Multiple charging plugs won't lock.

[Zews]

I have my first serious issue with my e-Golf.

Whether I try to charge at a CCS EVgo charging station like I tried today or try to connect my level 2 charger at home, the plugs won't lock so I can't charge my battery at all. I am now at 1 mile on the guess-o-meter so I can't even drive to the dealer to have it looked at. At best I need a tow.

Does anyone know how to force lock the charge plug into the charge port so I can charge the battery?

 

[RonDawg]

Have you tried using the 120 volt unit that came with the car? It will take a long time to charge but it if doesn't work as well, it will save you the trouble of the VW dealer telling you that you're using a defective EVSE.

 

[Frank3]

What color is the light near the charging port when you plug it in? Green? Red? Yellow? Flashing or not?

 

[Jeremy1026]

There is a charging station that I use often that I have to really give it an extra push to get it to lock (click). Have you tried pushing a little harder than you think should be necessary?

 

[REM]

Any update on your charging issue? My e-Golf has been finicky in cold weather when the ring in the charge handle isn't flat. Sometimes I've been able to wiggle and push to get it to lock, but not always. Three years of driving a Leaf aand I never experienced anything like it.

 

[Zews]

Here is an update to my charging port failure issue.

The car has now been in the shop 23 days with no result in sight.

I have been told conflicting stories by the dealer repair shop representative and by an e-Golf 'specialist' at VW Customer Care.

Yesterday, the latest I was told is that a custom part had to be made for my car in Germany to repair the car. Not a part that fits any e-Golf, no a custom part for my car only. I told them that I find this difficult to believe. If this is indeed true I consider this a serious design flaw made by the designers and engineers of the car. However, at this point I don't know who is telling the truth. I feel I am given the runaround. I was told by the 'specialist' at Customer Care that he will contact me again on Monday. I wonder what he will tell me then.

If this goes beyond 30 days I may file a claim under the California Lemon Law. I have documented everything that has happened since the car was towed to the dealer.

This major failure has severely shaken my comfort level with this car and Volkswagen.

 

[JoulesThief]

If they won't lock, your charge port is probably damaged. Did it work properly for you at any time since ownership?

It can't be that many different J-1772 charging handles that are defective.

 

[RonDawg]

Yesterday, the latest I was told is that a custom part had to be made for my car in Germany to repair the car. Not a part that fits any e-Golf, no a custom part for my car only. I told them that I find this difficult to believe. If this is indeed true I consider this a serious design flaw made by the designers and engineers of the car.

They're pulling your leg. It will cost more for them to engineer and make a "custom part" than to simply give you a new replacement. It's a lame excuse for the reality of they don't have enough spare parts to give you without affecting present eGolf production.

 

[eGolf2015]

I had a similar problem a couple months back and was able to determine that it was a mechanical issue with the locking pin getting stuck in the retracted position. Pushing on the pin with the tip of a screwdriver freed it up so that it was able to extend out again. I figured it would happen again, so took it to the dealer to have it checked out. They ended up replacing the entire charging socket/harness. It took several days to get the part and do the work, as it included wiring that goes all the way up to the front of the car and they needed to drop the battery to get to it.

 

[eeedub]

Hopefully you have things sorted by now, but the plug not locking is a fairly common problem, and seems to happen more with public chargers for whatever reason. I had this happen with a couple different chargers last week.

On the charging port, above the connector there is a little pin that will come out after the plug is inserted, this prevents the plug latch (the thing that moves up and down when you press the button on the handle) from moving up and unlocking. For whatever reason with some plugs the pin will come out, sense that something (not sure what) is wrong and then retract and give the error "charging plug not locked" which prevents charging.

I was eventually (after a bit of googling) able to get the public charger to work by wiggling/ pushing up or down (i cant remember which) when I put the plug in and allowing the locking pin to work. I have never had this problem with my vw level 1 or my Bosch level 2 chargers, just the public ones at the mall.

It seems to me that there is something not quite right with vws system for locking, either the location of the locking pin is a bit off or the mechanism is overly sensitive and prone to false errors.

 

[cassinscott]

New to the forum. I found it today when wife arrived home and told me her 2 month old eGolf would not begin charging after inserting the plug head. It was going into charge fault mode which is the LED next to the charge port glowing red. I read all the threads here about various charger head issues, namely that they were often unable to be disconnected. Those posts led me to look at the little silver latch piston on her car, the one that is supposed to lock the charger plug in place. Well, hers was doing the opposite in that it was not extending. It would try very feebly a few times then trigger the fault. I am no longer in the auto repair field but I used to be. As a younger man I spent about 15 years as an automotive troubleshooter specializing in electrical/electronics so it was fairly easy for me to understand what was supposed to be happening vs what I was actually seeing. There must be a micro switch attached to that little latch mechanism. When the latch is fully extended a signal is sent that allows charging to begin. If the signal is not present because the latch has failed to extend, you get the red light. After reading all the posts here about techs replacing half the car in trying to unlock stuck charger heads, and knowing without doubt that we were in for a rough ride once the car entered the dealership vortex, I decided to spray some silicone lube at that little bugger. Don't you know the latch is moving freely in its orifice now? I won't say for sure just yet that this actually solved the problem but it seems pretty likely... 3 shots of silicone spray and the piston is moving just as it should. By far the most helpful thing I learned in my career as a troubleshooter was that you go for the most laughably simple fix first because it often works. If it doesn't, then you can start your advanced thinking. Can you imagine the tragedy of having not tried a little shot of silicone before we sent this otherwise terrific car into the black hole of a totally clueless service department, only to have them eventually replace half the car because that stupid little piston is not serviceable on its own? I will post a follow up after we run it for a few days but the early indicators are that this dumb little device, which by most accounts is totally unnecessary, can easily be crippled by a bit of dirt, ice or other crud. Maybe my findings will save some other eGolf owners a long and agonizing dealership experience they don't even need.

Update one day later... wife had same trouble at work this morning. Am now thinking the orifice may have a bit of ice in it. We have had rain and freezing rain ongoing for about the last 4 days. Was slightly above freezing yesterday when I got it working, thinking maybe the spray lube had done the trick. Maybe it was simply that the ambient temp had risen just enough to thaw whatever ice may have formed in the latch mechanism? Hard to say. Given that the charger port door is open during charging it's not unfathomable that a bit of wind driven rain could be going down into that latch mechanism then freezing. Ongoing rain and temps hovering right around freezing here the whole time she's had this trouble... seems unlikely the trouble is just that perfectly coincidental with our recent weather. Supposed to be mid 50's here by later in the week so we will see how that affects things. Will post another update soon.

 

[user 1060]

+1 for using orifice.

Seriously though, thanks for posting your experience.

 

[snAKes]

My 2015 SEL also would not charge, and was in the dealer for just over a month. They replaced the charger unit under the hood which the dealer said cost $2000, and said that it was showing faults that the battery was overheated (falsely) and would not charge. Before that it was having the intermittent issue where the pin would not retract, and I carried a long allen wrench to unlock it. I was waiting for it to fail more consistently before taking it in, when this happened. It could be unrelated, so my concern is that I still might have the intermittent issue. I had the car for two weeks and everything worked fine but VW then decided to send the dealer more parts and my car is back in the shop to have the battery dropped to replace the other components. They said they would not replace the actual charge port until those parts are replaced too.

I'll keep you posted as well and will track this topic so we can compare notes. I'm definitely getting nervous about owning this car out of warranty which is coming up in the next month or two (I'm over 33k miles).

 

[miimura]

I've heard that they need to drop the battery to replace the charge port. So, they may do it all at once.

 

[snAKes]

I've heard that they need to drop the battery to replace the charge port. So, they may do it all at once.

I read that too (here I think) but the dealer insists that they have done more than one replacement of the charge port and the battery does not need to be dropped to replace it. I have a VWoA case that is escalated to a regional manager and I am requesting that they replace it while it is all apart.

 

[daeofcal]

I don't push the cable plug all the way in to keep it from locking on when charging at (Chargepoint) public stations, just to be less of a jackass in case I cannot move the car in a timely fashion. I don't ever recall locking CCS plugs to the car's receptacle... the status light stays yellow in both instances, but it charges just fine. So am I not supposed to do this?

 

[snAKes]

My 2015 SEL also would not charge, and was in the dealer for just over a month. They replaced the charger unit under the hood which the dealer said cost $2000, and said that it was showing faults that the battery was overheated (falsely) and would not charge. Before that it was having the intermittent issue where the pin would not retract, and I carried a long allen wrench to unlock it. I was waiting for it to fail more consistently before taking it in, when this happened. It could be unrelated, so my concern is that I still might have the intermittent issue. I had the car for two weeks and everything worked fine but VW then decided to send the dealer more parts and my car is back in the shop to have the battery dropped to replace the other components. They said they would not replace the actual charge port until those parts are replaced too.

I'll keep you posted as well and will track this topic so we can compare notes. I'm definitely getting nervous about owning this car out of warranty which is coming up in the next month or two (I'm over 33k miles).

Update: The Control Unit was replaced (with the new style per the notes) which required dropping the battery so it was in the shop two more weeks. I then drove it for 1 week and it worked fine until today. At work today with the supplied 120V EVSE and car did not charge and the charge port light was red. No faults were showing on the dash. I drove it home and tried my L2 charger with the same result. While taking a video of the sequence, I could see that the pin was not coming out so the plug was not locked in. I then pushed the pin in a bit to loosen it in case it was jammed, then inserted the charge plug. The pin came out, the light turned green and the car is charging.

So I'm pretty sure they will change the charge port now because it's the only component that hasn't been replaced. I just hope it's been revised to fix this problem permanently.

 

[JoulesThief]

My 2015 SEL also would not charge, and was in the dealer for just over a month. They replaced the charger unit under the hood which the dealer said cost $2000, and said that it was showing faults that the battery was overheated (falsely) and would not charge. Before that it was having the intermittent issue where the pin would not retract, and I carried a long allen wrench to unlock it. I was waiting for it to fail more consistently before taking it in, when this happened. It could be unrelated, so my concern is that I still might have the intermittent issue. I had the car for two weeks and everything worked fine but VW then decided to send the dealer more parts and my car is back in the shop to have the battery dropped to replace the other components. They said they would not replace the actual charge port until those parts are replaced too.

I'll keep you posted as well and will track this topic so we can compare notes. I'm definitely getting nervous about owning this car out of warranty which is coming up in the next month or two (I'm over 33k miles).

Update: The Control Unit was replaced (with the new style per the notes) which required dropping the battery so it was in the shop two more weeks. I then drove it for 1 week and it worked fine until today. At work today with the supplied 120V EVSE and car did not charge and the charge port light was red. No faults were showing on the dash. I drove it home and tried my L2 charger with the same result. While taking a video of the sequence, I could see that the pin was not coming out so the plug was not locked in. I then pushed the pin in a bit to loosen it in case it was jammed, then inserted the charge plug. The pin came out, the light turned green and the car is charging.

So I'm pretty sure they will change the charge port now because it's the only component that hasn't been replaced. I just hope it's been revised to fix this problem permanently.

i lube mine from time to time with silicone spray, to reduce sticking. Also remove dust and grit that might collect there.