is already considered 34 too cold 34 whereas other types of accumulators can still be normally charged at temperatures of about 10 u00b0 c the internal state of the accumulator determined by resistance measurements according to the invention irrespective of the type of the accumulator is a characteristic which may influence the charging program accordingly when the temperature of the accumulator is found to be too cold the charging current is immediately reduced to one half if subsequent measurements under these charging current conditions still result in unacceptable measuring and evaluation results the charging current is again reduced by one half if the subsequent results should still be found inacceptible the charging program will be considered unsuitable for the respective accumulator a differentiation as to the type of accumulator can be made in the following manner when r 1 and r a lie above a preselected limit value associated to the specific accumulator and at the same time r 4 gt u02dc 3r 0 or the cell voltage lies above a predetermined limit value the accumulator is a mass cell accumulator or a sinter cell accumulator of a too small capacity for the selected charging current a reformation of the accumulator is required when the trend of qr 1 is very highly positive in the initial phase of the charging operation the accumulator has no capacity when r 4 gt 4r 0 and all of the remaining resistances are considerably above characteristic standard values of the specific accumulator in this context the term.