Jack Schmidling

Thanks for all the help again. Think I have a fair understanding of how it works. A few more things came up that I can't find in the manual. 1. I ordered a cigar lighter DVM but in the meantime, I can not get a reading with my usual DVM in the lighter socket. Is there something that needs to be enabled? 2. When I get near home, the EV box starts to show EV+ and googling that produces some gibberish that makes no sense. What does this mean. 3. On seemingly random occasions, a gremlin starts sending Morse code and I haven't a clue what it means. Usually dit dit dit dah as in V sometimes some other character included. What is this? 4. If I drive very cleverly, by the time I get home the HVB is nearly depleted. This seems counter productive to starting again in cold weather. Thanks, js

If the HVB never goes dead and there is a DC-DC converter that presumably charges the 12v and the 12 volt is only used for electronics, why would there not be enough power in the 12v to get things going? i.e., what battery is dead when the car wouldn't start? Why can't everything run off the 300V battery and down converter as needed? And how much current does it take to jump start the car? Sounds like a few amps only and kingdom that was lost for the loss of a horse shoe nail. js

Lots of good stuff here. I just purchased the jumping gizzmo suggested but prefer to shop on Ebay and it was the same price including shipping. So now I feel comfortable during my learning experience. The user manual raises more questions than it answers which is why I joined this list. I suspected that there could be some way the HVB was involved in the starting but nothing like this is obvious from the manual. I am a child of the 50's and really got into the Mobile Economy Runs and have good a feel for the issues of MPG and enjoy working with the instrumentation provided. On my second run, I got 57 mpg on a 15 mile trip while my wife got only 32 getting there. I now realize that there are considerations at the beginning because of cold weather and getting the car warm so it was not a fair comparison. After the dead battery problem, I am wondering if the price for good mileage is a dead 12v battery. Another obvious question.... . what is the voltage of the HV Battery and why is this not in the manual? What and when actually charges the 12V battery? js

Are you confirming the fact that it is OK to connect a typical 12 v 6a auto battery charger to the terminals under the hood that are used for jumping? If so, it hardly seems worth investing in the jumping gizzmo. js

I have had a 2014 Cmax for about two week and yesterday the battery was dead and had it jumped and then got into this battery mess. We typically use the car only to go shopping once a week with an occasional run in between. Was buying this car a bad idea? My real question is based on the words of the guy who came out to jump it. Something like, let it run for 45 minutes before driving or turning it off. Sounded reasonable. After about 15 minutes I went out to find nothing running but blowers for the heater it seems obvious that this is no way to charge a battery. Which one of us is wrong? He also said not to connect a 12 v charger to terminals under the hood but to go directly to the battery in the trunk. This seems grossly inconvenient and his reason didn't make much sense because he didn't do a very good job of explaining why. It also occurred to me that I might charge it through the 12 v lighter jack in the cab.but I measured 0 volts when I went out to check it with a DVM. Nuff for now. Any help? js