2018 Nissan Leaf does not charge at Eaton POW-R-STATION

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skamithi

Member
Joined
Feb 9, 2018
Messages
5
Owned a 2018 nissan leaf now for 1 month. Had problems with it from day 2. First the car whistled close to the driver area when you go 50mph and turn off the AC. Well the AC masked some of the sound. It took Nissan 3 weeks to fix it. Apparently a manufacturing defect and they sealed the hole somewhere in the guts of the car.

Thought all my troubles were over when I realized that any Eaton POW-R-Station I use do charge the car. It would produce the red circle with exclamation mark icon on the Eaton L2 charger. So i investigated the issue further. I live in the Raleigh Durham (RTP) area. The following chargers did not work for me.

Durham Southwest library
Chapel hill franklin street
Pittsboro Library
Morrisville City Hall.

All Eaton POW-R-STATION chargers. Dealership service manager did confirm that new 2018 nissan leafs on the lot have the same issue. Service manager said Nissan engineering
recommends the charger be upgraded. but seriously when are you gonna get 4 different cities to do this because of a particular year of one particular brand. I responded by saying their
engineering should workaround the problem like all the EV car brands. I spoke to tesla , BMW and a 2016 nissan leaf owner and all reported no problems using these Eaton chargers.

Raleigh / Durham EVs considering a 2018 nissan leaf .. BEWARE! you can't charge this car anywhere!

Not sure if nissan will patch up their software any time soon. Maybe these EATON chargers are not as popular countrywide like they are in here in Raleigh durham area.

Anyone else in any other part of the USA with a 2018 nissan leaf experience the same issue with Eaton chargers ?
 
skamithi said:
Thought all my troubles were over when I realized that any Eaton POW-R-Station I use do charge the car. It would produce the red circle with exclamation mark icon on the Eaton L2 charger. So i investigated the issue further. I live in the Raleigh Durham (RTP) area. The following chargers did not work for me.

Durham Southwest library
Chapel hill franklin street
Pittsboro Library
Morrisville City Hall.

...
engineering should workaround the problem like all the EV car brands. I spoke to tesla , BMW and a 2016 nissan leaf owner and all reported no problems using these Eaton chargers.
Thanks for the info. Can you post Plugshare links to these? If you haven't already, can you check in to them and state that you can't charge your '18 Leaf on them?

There are certain Eaton level 2 stations that have trouble w/older Leafs like my '13 and I believe my former leased '13, as well. Example are the ones at https://www.plugshare.com/location/15000. You'll also get a red fault light when trying to charge. But, if you press the station's reset button a few times, it eventually starts and stays charging w/o issue. This has happened every single time I've tried to charge at that hotel and I've always succeeded (and received plenty of juice or fully charged my car) after a couple reset button pushes to get it going.

Eaton L2 EVSEs aren't common in the Bay Area. I've never personally used any except at the above Cupertino Aloft hotel. My memory is foggy as to whether I've personally seen any others in the Bay area.

Here are some earlier threads on I found on Eaton L2 EVSE compat problems w/Leafs before model year 2018:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=18019
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=12467

Both threads allude to firmware updates to the stations.
 
I will update plugshare next week and post the links here. There are a few more Eaton stations in my area not to far for me to check.

I have tried the reset button trick.. in one location it worked..but in most of them, nothing changed.. if you hit reset too many times the Eaton stations just doesn't allow you to hit reset again.
 
skamithi said:
I will update plugshare next week and post the links here. There are a few more Eaton stations in my area not to far for me to check.
Thanks!

skamithi said:
I have tried the reset button trick.. in one location it worked..but in most of them, nothing changed.. if you hit reset too many times the Eaton stations just doesn't allow you to hit reset again.
On the latter, that's weird. For the problem Cupertino Aloft stations I tried, pressing the reset button a bunch of times doesn't seem to have any negative effect. I recall connect it, hitting the fault light and pressing the reset button, waiting for a fault again, etc. and eventually, it works.

That hotel has 3 identical looking Eaton L2 EVSEs in a corner and either 2 or all 3 have the same issue with '13 Leafs.
 
skamithi said:
I will update plugshare next week and post the links here. There are a few more Eaton stations in my area not to far for me to check.

I have tried the reset button trick.. in one location it worked..but in most of them, nothing changed.. if you hit reset too many times the Eaton stations just doesn't allow you to hit reset again.


So you were able to charge at "some" Eaton stations then? Its simply weird to have issues with level 2. FYI; 2018 LEAF won't charge on Aeroenvironment DCFC.

Aeroenvironment knows what the issue is and per tech, says they are waiting for a response from Nissan as to how to proceed with the fix, whatever that means
 
Eaton L2s were the first type they bought at my work (http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=24456) and both types we have (Pow-R-Stations and their other L2s) needed to have firmware updates (in 2014) before they would work with the LEAF. I'm not surprised that they might need another with the 2018s. Since Eaton is out of the EVSE business, this doesn't look good.
 
DaveinOlyWA. No Eaton L2 chargers in my area work properly. my car fails most of the time, and only rarely hitting the charger Reset button works.
 
skamithi said:
DaveinOlyWA. No Eaton L2 chargers in my area work properly. my car fails most of the time, and only rarely hitting the charger Reset button works.

The only Eaton I know of is at DOT and its not public and also a DCFC.
 
I wanted to say thanks for posting this. The university I work at has two Eaton charge stations and I had just got my Leaf earlier this week. I couldn't figure out what was going on at first. Here's hoping there's an update that they can get at some point as the other chargers are quite a bit more of a hike from my office building.
 
Hi-
Having the same issue here. I searched the boards and plugshare for a workaround. The one that was successful for 2013 Leafs does not work for the 2018 model. I attempted to contact Eaton and they no longer service EVSEs. I wrote to Nissan with the issue and am waiting to hear back from them.
 
Unfortunately, I have the same problem with my 2018 Leaf SL when attempting to use the Eaton Level 2 chargers at work. I continually get the "fault" icon coming up on the charger regardless of how many times I hit the reset button. I haven't had a problem with non-Eaton chargers. It's very frustrating since charging at work for free was one of my buying decision points. I really like the Leaf but having it not be compatible with certain chargers is definitely a problem. I see older Leafs using the same chargers with no problem, so it seems like the 2018s have an issue.
 
Besides Eaton L2's, I also had an issue plugging into just an outlet with my dual EVSE at Wildhorse. Had to use their 6-50 instead... So yeah, its the car.
 
Thanks for the original post, here in Boulder, I am seeing the same problem with this specific model of charger. Need to ask for those to be upgraded.
 
Longwood Gardens in PA uses these chargers and won’t charge our Leaf. I hit reset a bunch of times and finally asked about it. They sent the electrician out and we discovered it was my car,not the charger. So how do I go about asking them to update the charger?
 
Eaton is out of the EVSE business and no longer supports the chargers, so there's nothing that can be done to upgrade them. Eventually, the chargers will be obsolete and replaced with a contemporary model, hopefully.
 
Jamiex6 said:
Longwood Gardens in PA uses these chargers and won’t charge our Leaf. I hit reset a bunch of times and finally asked about it. They sent the electrician out and we discovered it was my car,not the charger. So how do I go about asking them to update the charger?

To say its the car.... is not quite right. The 2018 has added support for future changes to both J 1772 and chademo. This means that older stations that have not been upgraded or are more than 4 years old will not work. I had the same issue with Webasto QCs not working (Webasto is the company that bought Aerovironment's public charging division) either and AV....well, they were aware of the issue but were a bit lax in fixing it. Luckily Webasto bought them out and less than one month later, started upgrading all the stations and now everyone works. A HUGE HUGE HUGE boost in usability for me.

Before updates

http://daveinolywa.blogspot.com/2018/04/road-trip-with-altitude.html

After updates

http://daveinolywa.blogspot.com/2018/06/changing-of-guard-webasto-road-trip.html

http://daveinolywa.blogspot.com/2018/07/webasto-and-oregon-coast-or-i-fought.html
 
Does anyone have any solutions yet for the Eaton Chargers not working with the 2018 Leafs? I assume they will not work with the 2019 Leaf either.

These chargers were installed on a fair number of federal government properties, and my husband works for the feds and it sucks he can't charge at work... none of his workplaces. I was hoping there would be a fix, even though Eaton is no longer in the EV charger business.
 
Hello fellow Leafy's,
I just bought a 2019 SL and the EATON chargers at Denver Health don't work for my car either. I ran into a 2018 Leaf owner in the parking lot and she said they don't work on her car either. I also noticed a Hyundai that had the "fault" light lit up when it was plugged in as well. Tesla's and a Ford were doing fine on the EATON.
Is there an adapter that could be fabricated to alleviate this problem? Perhaps something that clicks onto the charger handle before then plugging into the car?
I am trying to figure out what exactly is causing the "fault".
Any ideas welcome (psst...electrical genius's here!).
Thanks all.
 
^^^
I suspect something is awry in the implementation of whatever checks each side (car and EVSE) does.

Example starting points below:
https://openev.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/6000052074-basics-of-sae-j1772
https://openev.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/6000052070-theory-of-operation
 
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