Heater Problems

[Susan43209]

I just got a 2012 Leaf and I feel that the air coming out of the floor vents is not very warm. No matter what I put the heat on, my feet are cold (outside about 25 to 30). I took it to the dealer and I was told basically if I wanted warm feet, I shouldn't get an electric car.

Does the forum agree that I'm not going to get warm air from the floor vents?

 

[ksnogas2112]

Susan,
No, mine works, it does take a while to warm up though and if you're doing defrost the default button includes a/c. And before anyone else suggests, you might want to update your profile with your location as it does help troubleshoot concerns.

Next steps:

1. Use the carwings app to preheat the car about 15 minutes before you leave in the mornings while you're still plugged into your EVSE.
This isn't just useful to test but also a good idea to help conserve the battery charge

2. Enable the Zero Emission button, energy use while you have the heater running. At 68* or so and medium fan speed my experience is that you'll see between 1.5 and 3 kWh used by the climate control

Do you get heat on your feet now?

Let us know how it goes.

 

[RegGuheert]

Welcome!

Does the forum agree that I'm not going to get warm air from the floor vents?

No, but there are a few tricks since this climate control has a mind of its own!

- As ksnogas2112 said, always preheat the cabin remotely for at least 15 minutes. If you do not do this, it takes a bit of time to get heat in the LEAF cabin.
- Be sure to always use recirculate mode. For some reason, the LEAF always tries to switch back to fresh air mode.
- Drive in "D" instead of "ECO". This will allow more power to flow to the heater.
- Set the mode to only blow on your feet and ensure the A/C is off.
- Set the fan speed to a comfortable level.

Enjoy your new LEAF!

 

[keydiver]

The 2011/2012 heater does take quite a while to get up to temperature, but there have been quite a few LEAF owners on here that have had a defective heater and never got heat. If you NEVER get any heat, no matter what you do or how long you wait, take it back and make the dealer fix it. If they still want to give you an assinine response like that, call Nissan support! :x
BTW, the new 2013 LEAF has a revised heating system, which is hopefully better. IMHO, if you live in a part of the US that gets rather cold winters, you might want to consider getting the dealer to upgrade you to a 2013.

 

[vrwl]

Welcome!

Does the forum agree that I'm not going to get warm air from the floor vents?

No, but there are a few tricks since this climate control has a mind of its own!

- As ksnogas2112 said, always preheat the cabin remotely for at least 15 minutes. If you do not do this, it takes a bit of time to get heat in the LEAF cabin.
- Be sure to always use recirculate mode. For some reason, the LEAF always tries to switch back to fresh air mode.
- Drive in "D" instead of "ECO". This will allow more power to flow to the heater.
- Set the mode to only blow on your feet and ensure the A/C is off.
- Set the fan speed to a comfortable level.

Enjoy your new LEAF!

Or if you still want to drive in ECO mode, set the temp to 90, it will override the power-saving features of ECO and let heat come into the passenger compartment. Just remember that the heater sucks the juice out of the battery at an amazing rate and your range will be drastically reduced so it might be better to cycle it on and off as needed, rather than let it run continuously.

 

[SierraQ]

My heater works fine once it gets going. You can't cook meat with it like you can on some ICE cars but it does well enough. Some points to clarify:

• The A/C button is irrelevant in cold temperatures. Unlike most ICE cars the compressor will not run just because A/C is on (except perhaps in defrost mode to dehumidify). So you can leave the Leaf in full AUTO mode in the winter and not worry about it.
• Recirculating heat will cause humidity build-up in the car which leads to foggy windows so there is a downside. I've tried it both ways and strangely it seems like I get less heat on recirculate so I usually leave it on fresh-air mode.
• If you have climate control OFF to save energy then you might want to engage recirculate mode because otherwise the default will be to let some cold outside air flow through the floor vents which leads to chilly feet. You may have to defrost occasionally but off+recirculate keeps the heat inside the car longer.
• The best way to have a toasty car is to preheat. I haven't measured it but it seems like 10 min of preheat makes for a warmer cabin than 10 min of driving+heat.

See my climate control post if you want all the gory details.

 

[Susan43209]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I'm now driving on "D" instead of Eco and I have floor heat. It's too bad that neither my salesman nor the service rep suggestions that I be in Drive to help my heat problems. It is interesting that even when I have the mode set on floor heat, I still get heat out of the dashboard vents. However, I can close those.

 

[RegGuheert]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I'm now driving on "D" instead of Eco and I have floor heat. It's too bad that neither my salesman nor the service rep suggestions that I be in Drive to help my heat problems.

It is, but I'm not sure how they would know unless they owned a LEAF themselves. You can see from our responses to this thread that we've all come to our own understanding of how to try to tame the climate control beast in our LEAFs. It is a frustrating aspect of the car, to be sure. For the sake of future owners, I hope the climate controls on the 2013s work in a reasonable manner.

It is interesting that even when I have the mode set on floor heat, I still get heat out of the dashboard vents. However, I can close those.

That doesn't sound right to me. When we direct the heat to our feet, I have not noticed air coming from the dashboard vents. I will check it more carefully when I go out tomorrow.

 

[Reddy]

I find that a small amount of air "leaks" out of all vents, no matter what setting I use. Yes, you can manually close off the upper vents, but those foot vents always seem to leak. I think somebody (maybe GaslessinSeattle) went so far as to stuff something in the vent.

 

[DanBaldwin]

I checked my 2012 SL this morning. I set climate control for auto and set inside temp for 70 F. I could feel no air coming out of the dash vents. I was in D rather than ECO mode, and outside temp was 43 F.

 

[planet4ever]

I checked my 2012 SL this morning. I set climate control for auto and set inside temp for 70 F. I could feel no air coming out of the dash vents. I was in D rather than ECO mode, and outside temp was 43 F.

That's normal for the first few minutes if you haven't preheated. The fan doesn't turn on until it can blow warm air, and the air doesn't warm up until the heater coil can warm up a tank of water. Was it still behaving that way after ten minutes of driving? If so, take it to the dealer.

Ray