The BMW Mini E

Charger Installation
Completed
6/9/2009

Today, we're one step closer to getting the car! Our charger cable was installed and the final electrical inspection passed -- all (surprisingly) smoothly done by 9:30AM. (An interesting side note: the city inspector showed up in a BMW. Business must be good in some parts of the economy!)

A charging procedure sticker for the Mini E was added to the charger box, but at first glance it looks a bit confusing and un-helpful. It would probably be adequate to just have a warning like: "Do not unplug while charging!"

Incidentally, I was told by the installer that the Clipper Creek charger box will not resume charging after a power failure. This is a problem also with our Toyota inductive charger. It should be clear that a short power outage in the middle of the night will be a problem in that the car may not be charged as expected overnight. This also makes it unusable with an external timer-switch. Only our original GM/Hughes inductive charger did it right!

The car-end of the charger cable is a hefty connector with three large and three small connections. The cable itself has 3 power wires (2 AC + Ground conductors) plus one relatively thin wire, presumably for communications between the car and the charger.