P0D29: Battery Charger Input Current Too Low
What to do
Charging will be slower than expected. Try another charge point; if the car charges at full speed elsewhere, the first supply was the limit. Nothing here prevents driving.
What this code means
The alternating current the charger is drawing from the supply is below what it asked for.
Input current is the quantity the charge point has authority over. The Control Pilot at P0CF3 tells the car a maximum, and the charger must stay under it. So a low input current can be perfectly correct behaviour — a car obeying a 10-amp limit on a domestic socket is doing exactly what it should.
It becomes a fault when the charger asks for current and cannot get it. That is a supply that cannot deliver: a breaker close to its limit, a shared circuit, a charge point advertising more than its wiring supports. It is the same underlying event as P0D27, seen through current rather than voltage — and a supply problem usually stores both. Seeing them together is confirmation, not two faults.
The measurement comes from the sensor at P0D38, so that sensor reading low mimics this exactly.
Likely causes
Start here
- Fault in the external charging equipment · easy
- Corroded or loose connector · specialist
Less common
- Faulty on-board charger · specialist
- Damaged wiring harness · specialist
- Damaged charging inlet or pins · moderate
Symptoms
Components involved
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Community experience
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What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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