2009 Mini E: Beats Going to the Pump

That does seem cool. I'm seriously thinking of setting up a solar array for my house, and buying a Chevy Volt in a few years. Besides being good for the environment and being low cost (in the long run), I think it would be fun and "different", with an eye towards the future.

I drove the Mini E about three weeks ago, back when I took it home for suspension walkaround photography. While asleep, the charging process mysteriously stopped in the middle of the night, and I was faced with a 50-mile drive and a battery with a 69% charge.

This past weekend I found out what had happened: the Mini-E's 110V charger had tripped the GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter [a specific kind circuit breaker within a circuit breaker]) in my garage sometime during that December night. Nothing else but my sprinkler timer was plugged into the circuit at the time, and it was shut off due to recent rains, so I didn't notice the tripped GFCI until I attempted to use my shop-vac Saturday afternoon.

My garage outlets and the GFCI are rated at 20-amps and the Mini E's charger was plugged directly into an outlet, with no extension cord in between. There would seem to be no reason for the GFCI to have tripped.

About the only theory I can come up with is this: The overnight low on the night in question was about 45 degrees or so, perhaps providing the right amount of battery cooling to make them particularly receptive to charging. Maybe the aftermarket-style charger isn't intelligent enough to throttle the flow when charging conditions are ideal and the battery drew juice more quickly than my circuits were prepared to provide. Obviously I'm no electrical genius, and I barely believe this myself. I surely have this bass-ackwards. But if the battery isn't charging because it's too cold, for example, what would trip the GFCI? I welcome other theories from any journeyman electricians who may be reading.

The point is this: I'd like to agree with Phil, but I can't. I don't trust the Mini E's 110V home charger because it has tripped off mid-charge like this at least a dozen times in a half-dozen different garages, probably more. If I can't wake up in the morning safe in the knowledge that my range-challenged e-car is indeed full to the brim with "fuel", then I'm out. I expect that real production electric cars will be different from Mini's research project on wheels and this sort of thing won't happen. Time will tell, I guess.

I'd rather spend five minutes at a gas pump and know that I had 300 miles of range than plug the car in overnight and wonder if I would make it to the office the next morning.

Considering how a ground fault works (the outlet expecting the current on the hot side to match the current on the neutral side), it could either be condensation forming in the space between the plug and outlet or a design flaw in the charger. Did all the faults happen in garages with ground faults?

"I'd rather spend five minutes at a gas pump and know that I had 300 miles of range than plug the car in overnight and wonder if I would make it to the office the next morning."

Precisely why I like the Volt. The onboard gas generator engine eliminates the range issue of a traditional electric car like the Mini E.

Agree with thegrocer. Dan, your problem wasn't the load. Your problem was that something actually went wrong, causing a ground fault.

I just want everyone here to understand that what they are using in NOT the "home charger". There are roughly 400 MINI-E trial participants and nobody uses that to charge their car. It's and emergency, last resort charger if for some reason you get stuck and cannot make it to your real charger. It would be impossible to use that thing on a regular basis. We all have 220v wall mounted chargers at our homes, and they are either 32amp or 50amp and can charge a fully discharged battery in 3.5 to 4.5 hours. I have two of them, one at home and one at my place of work so I can charge up anytime. I drive the car 120-150 miles per day and have put 18,000 miles on the car in the six months I've had it so far.

The car is not nearly perfect, after all, it's a test mule. MINI isn't ever going to sell them. BMW is using the car to gather information for an EV they plan to sell in 2-3 years. This car was slapped together in a couple months, has no battery temperature management other than a little fan that blows cabin air over the pack and really shouldn't be included in the Edmunds long term tests because it's never going to be produced for sale and really isn't much more than a kit car.
I think the shortcomings the car has really makes some of your readers think to themselves "I could never live with an EV" and that's unfortunate because no auto manufacturer would produce this car the way it is and sell it to the public.

As far as charging goes, when I get out of my car at home or work, it takes me all of 20 seconds to plug it in and walk away, so for me it saves time not having to drive to a gas station every couple days.

Electric cars are really in their infancy, but they are coming there is no doubt about it. Nobody that doesn't want one will be forced to but one but there are a lot of people that are sick of sending trillions of dollars to the giant oil cartels that are run by regimes that hate America. I can't tell you how many people stop me on the street and ask me if they can buy an electric MINI or if I know of any other electric car for sale. I think there are a lot of people willing to sacrifice a little convenience to do what they think is the right thing. I'm happy to be in the MINI-E trial program, I'm finding that I really can live with an EV even it it only has a range of 100 miles or so (my best so far is 128). We'll see if the public really is ready once the Nissan Leaf and others begin to go on sale. It will be interesting.

There was a post recently about the Volt's iPhone app. I suppose they could develop something similar for the Mini E, and others, that beeped or sent you a text message or whatever if the juice stopped flowing when your car was plugged in. Although I'm not sure I'd want to be waken up five times a night to go and reset the circuit breakers.

By the way, if the oil cartels kill us all, who's going to buy their oil?