This EV From The 2010s Can Be Bricked Just By Turning It On The Wrong Way

The early 2010s were a weird period in modern electric car development. The cars of the era often had pretty lousy range, lofty price tags, and long charging times. America’s charging network wasn’t anything like it is today, too. One of the first mass-produced electric cars of this era was this, the Th!nk City, a truly weird little car. The Th!nk is known for its quirks, and one of them is that if you try to turn on the car in a certain way while running its heater, you can brick the whole thing. I’m serious!

I’ve been following the Th!nk City story for years, and that’s because the U.S. version of the little Norwegian city car has Midwestern roots. Final assembly occurred in the RV capital of America, Elkhart, Indiana, with lithium batteries sourced from EnerDel of Indianapolis. Living in Illinois meant that, at least for a couple of years, I saw these cars on a regular basis. I’ve been wanting to buy one for years.

Unfortunately, time has not been kind to the Th!nk City. It might have been one of a handful of first mass-production EVs of the early 2010s, but it was also one of the first to fail. It’s been maybe seven years since I last saw a Th!nk being used as a daily driver, and most of the Th!nks that I find on Facebook Marketplace either have severely degraded batteries. Or, worse, they either have broken HVAC systems or have been bricked because of a seriously silly, but unfortunate, bricking scenario. Thanks to Robert Dunn of the YouTube Channel Aging Wheels, we have an extremely detailed look into how you can brick a Th!nk City by using its heater:

This bricking issue is pretty well-known in the Th!nk City EV space. I have known about it for years and have even personally seen Th!nk City cars with stickers on their dashboards instruct the driver to ensure that the cabin heat is turned off before turning on the car. Yet, through all of this time, I didn’t know exactly why turning on the heat could brick a Th!nk. The reason why is as fascinating as the Th!nk City’s story.

An Early EV Underdog

The Th!nk City might have been a short-lived car in America, but it was steeped in history. Here’s what I wrote in the past:

The Th!nk City’s story is a sad one, involving a company with huge, forward-thinking ambitions, but never enough money to keep the good times rolling. For this one, we start in Norway during the 1973 Oil Crisis. As Automotive News Europe writes, during this time, a man named Lars Ringdal came up with the original idea for what would become the Th!nk, putting a concept on the road in 1972. Science Norway notes that his EV featured a motor from a washing machine and a rotomolded plastic body. Development continued after the oil crisis ended, but eventually, Ringdal’s company went bankrupt. Still, the idea of an electric Norwegian city car never died, and almost 20 years later, Ringdal’s son, Jan Otto Ringdal, took on the EV challenge.

In 1991, Pivco–Personal Independent Vehicle Co.–launched in Oslo, Norway’s capital and largest city. As Plastics News notes, Pivco wanted to bring Ringdal’s electric car concept to market, and actually punched out a couple of working prototypes, starting with the PIV2. This little car had an aluminum chassis, a rotomolded polyethylene thermoplastic body, and a nickel-cadmium battery. Just 15 of them were made and 10 of them made an appearance at the Lillehammer Olympic Winter Games in 1994, MotorTrend notes. The cars had a top speed of 56 mph with a range of 62 miles.

Pivco followed it up with the PIV3, MotorTrend notes, also known as the City Bee or just the Citi here in America. In 1995, about 40 of these made their way to California to participate in the DARPA-sponsored San Francisco Bay Area Station Car Demonstration project. Unfortunately, the project ran out of money again in 1998, forcing Pivco to file for bankruptcy. Pivco expected to lease its City Bee cars to businesses and government agencies to build out a public transport commuter system. The company set a goal to make 1,500 of them before ramping production up to 5,000 a year by 2001. But after spending $19.9 million on the project and Norway’s government pulling out of its planned investment, Pivo was out of cash.

In 1999, Ford would buy Pivco in an effort to have an electric vehicle to comply with what was then California’s Zero Emission Vehicle mandate. Pivco was renamed to Think Nordic, and in 2001, with Ford’s massive cash infusion and parts bin, Think was able to kickstart the Th!nk City Electric Vehicle Demonstration Program, placing 375 Th!nk City cars around America, and one in Bermuda.

Ford saw the Th!nk City going into mass production by 2009, but pulled the plug on the project in 2002 after producing around 1,000 Th!nk City cars and burning $150 million. It was around this time that the company also produced 7,172 Th!nk Neighbor low-speed electric cars.

Th!nk was saved again in 2009 by Ener1 Group. The car was finally finished, Production was restarted, and Th!nk announced its return to America. The American Th!nk City was advertised to start at $36,495, with the first 100 units hitting $41,695. Th!nk cars were built as knock-down kits in Finland, then shipped to America, where Th!nk North America assembled them from as many local parts as possible. EnerDel, a subsidiary of Ener1, supplied 23 kWh lithium-ion batteries from Indianapolis. This was combined with a 46 HP electric motor, and roughly 500 examples were produced in America.

The 2010 to 2012 Th!nk City has a top speed of 68 mph and a range of about 100 miles. The body consisted of injection-molded plastic panels. Even though Ford wasn’t involved anymore, the Th!nk City was full of interior parts from the first-generation Ford Focus and even used generic Hella 4169 taillights.

Personally, I thought the Th!nk City was charming in only a way that a small company could achieve. An early Nissan Leaf is a more substantial and cohesive car, while an early Smart Fortwo Electric Drive was more reliable. But the Th!nk City? Its rollercoaster of a story makes it weird. I mean, some of the Th!nk City cars sold in other markets had a molten salt battery that had to stay at 300 degrees Celsius to remain functional!

Quirks And Bricking

That weirdness extends to keeping these cars alive. They have lots of quirks, and while finding interior parts isn’t that hard, the entire drive system is an orphan, and good luck finding spare parts without buying an entire Th!nk as a parts car. Several Th!nk owners get their hands dirty with soldering or custom fabrication to keep their Th!nks on the road. Faults include minor annoyances like parasitic 12V battery drain to major failures like the HVAC module conking out or, oh yeah, the fact that you can brick it by leaving the heater on when trying to turn on the car. That brings us to Dunn’s video.

Dunn recently bought a Th!nk City and the major problem with it was that the battery was in a sorry state, with about half of its capacity left and around 30 miles of realistic range. Amazingly, upon hearing this, the guy who sold Dunn his Th!nk City volunteered to give Dunn the battery in his Th!nk, which had a broken HVAC module, but a battery with around 18 kWh capacity. So, the seller, Kyle, got both of the Th!nks together and swapped out their packs.

In the video, Dunn explains how a Th!nk can be bricked. The Th!nk’s owner parks their car with the heater on and shuts off the car. When they get back to the car, they start the car with the heater in the on position. Now, this won’t brick the car, as the car can handle this. But if, for whatever reason, the person immediately turns off the car and then turns it back on, the car cannot handle the load, and a circuit board literally blows up. The Th!nk is now br!cked.

You may think this scenario sounds silly, because who would immediately turn off and turn back on their car? Yet, apparently, this has happened enough that I have seen lots of dead Th!nks for sale on Facebook and, as I noted earlier, some of the Th!nks I’ve seen even have stickers to remind their drivers to turn off the heater before turning on the car.

But why does this happen?

The Offending Resistor

As Dunn says: “The pre-charge resistor is undersized, so if you turn the car on with the heater on, it overloads the pre-charge resistor and fries it.”

Dunn starts by explaining how a high-voltage contactor works. Send juice through the contactor, and the electromechanical switch closes between two terminals, connecting them. Remove the power, and the contactor opens, isolating the terminals. In an EV, contactors are the bridge between the battery and a load.

Dunn notes that, at least in this case, you don’t want to just directly apply the load to the contactors. Over time, arcing can damage the contactor, and immediately applying huge loads to the circuit can damage electronics. A pre-charge resistor is just a resistor that is added so that the load builds up in a more controlled manner, rather than just snapping through the circuit. Then the contactors can close without arcing or without the rush of current.

Normally, when you start a Th!nk, the vehicle prevents the heater from running until the pre-charge process is over. However, if you immediately turn the car off and then turn it back on, that protection is turned off, and the heater will immediately turn on. Now, it’s entirely on the resistor to handle the load.

The problem is that the resistor in the American market Th!nk City is too small for the job. It works okay when you turn the car on without any additional load, but adding the load of the heater is enough to overload and overheat the resistor. If you’re lucky, the resistor will only get so hot that it melts the zip tie holding it down. If you aren’t lucky, the resistor will blow up in such a dramatic fashion that it’ll take out the rest of the logic board it’s attached to, bricking the car.

You can fix the bricked condition by replacing the board, but the board is attached to the battery pack. So, you’ll need a lift and a way to gently remove the battery pack, plus someone who knows how to work on the car. It’s because of this that many folks just get rid of their Th!nks when the board blows up.

Thankfully, if you do know someone who is willing to work on the car or is willing to take on the challenge yourself, this problem is so well-known that there are resistor kits that you can buy to fix your board before it blows. But again, you have to drop the battery to achieve that.

The rest of the video shows what that process looks like. The battery is under the car, and it’s held on with an army of fasteners. Once you remove them, you have to drop the battery a few inches, disconnect its cabling, and then drop it further. Hopefully, you have a cart to support the weight of the battery.

Dunn also shows the early build nature of the Th!nk in the battery. The orange high voltage cables are labeled as welding cable, and the high voltage connectors are push fit.

Still A Cutie

So, if you’re like me and you have a real soft spot for these Th!nk City cars, it sounds like you should be pretty well-versed in doing things yourself. These are rare cars from a dead brand which didn’t leave behind many spare parts. The youngest ones are at least 13 years old now and their batteries aren’t getting any better. Yet, I keep finding all of these quirks weirdly charming.

Still, if you happen to buy what was one of only a few mass-market EVs on the road in America in the early 2010s, be careful. Don’t futz around with the ignition with the heater on because you run a high chance of blowing up a logic board. That should be enough to scare anyone from a car like this, but I still want one.

I also highly recommend watching more Aging Wheels for fun obscure car shenanigans!