How Do You Know Your On Board Charger Died?

Each Arcimoto (and EV vehicles) has an on board charger. This heavy rectangular device sits at the front of the vehicle tucked behind the 2 inverters. Your on board charger is what allows charging to take place. The Greenwatt on board charger is, in all honesty, poorly designed and very prone to failure. 

How do you know it failed? There can be many different indicators, not always the same for each failure. 

Firstly, your touch screen must turn on when touched. If it doesn’t it may be a different problem: a dead 12v battery.

Otherwise, you may have a failed on board charger if…

1. You plug in your EVSE to charge the vehicle and the little green bar doesn’t move left/right indicating it is charging.

2. You plug in your EVSE and there is an error indicator on the EVSE box.

3. You leave it to charge for a couple hours and you come back with the state of charge (SOC) at the same number or lower.

4. You plug in your EVSE and the fuse for the EVSE circuit is tripped.

5. You plug in your EVSE and hear a “pop” sound from the front of the vehicle, this might possibly be followed by an electrical smell.

6. You plug in your EVSE, let it charge for 24 hours, and the state of charge (SOC) might increase the charge by 1%.

7. You try a different EVSE and it still doesn’t charge.

8. You plug your EVSE into a socket in a different house or a plug on a completely different electrical circuit - and the wiring in your home is newer (ruled out poor wiring).

9. You try a commercial charging station EVSE and it either doesn’t move the green bar, the commercial EVSE has a fault, or the EVSE stops working altogether and is now broken.

The solution is to replace the Greenwatt on board charger with the exact same model to ensure fit and that it will work with the system Arcimoto programmed. The charger costs about $1200 and it takes about 1.5 hours to replace if you know how to do it. A competent person can do it themselves, there are instructions out there.