Hello All!
I just had a Home Charging Station (VOLVO EVSE-VX, which apparently was manufactured by aerovironment) installed a couple of days ago and I can’t get it to actually charge my car.
When I switch the charger on it performs a self test and the LED light turns white indicating it’s ready to charge. However, when I then plug in the charging cable into the car the LED ring suddenly starts blinking red. Normally I would assume the charger is broken or the power supply is faulty but I did manage to get it to work ONCE so I know that the hardware & the set-up itself is correct. Any idea what might be the problem?

 

Does the car charge normally using the basic unit that came with it? Or at a local Level 2 station like a ChargePoint? If so, that would point to (possibly intermittent) fault in the EVSE or cable vs. the car. The EVSE itself doesn't really do much on these cars. All the intelligence is in the vehicle, so eliminating the possibility of a fault in the car itself is a useful step.

 

Thanks for a very logical question @philipm785. Yes, the car charges normally using both, public charging station as well as the simple cord-like mobile charger. What is more, the wallbox has worked ONCE which makes me think it can't really be broken. I'm rather thinking something is sending a signal to the wallbox to stop charging. At the moment I'm suspecting the integrated cord or the plug.

 

My understanding is that Level 2 EVSE is pretty "dumb" (for want of a better term). Really just a glorified plug with some overload and thermal protection. To the best of my knowledge there is no signaling in a Lvl2 J1772 charging interface.

So if the car charges reliably, I think you may just have a bad cable as you suspect or potentially a bad wall box. You could certainly have a bad connection or component which intermittently causes too much voltage drop as the car ramps up the current, for example. It might work one time when the pack is already partially charged and not another time when conditions differ. At least it's brand new so hopefully easy to have them replace it.

 

Hi All and especially @philipm785
I'm coming back with a solution / fix.



Since the car charges normally on both charging station and during driving/breaking I was convinced it's a faulty wallbox. I've managed to find a technician who offered to come over and test it with a bunch of hardware simulators, etc.



The guy came over in his Ford MachE and started with checking the set-up which was fine. He then plugged the simulator to the wallbox and to our surprise, it was OK as well. However, when we plugged the cable into the car, same error (blinking red ring) occured. To prove the car is charging fine, I took out my my mobile, home-socket charger from the trunk, plugged it in and it started charging just fine. He decided to test the "faulty" wallbox on his car and it charged fine. This made I suspect that the wallbox and VOLVO have some sort of buff. He asked me if I have some sand paper and when I gave it to him, he gently "polished" the bolts inside VOLVO's charging port. It took a couple of tries but when he finished, we plugged the wallbox charger plug and it finally worked. The technician told me that those wallboxes can be really sensitive to any breaks in connectivity so even when mobile chargers or public charging stations work, the wallbox might not.

FIX: The bolts in the car charging port were slightly tarnished and smoothing them over with a 1500 granularity sandpaper fixed the issue.

 

Thanks for posting the solution - great to hear that all was resolved.

 

Thanks again for your support!