disappearing. In some threads you see quotes of 'we couldn't find the fault codes in the logs'.

 

2017 R90 30000 miles, multiple "Electric motor failure" now under repair (edit: fixed in 5 weeks by replacing motor)

(sound in error mode)

 

Exact same problem that I had. Renault did diagnostics and there was some rotor sensor issue.
Today it is fixed by replacing the motor at no cost. Also the sound and red stop and orange esc light.and flickering PRND. After car went to sleep, I could drive again. But problem returned more often.
Car was pulling forward while throtling down en then stopped. Now I hope its is fixed with this new engine built 18/07/2018 23:03:34

 

Exactly the same issue as me apparently although I was told "Engine position sensor" which sounds the same thing. As it was described to me normally when they plug-in the CLIP tool it tells them the error and what they do to fix it. This one apparently orders them to compile a report to give Renault Technical (who I assume are based in France) and await further instruction from them. They are now involved in my car. I have a hire car till then and both Renault UK and the dealer have been very helpful. Particularly impressed with this dealer's EV knowledge too.

There's a whole bunch of process I've learnt from this such as hire cars come from asking Renault ZE Assistance when you break down (and are the quickest way to arrange the car to be taken to a garage and repaired).. and as a ZE owner you can ask Renault UK to cover fuel. None of this is offered until you ask. Renault UK will also keep an eye on the dealer etc and it may be their decision as to whether or not the hire car is to be extended.

Renault ZE Assistance were also very helpful, genuine and lovely people.. but ironically knew next to nothing about ZEs (by their own admission) .

Happy with the way Renault are handling things at present.. the breakdown process seems a bit confusing unless you know all the tricks and departments, some of them are better trained than others.. but they are doing everything I would like and no car is perfect considering there's 93,197 of them on the roads worldwide I'm sure a few issues creep in occasionally.

 

Crazy stuff. Wonder what happened with OP.

I agree if there's a dangerous problem like that, they shouldn't release it to the customer to risk their lives diagnosing the hard way.

When a dealer is being crap, from what I've heard, Renault Customer Services are generally good at lighting a fire under their backsides.

 

OK, so I had the dreaded Electric Motor Failure today in our 2107 R90.
This is the 2nd time, the first was over a month ago when my wife was driving and by the time I go her, about 20 minutes, the error message had cleared and it has been driven for several hundred miles since then.

The symptoms are exactly the same as reported by the OP Dominic.

Today I was about 3 miles from home when it happened, this time I did not hesitate and called Z.E. Assistance who were going to send a recovery vehicle to collect and take it to our local dealer.
They told me it could take 60 to 90 minutes for recovery to arrive.
After about 30 minutes or so the error message cleared so I called Z.E.Assistance to ask if it would be OK to drive the 8 miles to the dealer and not wait for recovery, they said it was up to me, so they cancelled recovery and I drove straight to the dealership and made it as far as their car park when it stopped again as I was reversing into a parking space, only just made it
The car was blocking the car park (see below) and had to be pushed by 3 men to get the few feet into the space.

Photo of dash

The next step was call Z.E. Assistance for them to arrange rental car from Enterprise.
I can have the rental car for 5 days and if the Zoe is not repaired by then the dealer will give me a loan car until it is repaired.

 

They might otherwise just extend the rental. I guess it probably depends on a few things including the dealer and whether they have enough spare courtesy cars. The loan car situation seems to vary - at least if the dealer can accept the car in straight away that makes things easier, as if there's a lead time then you're on your own until they can

Good luck!

 

The car is at the dealer who told me that they may not have time to look at it before the weekend. I am back home waiting for Enterprise to bring a car.

 

So Enterprise eventually arrived at my home with a rental car this evening and the driver was delighted to tell me I had got a free upgrade.....personally I was not overjoyed, I had expected a small economical hatchback but instead I got this Vauxhall Insignia If the repairs to the Zoe take longer than the 5 days I have this car for, and I guess they will, I will ask for something smaller from the dealer. I will only use the Vauxhall if I am desperate...I am quite surprised at how much I have come to dislike ICE cars.

 

Ah yes, only in the ICE world is something less economical an "upgrade"!

Could be worse, repair before last the only vehicle our Enterprise had was an 8 seater party bus... that was a fun one to drive around / fit into parking spaces!

 

I digress somewhat from the topic, but I find myself in a moral quandary these days.
I am retired and try to be as green as possible, but when it comes environmental impact my 3 voluntary jobs vary widely, driving an electric buggy for the National Trust, driving various filthy polluting diesel vehicles for the Red Cross plus being a track marshal at Silverstone.
I guess of the three my lowest impact is marshalling as it is not me doing the polluting

 

Back on the topic, does anyone know of this fault happening to an R110 or is it just the earlier versions that this happens to?

 

I wouldn't worry too much on the OT subject. It's good to aim for EVs where possible but doing good deeds in a dirty diesel that already exists isn't the end of the world. Besides none of us are perfect (for example, I still eat meat, which has a big environmental impact). We can only try to do what we can, or at least try not to do too much harm, in our short time on this rock!

 

True, the worst offender I drive is a Red Cross 12 year old Peugeot Expert van which stinks out the garage it lives in before I can get it through the door. I'm quite glad I don't pay for the diesel, it cost £94 to fill it up earlier this week.

 

So the latest on my R90 is the garage phoned to say can not find any faults.
I asked if they could delve deeper as this has now happened 3 times and the 4th time I could be driving down the fast lane of the M1 with dire consequences. The technician said they would take it for test drive and call me back.

 

I had another call from the garage.
They are going to keep it overnight and one of their technicians is going to take it home and bring it back tomorrow, a journey of over 40 miles. I agreed to this in the hope that fault happens whilst they have it.

 

This is the thing I find the most crazy about this fault; it can, without warning, suddenly leave the car completely dead and undriveable, yet two minutes later there is no evidence of anything untoward having happened, either to the driver or (the craziest bit) a technician with presumably full access to everything?

It's madness, and Renault have seriously dropped the ball with (a) handling it now they know about it and, presumably (b) implementing mechanisms that are adequate in fault finding such serious issues.

 

Surely the errors will be there to be seen if they connect to a computer with the clip tool?

 

From experience of ours and others either they aren't, or they are but not with sufficient information to diagnose the problem properly, or the technicians aren't adequately trained to know what the information means.

When this happened to ours the dealer said they had fixed it with a software update only for the same thing to happen again a week later, then it took them ages to decide to replace the PEB.

There shouldn't be this much guesswork and trial and error to diagnose such a potentially dangerous problem.

 

Thank you Mo and Phil, depending on what happens overnight I will be asking questions based on what you and others have written.

 

Call me sarcastic, but often the errors are cleared / ECUs reset and yippee, car runs fine. Riiiiiiight. I think I mentioned before that (probably because of the 12 volt battery replacement), my car is loaded with under-the-hood error messages, says CanZE. I bet if I bring it in for service in September, it will come back squeaky clean in that department! It would be smart IMHO to record the faults before trying to fix-by-clearing. And maybe they do.

 

The latest from the dealership yesterday was that a technician was going to do an extended test drive by taking the car home and bringing it back this morning. The journey was going to be 48 miles, however as you can see from the thumbnail screen shots of the app, between 16.55 yesterday and the latest update the car has only done 8 miles.
5 minutes ago the garage contacted me to let me know the car broke down so they will be contacting Renault for a decision about what to do.
I'm so glad that it broke down whilst they had it and I did not get fobbed off with we can't find anything wrong with it.

 

I hoped I would have an update today but I haven't been able to speak to the service manager.
All I have been able to do is get the garage to approve an extension loan of Enterprise car.
I have also changed it for something more eco friendly, a Fiesta, but I hate it, 6 speed manual and it sounds like a lawnmower

 

I hoped I would have an update today but I haven't been able to speak to the service manager.
All I have been able to do is get the garage to approve an extension loan of Enterprise car.
I have also changed it for something more eco friendly, a Fiesta, but I hate it, 6 speed manual and it sounds like a lawnmower
View attachment 117606

2 Cylinders more than your average lawn mower. And 1 turbo more too. The 3 banger is great fun, its a rental, go ring its neck.