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Leviton charger warranty repair experiance?

Discussion in 'Gen 1 Prius Plug-in 2012-2015' started by AHetaFan, May 11, 2013.

  1. AHetaFan

    AHetaFan Member

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    Sigh. The replacement unit only charged the car once. It doesn't seem to be communicating properly with the car. when connected the green power light blinks 3 times and usually that is all that happens. I have verified there isn't any problem with the car. Works every time using the Toyota charging cable and a level 2 charging station at Walgreens. I got an immediate response from Leviton when I emailed them. Phone call and email. Someone will come next week.
     
  2. cwerdna

    cwerdna Senior Member

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  3. AHetaFan

    AHetaFan Member

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    Perhaps but those are not comparable with my 40 AMP unit. It would be slower to charge a RAV4 EV with one of those and I hope one day they will be available in my state.
     
  4. AHetaFan

    AHetaFan Member

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    My problem is resolved. I waited a few days to be sure this time before posting about it.

    They had me take my car to a Dealer where a regional Toyota specialist met me and verified there wasn't anything wrong with my car and that it charges correctly on their charger. They pulled the logs from the car also. Then they drove a known good Prius plugin to my house and tested that the same issue occurs with a known good car when connected to my charging station. My charging station behaved exactly the same way on their known good car. Toyota sent all the results to Leviton.

    Leviton then flew out an engineer to diagnose the problem. This engineer was involved in the design and programming. Hard to beat this for commitment to a solution. The circuitry tested out correctly. He swapped circuit boards with a known good board but this did not solve the problem. He connected a 32 amp charging station he had brought with him and everything worked perfectly every time this was connected to the car. The 32 amp unit uses the exact same circuit board design and programming except that the pulse width signal sent tells the car this is a 32 amp charging station. Next he looked at things that would cause the car to think there is a problem such as faulty connection to the car. He manipulated the connection at the car while it was successfully charging and charging would stop. That should only happen when the disconnect button on the handle is pressed. He swapped charging cables with the 32 amp unit which uses the exact same cable. Problem solved. The car has charged reliably every time since. Apparently the charging connector wasn't making reliable contact with all terminals on the car.
     
  5. mrbigh

    mrbigh Prius Absolutum Dominium

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    I really liked your comment about the troubleshooting procedure.
    Nothing was left to a random guess......And finally the culprit was the J1772 wand cable assembly
     
  6. Electric Charge

    Electric Charge Active Member

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    Very happy to see the outcome of this. Still wondering if they would go this far if you installed this yourself, but I'm sure they are very interested in working out the bugs, since they just received a $1,000,000 contract from NY to install a bunch of charging stations all over the state.
     
  7. DianneWhitmire

    DianneWhitmire High PRIUStess

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    I'm very glad to hear they are becoming more proactive about their customer service.
     
  8. reddavid

    reddavid Junior Member

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    very cool of Leviton to be so responsive.
     
  9. El Dobro

    El Dobro A Member

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    I have their plug-in level 2 station. Let's hope they're just as good at supporting it. :D