Wierd experience?

[Bob]

From what I was able to determine:

Error P317A is the Traction Motor Inverter.
Error P3180 is the Li-Ion Battery.
Error P30A1 is Cell Continuity ASIC23 Open.

It seems like you had a bad or intermittent connection between cells, and that caused the inverter to give error P317A and also gave error P3180 on the battery pack. Then the LEAF debugged it down to a particular group of cells and gave error P30A1.

The battery pack is able to deliver >50 amps, so requires extremely good connections...and lots of them. The battery cells are in series, so one bad connection stops everything.

Bob

 

[gbarry42]

I think you deduced the important part originally. You can't magically dispose of several kilowatt-hours without it being noticed (in the form of smoke, fire, or tons of steel being transported for many miles). Nor can you magically put that kind of energy in, in a short time, using a 1 kilowatt supply--or by rebooting the car. Thus, we have to conclude that it's "instrumentation error".

This should be picked up by Nissan's monitoring system, but maybe that would take a long time, or maybe they aren't smart enough to watch for it. But the error codes likely indicate the same thing. And when wiring or sensors go wrong, the error messages usually tell you things that aren't true. What the experienced troubleshooter will recognize is that the kinds of errors being seen don't fit together right, or that there are an unreasonably large number of them. That should send them looking for bad sensors, bad grounds, or a bad power supply (bad power supply here is the 12V battery. That was a good guess even though it wasn't the cause).

Historical note: We had another owner here that was plagued by similar symptoms. His car eventually went back under lemon law proceedings. If only they had been as smart then, I think they could have fixed it. Or, in our fairy tale universe, we could say that Nissan took the car back, got a bunch of engineers to disassemble it piece by piece, until they found the root cause. And then, used this knowledge to speedily diagnose your car. As I recall, what they really did was to claim that it never really happened.

 

[Nubo]

The only thing I can come up with (I'm an accountant, not an engineer) is that perhaps I have one bad cell that corrupted the ability to read the battery and now as that cell gets charged, the battery will read as full. Is that plausible?

Sounds like you diagnosed it from the get-go. It only took trained Nissan technicians 2 1/2 months to catch up to an accountant.

 

[user 10599]

Well, both times I took it in before they examined it they started with the generic - 'oh there isn't going to be anything wrong with the car, you must be using a charger that isn't on a dedicated circuit, blah, blah, and blah.'

The fact that I had pictures demonstrating the problem and was pointing to the fact that this happened despite a good solid charge from a Nissan dealer's level 3, may have gotten them to do a more serious diagnostic this time. Or maybe it was not far enough advanced of an issue the first time but now that it was repeatable they were able to catch the codes as it happened. I hope they took the matter seriously both times, but am glad to get a plausible diagnosis and repair this time.

Fortunately, it did not leave my wife stranded somewhere. She puts at least a third of the miles on it and if she lost confidence in it then its days would be severely numbered. Time will tell if this is truly fixed. We've had it back almost a week now and no signs of problems, so I think we are back to good shape.

I must say that I've been very impressed with the technology and the car thus far. I'm looking forward to keeping it a long time. The only near term challenge to it would be if I decide to go for the MBZ B-Class. But I like to wait until the 3rd year of production so I'm not on the bleeding edge. (Thank you to all of you brave souls who have gone down this road and helped bring this technology into viability!)

 

[TimLee]

Well, both times I took it in before they examined it they started with the generic - 'oh there isn't going to be anything wrong with the car, you must be using a charger that isn't on a dedicated circuit, blah, blah, and blah.'

The fact that I had pictures demonstrating the problem and was pointing to the fact that this happened despite a good solid charge from a Nissan dealer's level 3, may have gotten them to do a more serious diagnostic this time. Or maybe it was not far enough advanced of an issue the first time but now that it was repeatable they were able to catch the codes as it happened. I hope they took the matter. ... (Thank you to all of you brave souls who have gone down this road and helped bring this technology into viability!)

Excellent job helping the dealer and Nissan solve the problem.
Pretty clear from the rapid dump to turtle that one or more cells were seeing a rapid change in voltage that was caused most likely due to bad connection or cell internal problem or arcing.
Single pair reading low can trigger turtle.

And you are still one of us brave souls. You are still driving basically Nissan first generation EV technology. They haven't changed the battery significantly yet

 

[DaveInAvl]

And you are still one of us brave souls. You are still driving basically Nissan first generation EV technology. They haven't changed the battery significantly yet

Well, I still very much appreciate the folks who have the 2011s/2012s and whose feedback helped drive the refinements in the 2013s/2014s.

 

[user 10599]

I definitely appreciate those with the 2011 and 2012 models. I realize my 2013 SL has a number of improvements thanks to their experience and feedback. I also realize that a very substantial portion of the knowledge base that I've tapped here comes from those same individuals.

I'm a supporter of the EV concept and am willing to be an early adopter, just not at the bleeding edge.

I'd also like to thank Nissan for having the foresight to develop this car not just as a compliance car but as an effort to launch a viable worldwide EV that is reasonably priced. Yes I like the Tesla, but when you can get 2-3 Leafs for the price of Tesla, Tesla doesn't work so well. I also appreciate the installation of the EVSEs at the Nissan dealers.

Thank you!!!!

 

[thankyouOB]

weird

 

[mkjayakumar]

I am guessing your battery has a leak. Did you see a puddle of electrons in your driveway ?