My EQS has issues with charging pauses with my Clipper Creek Level 2 Wall Charger.

During the charging pause of 4pm-12 am when the electric rates are higher, the car will constantly signal to the wall charger that it wants electricity and then will "pause" for a second with a loud click to stop charging, and then recycle in 5 seconds with a demand for power again followed by a loud click to pause etc. This happens until the charging period ends at 12 am.I sent it into the dealer a couple of days ago.

The dealer has tried their Chargepoint flex charger and a Juicebox charger and they say that the charging pauses work normally with those chargers. However, they also have a Clipper Creek charger and also can replicate the pausing clicking error with their Clipper Creek Charger.

So, it seems there is some sort of incompatibility with the EQS and Clipper Creek Chargers. Anybody else have this issue (or not?) with their Clipper Creek Chargers?

They are reaching out to MB Engineering but have not gotten a response yet. I've reached out to Clipper Creek and they say it is Mercedes.

I believe there's another thread on this topic... if you will search for it.

This is the second time I've heard this with Clipper Creek. Sounds like a good reason to not buy one. Definitely sounds like a Clipper Creek problem to me, something in their software is not compatible with charge pauses, and they should be up front about that. If it was Mercedes, my ChargePoint would be doing it too, and it is not. My car completely pauses, until the scheduled start time. It does not ask the charger for power. The light on the ChargePoint turns blue, indicating that it is supplying power to the car, but the charging is paused by the car, and starts at the selected time. The lights on the car remain orange, indicating that it is not yet charging, until the selected charging time, then they pulse blue, as does the charger while it is charging. Then, after is has completed the charge, the light on the ChargePoint is still blue, indicating there is still power to the car, but the car has finished charging and turned off, with the lights on the car returning to orange. The light on the charger remains blue until I unplug the car, then it goes back to green, which is the standby mode.

Haven’t quite got my car yet but I did buy a ChargePoint flex charger and from the sound of things I’m glad I made that choice.

OK, this is a retraction of some of my previous statements about charging pauses, which were apparently made in error. I had my car on pause this afternoon, plugged in to the ChargePoint Homeflex. I was working in the garage and the steady blue light was on on the charger, as usual. Then I heard a click from the charger, the light dimmed, then another click and the pause resumed. Had never heard this before, and I was surprised. However, as i continued to work in the garage, it occurred regularly, every five minutes. (notably, not every five seconds, as described by the OP) I called ChargePoint and discussed this. They said it appears that the charge station is communicating with the car and reaffirming that it should pause charging. They did not see this as a problem, per se, however they recommended I delete the charging pause in the EQS, and program a charging time start in the ChargePoint Homeflex, and that should resolve the issue. I may give this a try. But I just wanted to clarify, and confess that I had no idea this was happening. I also find it notable that they did not blame MB per se, just recommended that we use the software in the charger to do the same thing. Your comments are welcome.

Follow up message: OK, I deleted the charging pause in the EQS. I set a schedule for the ChargePoint Homeflex, which was very easy. It told me to delete the schedules in my car, and to plug my car in. I did so. The steady blue light came on on the Charger, the car accepted the plug, but the lights on the EQS did not come on, the plug in area remained dark. I did get a message from MercedesMe Connect telling me an error had occurred in the charging process. I remained in the garage for a full 10 minutes, and there were no clicks or any activity from the Charger or the car, the steady blue light on the charger remained on. I will go out again tonight around 8PM, when it is supposed to start charging, and observe. I will report back to you tomorrow on how this does. It seems that we must endure clicking every so often, if we set charging schedules with our EQS', and messages telling us that there is an error in the charging process if we schedule the Charger to come on at certain times. Disappointing that the only way to do it cleanly is to walk out and do it yourself, but that appears to be the reality. I will post a follow on message tomorrow to let you know if my car charged overnight.

Hlothery, thanks so much for reporting back and for trying it in your system and home and letting us all know. I've found your posts and replies to be super helpful, not just here but on other subjects in the forum.

The click for me occurs every 5 seconds, not 5 minutes like it does for you so that is quite interesting that it is somewhat different. Unfortunately, I cannot do the workaround that you are doing by programming the wall charger as the Clipper Creek is not wi-fi connected and has no app; it is a "dumb charger". I selected it as a recommendation from an engineering friend, who has pointed out that Clipper Creek has been around for forever, and is used by many hotels, parking structures, and commercial locations; It charges our Tesla perfectly and we figured that less connectivity, screens, things to break etc = better. Our friends who have a Juicebox are on their second at this point in under 2 years.

I've reached out to Clipper Creek, who say this:

"My suspicion is that the Mercedes may be responding to the ClipperCreek self-diagnostic that occurs at the end of charging or “charging pauses” and then getting stuck in a loop cycle. I could go into technical details if you would like, but it may be more productive to work directly with one of the techs or engineers at Mercedes. Do you happen to have a contact phone number for the technician or dealership who worked on your vehicle? I would like to reach out and try to work with them on a solution. This will inevitably come in the form of a software update from Mercedes, but we have worked with other EV makers such as Tesla and Nissan to help correct this issue."

I have put them in contact with my dealership's service advisor, who hopefully will connect them with MB Engineering to get this resolved in a future update.

Does anybody with JuiceBox have the same issue?

I had scheduled charging to begin at 8:00PM, and left the EQS plugged in. At 8:00 last evening, the orange lights on the EQS began to flash, then turned blue and the car began to charge as scheduled on the ChargePoint Homeflex. Unfortunately, the MercedesMe app continued to tell me that the car was not connected and not charging, even as the charge percentage increased, showing the charge percentage in red, instead of blue. This continued until I finally went out and unplugged, then plugged in again. Then the app returned to normal. So, it appears there are issues any way you look with paused or scheduled charging. Frustrating for sure. I'll probably end up just cancelling all the delays on the car and the charger, and just plug it in before I go to bed on the nights when I'm charging.

Wonder if anyone has tried the MB wallbox, or is it only available in Europe? Probably no difference with the Mercedes Me issues as above.

I'm using a relatively cheap and old (2017) German 11 kW wallbox and seem to have issues if I have programmed a departure time and plugged the car for charging. The car does charge the high voltage battery right but it fails to run HVAC from the plug, instead runs it from the battery. I've only tried it a few times so far though, the error message was somehow pointing to low 12 V battery. Need to check that, cannot even remember for sure if the message was from Mercedes Me. Cannot see why the wallbox would play any role but who knows if the Mercedes wallbox would work better.

I have a charge point home flex, and have noted similar issues as hlothery with scheduled charging. In the past I have plugged in the charger in the evening (around 7-8PM) but scheduled it to start charging at off peak hours (11PM). This was scheduled through the charge point app, not the MB app. At 11PM, just like hlothery I got an error from the MB app stating the car was not charging, though it appeared like it was charging from every other metric. Going outside to unplug/replug in the charger corrected the issue. Certainly a nuisance but not the end of the world

So an update with why our cars do not seem to be able to schedule pauses properly without clicking on and off incessantly--it seems that MB Engineering needs to correct some programming for how the car interprets a supervisory self-test followed by charging instructions from the wall charger during a programmed pause. Here is an email I got from Clipper Creek Engineering. Apparently this has happened with many other makes as well including Tesla but can be rectified with a firmware update if Mercedes will do it. This email was sent to both me and my dealer's service department.

"I do not have access to the current Mercedes for testing, but I suspect I have a good understanding of the issue being seen.

My suspicion is that when the driver/owner pauses the charging session, the vehicle ends the charging session and changes the pilot signal from State C to State B. Our HCS products then perform a supervisory self-test as we do at the end of every charging session. During this test, the charging station sets the pilot to State B1 for about 100mS to let the car know that the EVSE is not ready to supply power. When the test is complete, the EVSE resumes pulsing the pilot to let the car know we are ready to charge. The issue with some cars is that they interpret this transition from B1 to B2 as a “wake up” signal and immediately start a new charging session. When that happens, the car then stops that new charging session because it sees programming in place to pause or wait. It ends the new charging session and the HCS does another self-test. The cycle repeats until the cable is disconnected or the vehicle is programmed to start charging.

We have worked with a few other automakers, such as Tesla, BMW, and Jeep to help them implement firmware updates to the car so that their vehicles are not as sensitive to this 100mS self-test. The general solution these other companies have implemented is that when the car is set to delay charging or “Pause”, it does not start a new charging session. Some EVs also implement a 1 second grace period at the end of charging to allow the EVSE to perform self-tests without having the car respond to pilot state changes."

Very interesting, and would certainly explain what you and others have experienced. I do wish MB could implement the firmware changes, hopefully via an OTA update. I would like to resume charging pauses, simply to be a more responsible EV owner vis a vis the total power grid. I liked charging while I sleep, and could still do it, I suppose, if I just wait til bedtime to plug in. I just don't like the recurrent clicking which occurs during the above described interaction with the wall box and the car. One can hope.

I asked the manufacturer of my wall charger (Clipper Creek) if it was harmful for it to click on and click off. He said that each "click" is a cycle and the wall charger is tested to last at least 10,000 cycles and that it does cause wear on the wall charger to have it click on and off. As a result, I am no longer letting it click for multiple hours, as it could drastically shorten the life of the wall charger. Fingers crossed Mercedes fixes this issue!

10 000 cycles sounds very low for a contactor inside the wallbox. Should be 100 000 cycles for an average product and that is switching under load (on and off). The car would always switch the wallbox contactor under zero load. Sounds like Clipper people are overcautious. Of course still better to avoid unnecessary switching if possible.

I agree, and that is the reason I am no longer using pauses in charging until this gets worked out. Too bad, I really like the concept.

I have been combing through the thread, not sure if my situation was addressed already, so apologies in advance. 5 week old EQS 580 (love it), with a 50A Chargepoint homecharger connection. For the first couple of weeks everything worked as advertised including scheduling home charging at night to take advantage of lower cost. However, starting about 3-4 days ago, neither does the schedule work anymore and neither does the manual override. I never had any pauses programmed in the EQS or the Chargepoint App. When I charge it manually in the day, I am hearing a click as the pulsing blue light on the charger moves to solid blue (within about 5 seconds or so.) It almost seems like its reacting to a pause signal. However, I have turned schedule off, pauses deleted, and am at wits end. Have plugged/unplugged from wall, also have flipped circuit breakers, rebooted charger, etc. Have sent in a ticket to Chargepoint, but thought I'd ask here if there were any additional suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

My ChargePoint HomeFlex charges at 9.6kW, and the car turns itself off when it is charged. I have noticed some changes in the ability to adjust settings in the app recently, but it is still functioning well. I often plug the car in and go to bed, and it is charged and turned off when I wake up in the morning (blue light on, but not pulsating). The pauses I was using caused the clicks I described above, but I am no longer using them. Sorry you are having difficulty. I would suggest calling ChargePoint.

Had the clicking when trying to charge using multiple clipper creek chargers. I turned off the charging pauses in my EQSX 450 and as soon as I swiped the pauses off the charger clicked and started charging.