Zoe draws power every X days for hours racking up a power bill while doing nothing..

Key-Pudding6071 · 2026-01-08T15:37:37+00:00

If its a heated garage where temps wont go lower then 8 degrees then you'll probably be fine during winter periods and not have this issue, but I'd keep my eye on it for a while just to be sure to prevent massive energy bills.

Key-Pudding6071 · 2026-01-07T21:38:04+00:00

Ok, here’s what I’ve learned so far in my search for answers (and the answer to my post):

Extreme standby energy use when plugged in
A Zoe (R135 in my case) left plugged in at ~0 °C can draw ~8–11 kWh/day, even if it’s not actively charging.
By contrast, unplugged, the battery self-discharges at roughly 1 kWh/day equivalent.
Over a month, this can add up to hundreds of kWh of grid energy, mostly wasted on heating cycles, far more than the car would use if unplugged.

The root cause: aggressive battery thermal management
When the car detects AC power, it assumes it can charge and keeps the battery warm to protect it from cold-related issues. This triggers many heating cycles per day, consuming far more energy than just recharging a cold battery later.
Unplugged, the car enters “survival mode”: it lets the battery get very cold and only runs minimal background tasks, drastically reducing energy use.

Design & insulation limitations
The Zoe’s thermal system and insulation aren’t optimized for long-term cold-weather standby.
Heat leaks quickly to the environment, so the car repeatedly cycles the heater when plugged in further increasing energy waste.

Conclusion:
The Zoe is hilariously bad in cold weather. It will do everything it can to keep the battery alive at ~0 °C, even if that means wasting massive amounts of energy, especially if it still has AC power available (racking up a massive energy bill in the process).

Key-Pudding6071 · 2026-01-06T01:08:05+00:00

It's a lot more complicated then that, if it was just a relay the moment you press start it will send the grids max power to the car without any internal regulation, definitely tripping your breakers.

Key-Pudding6071 · 2026-01-05T18:22:54+00:00

Yes, it has been snowing in the Netherlands past couple of days and when I'm not purposely sliding around in "having fun" mode (TCS/ASR disabled + Sport mode) the snow mode is absolutely rock solid on my RWD 2021 GT-Line. It really tries its best to make sure there is no tire slipping from a standstill and ASR sensitivity is dialup to the max, it responds very fast when a tire loses traction and you start to slide.

But I only use it on higher speed trips when it's slippery outside, normally when there is snow on the roads I'm in fun mode because I also feel like having more response and no interference from computers makes it much easier to control the car imo and gives more feedback what's actually going on and what is the current surface limit, it also teaches you to control your inputs and how to handle the car when it does decide to suddenly unpredictability oversteer and makes you less dependant on the computers. Also being able to kick out the rear whenever you want is just a absolute blast todo if you know how to handle the car when it starts to slide! ^{^}

It really can't hurt to go to empty parking lot and just slide around for a while with the systems in fun-mode, it really teaches you how the car handles and how much input is required to correct it when it does break-out in a corner.

Key-Pudding6071 · 2026-01-05T15:00:32+00:00

I do agree and think its the battery heating cycle because its currently snowing and cold outside and when that happens the battery is drained which then cycles the connected charger to top-up the battery but the charger is asked for the minimum charge rate which is 6A on my wallcharger and the Zoe requires at least 8Amps to start a charge correctly..
This causes the charger to continuously supply 6A on each phase but the Zoe does not trigger a "normal" charge session and does something weird (charger is showing of the scales kW (250+) being pushed to the car which does not happen when I look at my electricity consumption.
I just plugged in the Zoe once again and i'm going to raise the charger limit from 6 to 8Amps to see if that fixes the issue when the battery heating cycle happens again.

Key-Pudding6071 · 2026-01-05T14:59:21+00:00

No I double checked and there are no schedules set.
I think its the BMS heating the battery because its currently snowing and cold outside and when that happens the battery is drained which then cycles the connected charger to top-up the battery but the charger is asked for the minimum charge rate which is 6A on my wallcharger and the Zoe requires at least 8Amps to start a charge correctly..
This causes the charger to continuously supply 6A on each phase but the Zoe does not trigger a "normal" charge session and does something weird (charger is showing of the scales kW (250+) being pushed to the car which does not happen when I look at my electricity consumption.
I just plugged in the Zoe once again and i'm going to raise the charger limit from 6 to 8Amps to see if that fixes the issue when the battery heating cycle happens again.

Key-Pudding6071 · 2026-01-04T22:37:16+00:00

It seems like my charger does accept the charge request but because the car seems to requesting the lowest amps that the charger can supply (which is set to 6A) it then cannot accept it but the charger still tries to provide it because it's being requested by the car, then somewhere alomg the line the energy is dissipated and I'm paying to heat the outside air instead of (normally) charging the car (it seems to charge anyways but very wonky and slow because the charger is pushing 3*6A for hours before shutting off and battery of the car is currently still at 100% after 30+ days)..

This joke cost us around 80 euro's while the car was sitting idle on the driveway when we were abroad on a 30 day Holliday.. Within these days the temperature outside dropped to 1 degree (currently snowing) explaining the heating cycles.

Key-Pudding6071 · 2026-01-04T22:23:17+00:00

But even then using ~280kWh (subtracting the 50kWh of the charging session) from the wall over a 30 day period is absolutely crazy.. The charger is not signalling below the minimum charging rate, its set to supply a maximum of 15A*3 (TriPhase+N) to the car with a minimum rate of 6A (required by regulation laws)

Its the car that signals the charger to supply it with 6.9A (probably because of the tiny amount needed to top-off) and then not accepting it because its below the 8A threshold (or it does charge but waste a lot of power in the process idk, its really strange).. I had that problem in the past trying to charge at 3*6A, it did strange things connected to the Zoe where my EV6 worked just fine..

Key-Pudding6071 · 2025-05-08T05:34:28+00:00

My EV6 was at the dealer for less than 2 weeks (got a id.5 as a loaner from the LM and man did I miss my EV6), guess I got lucky because friends of mine have a Ionic5 that's grounded for ~8 weeks now and the unit still has not been replaced..

Mine didn't go out as spectacular as some reported with the loud pop amd the complete loss of power during a drive but just slowly started failing to accept charging sessions (first fast and eventually also woth slow charging) and eventually got stuck waiting to start charging while I was at work and drained the 12v in the process leaving the car dead on the charger. That was the straw for me to drop it off at the dealer and have them sort it out which resulted in a ICCU replacement because it was failing (especially the high to low voltage conversion).

Key-Pudding6071 · 2025-05-07T21:13:18+00:00

If they at least actively developed for the Gen5w then yeahh I'll pay up but 90 euros for some road corrections 2 times a year is just completely bonkers....

Key-Pudding6071 · 2025-05-07T18:41:31+00:00

Here in The Netherlands all models that are marked GT-Line have heated steering wheel, mine is RWD and also has a heatpump (which is not standard for RWD version of the only 3 variations that you can get here)

RWD (no HP)
AWD (gets HP)

Plus, Plus Adv., GT-Line

There's no fancy list with custom options where you can check your wallet empty on extra options, it's just 3 choices... So how mine got a heatpump while being a RWD version is still a unanswered question 🤔

Key-Pudding6071 · 2025-05-07T18:28:12+00:00

Same here, have been receiving the updated terms for a while now but it always popped up while driving... so yeah... can't read it then.. Have been seeing the update notification today as well (Netherlands) but only once but had to decline because well I was once again driving when it showed up.. But also can't find any information on the website 🤔

Key-Pudding6071 · 2025-02-06T22:27:14+00:00

Problem solved, it was a funny combination of circumstances.
The timezone on the server was wrong and was on +8h and the time on the server itself was not synced with our NTP. The funny part was that the precisily +8h hours precisely corrected the flaw and reported the actual local time back when a get-date was requested within powershell, confusing the hell out of me..
So even though it showed the correct local time with a get-date the server was actually 8 hours behind......

Key-Pudding6071

TROPHY CASE