T6.1 Leisure batteries not charging on EHU

[Rololux]

I know there are various threads on similar topics, but I have not found any mention of this for a 6.1. My leisure batteries are not charging when on EHU, although they do charge when driving. The original symptom was that the parking heater would not start, even though the control panel indicated that there was >63hrs charge remaining. However, had red triangle indicator on the battery indicator, and only 1 or 2 bars shown, so batteries did appear to be low. Connected EHU, and heater functioned as normal. Initially, 9A charging was shown, but this quickly began to go down, and reached 0A in a couple of minutes. I then unplugged the EHU, and the charge remaining then started falling very fast, eventually settling down at 1hr20 mins! Reconnecting EHU after 30 mins or so and it showed 2A charging, again reducing to 0A in a few seconds.

Went for a short drive - just 10km or so, and when I returned charge remaining had risen to about 30 hrs, and 4 bars on battery indicator, so batteries are charging when driving.

I cannot be sure that charging on EHU has ever worked, as I've only had the van a few months, and hardly used it, due to the restrictions. I've never checked the charging rate, just noticed that the EHU charging light is always on when EHU connected. I have not actually driven it for about three weeks, so this may explain why batteries have drained a bit, but nothing has been connected and nothing turned on, so this would indicate that the batteries were pretty low to start with.

I'll be taking it in to the dealer when possible, but in the meantime, has anyone experienced anything similar, or can anyone suggest what is going on? The strange thing to me is that it did initially shown charge was getting to the batteries, so it's not as simple as a plug somewhere is disconnected.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Loz]

Check the Breaker is closed.
Check the 230V socket by the sink is alive.
Check the power lead is firmly pushed into the onboard Charger

 

[Rololux]

Check the Breaker is closed.
Check the 230V socket by the sink is alive.

All checked. Note that the control panel light comes on showing hookup is active.

 

[Loz]

All checked. Note that the control panel light comes on showing hookup is active.

Are you sure you are running on both batteries? (battery fuses on both batteries now on the 6.1)
Were the batteries allowed to discharge for a long period before you took delivery? (were they flat when yu got it?)

 

[Rololux]

Are you sure you are running on both batteries? (battery fuses on both batteries now on the 6.1)
Were the batteries allowed to discharge for a long period before you took delivery? (were they flat when yu got it?)

I have not checked any fuses, but the fact that when I first plugged in EHU, it did show 9A charging, indicates that there is not a fully open circuit somewhere.

As for the condition of the batteries, I cannot be sure, but the fact that they do charge when driving surely shows they are at least functional?

 

[Loz]

I have not checked any fuses, but the fact that when I first plugged in EHU, it did show 9A charging, indicates that there is not a fully open circuit somewhere.

As for the condition of the batteries, I cannot be sure, but the fact that they do charge when driving surely shows they are at least functional?

1. Yes, but you might be only charging and discharging a single battery. The fuses are on the battery post in the rear and on the post fuse carrier in the front.

2. They may take a charge but not hold it once the charging supply is removed.

 

[Loz]

Additionally, A T6F member was having similar issues and it turned out to be the battery terminal was loose.

 

[Rololux]

Thanks for your input - I'll have another poke around and check fuses and battery connections when it stops snowing!

 

[Ray Jordan]

I know there are various threads on similar topics, but I have not found any mention of this for a 6.1. My leisure batteries are not charging when on EHU, although they do charge when driving. The original symptom was that the parking heater would not start, even though the control panel indicated that there was >63hrs charge remaining. However, had red triangle indicator on the battery indicator, and only 1 or 2 bars shown, so batteries did appear to be low. Connected EHU, and heater functioned as normal. Initially, 9A charging was shown, but this quickly began to go down, and reached 0A in a couple of minutes. I then unplugged the EHU, and the charge remaining then started falling very fast, eventually settling down at 1hr20 mins! Reconnecting EHU after 30 mins or so and it showed 2A charging, again reducing to 0A in a few seconds.

Went for a short drive - just 10km or so, and when I returned charge remaining had risen to about 30 hrs, and 4 bars on battery indicator, so batteries are charging when driving.

I cannot be sure that charging on EHU has ever worked, as I've only had the van a few months, and hardly used it, due to the restrictions. I've never checked the charging rate, just noticed that the EHU charging light is always on when EHU connected. I have not actually driven it for about three weeks, so this may explain why batteries have drained a bit, but nothing has been connected and nothing turned on, so this would indicate that the batteries were pretty low to start with.

I'll be taking it in to the dealer when possible, but in the meantime, has anyone experienced anything similar, or can anyone suggest what is going on? The strange thing to me is that it did initially shown charge was getting to the batteries, so it's not as simple as a plug somewhere is disconnected.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Rololux
My Cali seems to have developed a similar sort of issue.
I have a Cali Ocean T6.1 MY21 which I picked up at the beginning of October 2020.

Everything seemed to be OK and the battery indicator always showed charging currents and capacity around 60Hrs etc. I ran the fridge and various electronic devices etc. I must admit that I have never seen all the blue bars on the overhead display lit 100% but just assumed a bit of inaccuracy really.
During my "testing phase" I had connected an external 240V supply and again everything functioned as expected.

After a month I had installed a 240V 16A 3 pin connection box in my driveway (exactly the same as most campsites) and I left the Cali connected to this supply for about 5 days just as you would on a week at a campsite (the overhead display showed >60hrs battery condition). I noticed after the 5 days to my surprise the battery condition had deteriorated to 10hrs which I thought was odd but considered that the Cali onboard charger may have a "maintain function" under no load and I had caught the discharge cycle. I didn't really pursue this as when driving the Cali >60hrs again was achieved.

(Because of Covid restrictions) I last drove my Cali on Jan 4th 2021 and decided to leave the Mains hook up connected again in the driveway.
The Cali would have been continuously connected on hook up for about 10 days (again this is quite a feasible time similar to say, at a campsite holiday.

I went to use the Cali and as soon as I put the ignition on there was a loud chiming noise and the overhead display froze (still displayed the mains connected indicator) and read "Battery empty. Charge now!" The dashboard also displayed "Second battery Low". Now I started to worry.
I disconnected the mains hook up and took the Cali for a long drive (time wise). The leisure batteries appeared not to charge during the drive either. As soon as the ignition was turned off, the overhead display reverted back to "Battery empty. Charge now!" again.
At this point, none of the internal camping lights worked (presumably to help conserve energy)

I decided to test the leisure batteries with a battery tester that I have used many times and had proven to be correct on other vehicle batteries in the past.
The images are attached:

Having set the parameters for AGM, AH etc, the battery under the passenger seat showed a SOC
(State of Charge) of 98% (voltage calculation) and a SOH (State of Health) of 100% (a more complex calculation based on Cold Cranking, Charge Acceptance and Reserve Capacity and a low internal resistance. So all in a GOOD BATTERY

Next was the battery in the hatch under the wardrobe.
This time the test showed a bad battery. SOH 3% SOC 98% and higher internal resistance. The tester considered that this battery should be replaced

This shouldn't be the case for a new battery of course but one theory could be the fact that this battery may have been hanging around discharged during the Covid delays I had with my Cali delivery.

So I have now decided to contact VW service and will let you know what happened.

Cheers.

 

[Rololux]

Thanks Ray - very detailed description and useful info. This is slightly different from my issue though, as my batteries do charge when driving. Sounds like a battery tester might be a good investment, but I'll concentrate my attention on the mains charger for now. Could be as simple as re-seating a connector - let's hope so.

 

[WelshGas]

Hi Rololux
My Cali seems to have developed a similar sort of issue.
I have a Cali Ocean T6.1 MY21 which I picked up at the beginning of October 2020.

Everything seemed to be OK and the battery indicator always showed charging currents and capacity around 60Hrs etc. I ran the fridge and various electronic devices etc. I must admit that I have never seen all the blue bars on the overhead display lit 100% but just assumed a bit of inaccuracy really.
During my "testing phase" I had connected an external 240V supply and again everything functioned as expected.

After a month I had installed a 240V 16A 3 pin connection box in my driveway (exactly the same as most campsites) and I left the Cali connected to this supply for about 5 days just as you would on a week at a campsite (the overhead display showed >60hrs battery condition). I noticed after the 5 days to my surprise the battery condition had deteriorated to 10hrs which I thought was odd but considered that the Cali onboard charger may have a "maintain function" under no load and I had caught the discharge cycle. I didn't really pursue this as when driving the Cali >60hrs again was achieved.

(Because of Covid restrictions) I last drove my Cali on Jan 4th 2021 and decided to leave the Mains hook up connected again in the driveway.
The Cali would have been continuously connected on hook up for about 10 days (again this is quite a feasible time similar to say, at a campsite holiday.

I went to use the Cali and as soon as I put the ignition on there was a loud chiming noise and the overhead display froze (still displayed the mains connected indicator) and read "Battery empty. Charge now!" The dashboard also displayed "Second battery Low". Now I started to worry.
I disconnected the mains hook up and took the Cali for a long drive (time wise). The leisure batteries appeared not to charge during the drive either. As soon as the ignition was turned off, the overhead display reverted back to "Battery empty. Charge now!" again.
At this point, none of the internal camping lights worked (presumably to help conserve energy)

I decided to test the leisure batteries with a battery tester that I have used many times and had proven to be correct on other vehicle batteries in the past.
The images are attached:

Having set the parameters for AGM, AH etc, the battery under the passenger seat showed a SOC
(State of Charge) of 98% (voltage calculation) and a SOH (State of Health) of 100% (a more complex calculation based on Cold Cranking, Charge Acceptance and Reserve Capacity and a low internal resistance. So all in a GOOD BATTERY

Next was the battery in the hatch under the wardrobe.
This time the test showed a bad battery. SOH 3% SOC 98% and higher internal resistance. The tester considered that this battery should be replaced

This shouldn't be the case for a new battery of course but one theory could be the fact that this battery may have been hanging around discharged during the Covid delays I had with my Cali delivery.

So I have now decided to contact VW service and will let you know what happened.

Cheers.

Have you checked the Cube Fuse on the +tve pole of the rear Leisure Battery?

 

[Ray Jordan]

Have you checked the Cube Fuse on the +tve pole of the rear Leisure Battery?

Hi WelshGas,
Thanks.... I havent yet. I didnt have time today to do a bit more testing on fuses etc but hopefully tomorrow. Will also search for a circuit diagram for a T6.1.
Cheers

 

[Loz]

Have you checked the Cube Fuse on the +tve pole of the rear Leisure Battery?

There is also one on the front battery as well on a T6.1, but it's not a cube fuse but a more standard midi fuse.

 

[WelshGas]

There is also one on the front battery as well on a T6.1, but it's not a cube fuse but a more standard midi fuse.

I thought so, but the OP mentioned that it was the Rear Battery that was flat, not the passenger seat battery.
Is the charger output connected to the front or rear battery on the T6.1 or some other point?

 

[Loz]

I thought so, but the OP mentioned that it was the Rear Battery that was flat, not the passenger seat battery.
Is the charger output connected to the front or rear battery on the T6.1 or some other point?

Front, via the fuses.

 

[Rololux]

So an update on this one. It went in to the dealer yesterday. They reported that they could not find any fault anywhere, and that they had successfully charged the leisure batteries on hookup. Indeed, the battery on the control panel now shows all 10bars (fully charged) and >60hrs remaining. They did say, however, that other people had reported similar problems and that they are expecting a software update at some point to address this.

My take is that probably the batteries are charging, but for some reason this is not being reflected on the control panel / system management system. I suspect they may have reset something to get the indicators correctly reflecting the true situation again.

I will await the software update. In the meantime, if I get the same behaviour again, I will try the old 'remove and replace fuses 5 to 8' trick!

Anyway, glad the batteries do not seem to have any issues for now. It would be interesting to hear if any other MY21 owners have seen anything similar.

 

[Ray Jordan]

Firstly.. sorry for the late reply @Rololux, Welshgas, Loz, Grumpygrandad etc, I have been "off grid" a bit with a work project and VW also could not look at my charging issue until last week.

Short Story:-
I picked up my Cali in October. Obviously not been able to use it as much as I would have liked due to COVID . I make a point of leaving the handbrake off (but in Park), driving it at least once a week etc and leaving the EHU connected most of the time. All those good things we do over winter!

I can never recall since I picked the Cali up, ever seeing all 10 blue bars on the battery display to be honest.

One day in the middle of January my console display showed "Battery Empty. Charge Now!"
No amount of EHU connection or long drives changed this warning which is accompanied with a loud beep and a shutdown of cabin power supplies!

So it looked like my leisure battery(s) had discharged completely.
I booked the Cali into VW for diagnostics and fix under warranty. They concluded that the 75A box fuse on the rear leisure battery had blown. This was replaced and after a EHU charge at VW, "viola" all 10 blue bars displayed
The cause of the blown fuse unfortunately is not known and is the bit that worries me of course.
Most plausible causes:
1) Fuse blown at battery fitment (e.g. spanner or terminal touching the chassis)
2) Rear battery feed cable has shorted to the chassis blowing the fuse. (VW reception guy said they would have tested for this)
3) Excessive current pulled on circuit somehow (unlikely)
4) Battery developed internal fault (unlikely)

My theory is that this fuse was blown during battery fitting at VW and the rear leisure battery since has slowly discharged itself to near exhaustion. (The timing feels right for this)
I really hope its not 2 or 3 (or even 4).... time will tell.

I will post a Longer more detailed story later

 

[WelshGas]

Firstly.. sorry for the late reply @Rololux, Welshgas, Loz, Grumpygrandad etc, I have been "off grid" a bit with a work project and VW also could not look at my charging issue until last week.

Short Story:-
I picked up my Cali in October. Obviously not been able to use it as much as I would have liked due to COVID . I make a point of leaving the handbrake off (but in Park), driving it at least once a week etc and leaving the EHU connected most of the time. All those good things we do over winter!

I can never recall since I picked the Cali up, ever seeing all 10 blue bars on the battery display to be honest.

One day in the middle of January my console display showed "Battery Empty. Charge Now!"
No amount of EHU connection or long drives changed this warning which is accompanied with a loud beep and a shutdown of cabin power supplies!

So it looked like my leisure battery(s) had discharged completely.
I booked the Cali into VW for diagnostics and fix under warranty. They concluded that the 75A box fuse on the rear leisure battery had blown. This was replaced and after a EHU charge at VW, "viola" all 10 blue bars displayed
The cause of the blown fuse unfortunately is not known and is the bit that worries me of course.
Most plausible causes:
1) Fuse blown at battery fitment (e.g. spanner or terminal touching the chassis)
2) Rear battery feed cable has shorted to the chassis blowing the fuse. (VW reception guy said they would have tested for this)
3) Excessive current pulled on circuit somehow (unlikely)
4) Battery developed internal fault (unlikely)

My theory is that this fuse was blown during battery fitting at VW and the rear leisure battery since has slowly discharged itself to near exhaustion. (The timing feels right for this)
I really hope its not 2 or 3 (or even 4).... time will tell.

I will post a Longer more detailed story later

I wouldn’t worry too much. Those Cube Fuses aren‘t very robust and easily damaged by over tightening on installation. It’s not a very good circuit design as the Mains Charger is connected to the front Leisure Battery . At least on the T6.1 the Leisure Batteries are monitored individually and you get an indication, eventually, that the rear battery is disconnected.
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there are not an insignificant number of T5/6 SEs/Oceans around with that fuse blown and the owners totally unaware as they never camp without Mains EHU or wildcamp without EHU for more than 24hrs.

 

[GrumpyGranddad]

I’ve noticed that my display for the last couple of days has shown >8 hours remaining even though ALL blue bars are lit. I’ve been driving the vehicle and not been using any power - lights/fridge/heater/etc, so was getting concerned that something was amiss. Had the van on EHU all day today and after unplugging it showed ALL blue bars and >9 hours which I felt wasn’t right!? I also have dual solar panels and today was quite sunny. The solar display showed a good charge rate too.

Just been out to check again and the camper display is now showing >59 hours.

Am I misinterpreting the display or is this a t6.1 quirk? Doesn’t inspire confidence in the accuracy of the display. Especially when wild camping.

 

[RikFizz]

I’ve noticed that my display for the last couple of days has shown >8 hours remaining even though ALL blue bars are lit. I’ve been driving the vehicle and not been using any power - lights/fridge/heater/etc, so was getting concerned that something was amiss. Had the van on EHU all day today and after unplugging it showed ALL blue bars and >9 hours which I felt wasn’t right!? I also have dual solar panels and today was quite sunny. The solar display showed a good charge rate too.

Just been out to check again and the camper display is now showing >59 hours.

Am I misinterpreting the display or is this a t6.1 quirk? Doesn’t inspire confidence in the accuracy of the display. Especially when wild camping.

View attachment 74089

Hi GG. I think 'Quirky' might be a kind term. I've never yet had more than half of the blue bars lit and number of hours remaining oscillates between 60 and 8 quite regularly. I am now doing two things: firstly trying to stop fixating on the read out and relax. Secondly, focussing on the voltage which as other, more experienced folks have highlighted falls away when the van is first entered or the ignition first switched but generally returns to a more accurate reading after a period of time.

 

[GrumpyGranddad]

Hi GG. I think 'Quirky' might be a kind term. I've never yet had more than half of the blue bars lit and number of hours remaining oscillates between 60 and 8 quite regularly. I am now doing two things: firstly trying to stop fixating on the read out and relax. Secondly, focussing on the voltage which as other, more experienced folks have highlighted falls away when the van is first entered or the ignition first switched but generally returns to a more accurate reading after a period of time.

Good advice. I think there might be a direct relationship between fixating on the Cali and Covid lockdown.

 

[Rololux]

I think it is worth taking a step back, and consider what we are dealing with here. For sure there are better experts on the California electrical system on here (@Loz springs to mind!), but I do have a degree in electrical engineering, albeit from 40 years ago, and batteries have not fundamentally changed since then. So I kinda know what I am talking about. I'll take a stab at it!

There only two parameters available to the control system - instantaneous battery voltage and instantaneous current being drawn from or to the batteries. These parameters are displayed in psuedo real time on the control panel, so should be treated with the respect that they deserve.

Everything else is a calculation. The two parameters will be sampled and stored in a ring buffer, and used to provide an indication of how much charge there is in the batteries, and what the expected time remaining is. How often they are sampled and stored is unknown (to me) - could be every second, minute or hour, or whatever, and the accuracy of any calculations will be affected by this. How long they are stored for is also unknown, but is less important than how much data is used for the calculation. It will be known what the expected battery voltage is at full charge (this voltage goes down as the charge decreases), but it must be bourne in mind that the voltage is only useful if the battery is on no load - so if you have anything at all on (even the lights) this will be inaccurate. So it is likely that the calculation will also use the stored data on current drain to work out how much charge has flown into and out of the battery since the last known 'good point'.

Knowing how well charged your batteries are is most useful when you are camping. Now this is pure speculation, but it would make sense for the calculation to use data from say the past two days, and also from the past hour or so, plus the current current drain, weighted for each set of data to come up with a best guess of the time remaining. This is an algorithm written by some very smart VW software engineers, who probably spend more time in front of a computer than out camping, but heh-ho. In any case, if you are not camping, and hence not really using the batteries for a few days, or weeks (as most of us sadly are at present), there will not be much data to use for the calculation. So it is likely that the battery capacity and remaining time will be somewhat inaccurate. Then you get in the van, turn on some lights, maybe set the heater on, and suddenly there is a very small amount of data to be used for the calculations. But not enough to give accurate information. You are sitting there trying to figure stuff out, and all the while there is better data becoming available. So there are rapid and significant changes to the output data. This would settle down after a while to give a best estimate of the real information.

So what I am saying is that you should not expect the data to be correct at all times. The only things you should be able to rely on are the battery voltage when nothing at all is turned on, and the current going to or from the battery.

I am told that VW are aware of some issues in this regard, and am also told that there will be a software update at some point that will hopefully improve the situation. We live in hope!

Now I think I'll go and sit in a dark room and chill!

 

[GrumpyGranddad]

I think it is worth taking a step back, and consider what we are dealing with here. For sure there are better experts on the California electrical system on here (@Loz springs to mind!), but I do have a degree in electrical engineering, albeit from 40 years ago, and batteries have not fundamentally changed since then. So I kinda know what I am talking about. I'll take a stab at it!

There only two parameters available to the control system - instantaneous battery voltage and instantaneous current being drawn from or to the batteries. These parameters are displayed in psuedo real time on the control panel, so should be treated with the respect that they deserve.

Everything else is a calculation. The two parameters will be sampled and stored in a ring buffer, and used to provide an indication of how much charge there is in the batteries, and what the expected time remaining is. How often they are sampled and stored is unknown (to me) - could be every second, minute or hour, or whatever, and the accuracy of any calculations will be affected by this. How long they are stored for is also unknown, but is less important than how much data is used for the calculation. It will be known what the expected battery voltage is at full charge (this voltage goes down as the charge decreases), but it must be bourne in mind that the voltage is only useful if the battery is on no load - so if you have anything at all on (even the lights) this will be inaccurate. So it is likely that the calculation will also use the stored data on current drain to work out how much charge has flown into and out of the battery since the last known 'good point'.

Knowing how well charged your batteries are is most useful when you are camping. Now this is pure speculation, but it would make sense for the calculation to use data from say the past two days, and also from the past hour or so, plus the current current drain, weighted for each set of data to come up with a best guess of the time remaining. This is an algorithm written by some very smart VW software engineers, who probably spend more time in front of a computer than out camping, but heh-ho. In any case, if you are not camping, and hence not really using the batteries for a few days, or weeks (as most of us sadly are at present), there will not be much data to use for the calculation. So it is likely that the battery capacity and remaining time will be somewhat inaccurate. Then you get in the van, turn on some lights, maybe set the heater on, and suddenly there is a very small amount of data to be used for the calculations. But not enough to give accurate information. You are sitting there trying to figure stuff out, and all the while there is better data becoming available. So there are rapid and significant changes to the output data. This would settle down after a while to give a best estimate of the real information.

So what I am saying is that you should not expect the data to be correct at all times. The only things you should be able to rely on are the battery voltage when nothing at all is turned on, and the current going to of from the battery.

I am told that VW are aware of some issues in this regard, and am also told that there will be a software update at some point that will hopefully improve the situation. We live in hope!

Now I think I'll go and sit in a dark room and chill!

Very informative, thanks.

 

[WelshGas]

The T6.1 Control Panel is no different to the T5 & T6 Control Panels in that the only real time measurements are Voltage and current in amps. The voltage is only accurate when measured off load.
The % Readout, the equivalent of of the bars graphic is a calculation based on the voltage and current. It is reset everytime the Panel is switched On or Ignition On. This calculation is dependant on accurate information but the information is so variable it makes it almost meaningless.
Eg: engine off V high dropping to resting V after 30 mins, Heater On, high current draw dropping to steady draw once heater upto temperature. I doubt if the algorithm knows where the readings are in the startup cycle hence the variability of the calculation.
You would need more sensors and computing power to get an accurate reading.

 

[Rololux]

So, latest installment on my own charging story. Van was showing 8 bars. Put on EHU overnight. This morning, still showing 8 bars. Drove the van for about 30 mins this morning, with fast charge selected. Still 8 bars when I got home. Had a bit of lunch. Got back in the van to drive to the golf club. Checked panel - now showing 9 bars. Drove to golf club - a full 3 minutes. Spent an hour on the range. Got back in van to drive home. Now showing 10 bars!

So still not really sure what is going on, but it clearly the control panel takes some time to catch up. I still don’t really know if EHU is actually charging the batteries, or if it only charges while driving..