Hi anyone out there. I've had my new Smart #1 Premium for about a week now and it's currently displaying a warning saying 'Slow Charge - unable to charge' and it recommends I read the manual and contact service. I can't find a thing in the manual about it and there's no troubleshooting section with a list of common warnings. I did charge it for half an hour a few days after I got it just to see how the chargers at my workplace function, how the cables work, etc. It seemed to work fine and the 22Kw charger was putting in better than a mile a minute of range. Today I'm at 135 miles left and I notices the red 'message waiting' icon on the main screen and find that warning.
Obviously this thing is so new I doubt anyone here (if there is anyone right now) has any idea what's wrong but I'll put in updates if I find anything. It may be a common problem in the future and it will be handy to know what to do, even if it's a warranty repair.
Unable to charge warning
I've never even found the charge settings. I went looking for them today when I took some screen shots of the warning to send to the support people. I'm tempted to try giving it a charge to see if it really is disabled or it's some weird software bug. It wasn't dominating the screen, it was just a little red notification icon on the top middle icon for bringing down messages. It appears to have activated around 10.10pm a few nights ago and I've never noticed it because I'm still at 75% charge. The warning says to refer to the manual but a search for 'slow charge' finds nothing and I've looked through the charging section a few times. No troubleshooting section either. I might have discovered a new bug. I guess this is the problem with getting a brand new vehicle that's just been released.
Well, just a little update. I've still not heard anything from Smart about the case they raised for this. I did try charging again and the charge worked fine but did generate this error again, along with a new warning saying 'Wrong cable connected!'. Frightening stuff but everything worked as normal and the third time I used the chargers it did not bring up any errors at all. I'm not sure if Smart have remote access to the cars or not in order to troubleshoot or reset. The asked for my user name and the vehicles VIN number among other things so I'm thinking they accessed it.
I got the warning twice and the car still charged just fine. Never saw it again until I got the 1.3.0 update when the fault returned. After the update the first charge I did went extremely slowly and it displayed the same error again. I left the car on the 22Kw charger at work for 2 hours which is way longer than it needs and it only put 12% on the battery. After that it hasn't returned and I'm charging as normal. I'll see if I get the fault show up once more since the 1.3.0(a)1 update.
Just a little update. Smart have given up trying to diagnose the issue and told me if it keeps happening just take it back to the dealers. I checked with another Smart #1 user at work who leased a base model one a month or so after I got mine. He confirms the same slow charging problem that happens maybe 40% of the time trying to charge. He too noticed that using CCS chargers with their own cable stopped the issue and is far more reliable. The only hassle is that there are only 2 out of the 18 chargers at my workplace that are CCS fast chargers and it's a pain trying to get on! I did use a 150w rapid charger at a motorway services the other day and it worked beautifully. When first plugged in it gave me a time of 1 hour to 100%. This turned out to be about 20 minutes to get to 90% at which point it slows down drastically. Thankfully I did not need the last 10% to go about my day.
