Hazard lights turn on when turning on headlights

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MotoJer76

Member
Joined
Jan 15, 2019
Messages
7
Location
Minnesota
I was about to take delivery of a 2012 Leaf SV and went to turn on the headlights. When I twisted the light knob to "On" the hazard lights turned on. Pushing the hazard light button didn't turn them off. If I turn off the headlights the hazard lights would stop/turn off. I am able to activate the hazard lights with the hazard light button.

I have tried driving with hazards/headlights on to no avail.

Aside from the hazards turning on with the headlights the car runs/drives fine. Any ideas?
 
Never heard of this before. Are you in Canada or something where someone wired up (or tired to) DRLs on a US model?

Can you update your location info via your user name in the upper right > User Control Panel > Profile tab? That way, we don't need to ask in future posts/threads or do sleuthing to deduce it.

What are your daily driving needs in terms of miles? How much city vs. highway? Will you have the ability to charge at your work/destinations?
 
No, I'm in Minnesota (updated my profile). The car was also driven only in Minnesota and Wisconsin. There are no DRLs that I could tell since it was dark and the only time there was light was when I turned on the headlights.

As far as daily driving goes: my round-trip commute to work is about 10 miles, all city/suburb. Currently, the only place I'll be charging is at home or the occasional destination that might have charging available (like Hy-Vee).
 
MotoJer76 said:
No, I'm in Minnesota (updated my profile). The car was also driven only in Minnesota and Wisconsin. There are no DRLs that I could tell since it was dark and the only time there was light was when I turned on the headlights.

As far as daily driving goes: my round-trip commute to work is about 10 miles, all city/suburb. Currently, the only place I'll be charging is at home or the occasional destination that might have charging available (like Hy-Vee).


A 2012 should meet your need very well, although I do want to warn you that if the battery wasn't replaced, you may only get 30 miles range (15 miles one way) in winter either now or in a few years. Do set your expectations appropriately so you're not disappointed.

Given the number of very cheap 2012's on the market, I would make the seller diagnose and/or repair the issue at a trusted mechanic (can be 3rd party) before taking possession. Unless it's an absolutely steal of a deal, I wouldn't want the risk. You can find a lot of 2011/2012 Leafs for very cheap that meet your range needs.
 
Interesting...I appreciate the insight. It may be too late to back out since I've already signed the paperwork. I purchased it for about $7800 with just over 30k miles on it. I have an appointment at a Nissan dealership on Friday to look at it. The selling dealership (Chevy) has agreed to pay some of the repair fees (I'll find out more in about 45 mins).

As far as the range you quoted in the winter: is that with moderate heat and/or heated seats/wheel turned on or off?

I appreciate your guys' input on this!
 
Use your heated seats and steering wheel all you want, they will not affect your range much at all. The heat will affect your range and you will figure out over time what your range hit is for various amounts of heat. If you have plenty of range for your daily needs, I would not sacrifice heating the car to a reasonable level of comfort.
 
The pre-2013 Leafs have a poor heating system, especially for your climate. You'll want to insulate the liquid lines for it, block the grille, and add a heater On/Off switch when it warms up in Spring. If you can preheat while connected to a 240 volt charging station, that will help a lot with your short commute. Even preheating on 120 volts will help a little if done only briefly. I'll add a link to my Tips & Tricks post to this one later.
 
MotoJer76 said:
IIt may be too late to back out since I've already signed the paperwork. I purchased it for about $7800 with just over 30k miles on it. I have an appointment at a Nissan dealership on Friday to look at it. The selling dealership (Chevy) has agreed to pay some of the repair fees (I'll find out more in about 45 mins).
Eek.

How many capacity bars is it showing? Where did the car reside before (can be found via Carfax/Autocheck)? Is it on its original big HV battery?

Capacity bars are all the way on the right, including the red ones http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Scott_3_bars_s.jpg is a fully charged 3 bar loser (9 capacity bars remaining).

If it is down several capacity bars and on its original battery, you overpaid.
 
MotoJer76 said:
Interesting...I appreciate the insight. It may be too late to back out since I've already signed the paperwork. I purchased it for about $7800 with just over 30k miles on it. I have an appointment at a Nissan dealership on Friday to look at it. The selling dealership (Chevy) has agreed to pay some of the repair fees (I'll find out more in about 45 mins).

As far as the range you quoted in the winter: is that with moderate heat and/or heated seats/wheel turned on or off?

I appreciate your guys' input on this!

The range I quoted is on my 7 bar (55% battery health) 2011 with the heat on to 70F and 32F outside. I do not have heated seats or steering wheel.

Use the heck out of your heated seat and steering wheel. They use very little power so if they can warm you up so the car itself is colder and you're comfy, you'll have better range.

I agree with cdwerna that you likely overpaid, but the good news is if you really have a 10 mile commute, the car will likely work very well for you for a number of years. If the battery has been replaced, it will be a great vehicle.

I haven't done any improvements to the heater as suggested earlier in the thread. The heat is quick and works well. Yes, it's less efficient than later model years, but again, with a 10 mile commute it won't be an issue.

Last word of advice:. Get LeafSpy Pro and a ODBII adapter for it. From checking trouble codes to clearing random errors if^B^B when the 12v battery goes dead. It also gives you a precise battery percentage, which doesn't show on the 11/12 model year dash.

Welcome to the Leaf family. Hope to see you around here!
 
LeftieBiker said:
The pre-2013 Leafs have a poor heating system, especially for your climate. You'll want to insulate the liquid lines for it, block the grille, and add a heater On/Off switch when it warms up in Spring. If you can preheat while connected to a 240 volt charging station, that will help a lot with your short commute. Even preheating on 120 volts will help a little if done only briefly. I'll add a link to my Tips & Tricks post to this one later.

Leftie,

Should the 2011 allow you to run heat while charging? I can run the AC while charging but heat will not enable unless my car is in ready to drive mode. Is this normal?
 
The way the heaters work on all Leafs is this: they draw power directly from the battery, and any charge added either slows that rate of charge loss, cancels it out, or exceeds it and the car adds charge while heating. I have never seen anyone write that they couldn't preheat a 2011/2012 Leaf while charging.
 
LeftieBiker said:
The way the heaters work on all Leafs is this: they draw power directly from the battery, and any charge added either slows that rate of charge loss, cancels it out, or exceeds it and the car adds charge while heating. I have never seen anyone write that they couldn't preheat a 2011/2012 Leaf while charging.

Interesting. My heater will draw 0 watts for the heater unless in ready to drive mode.. 120 or 240. Since I am unable to go into ready to drive when plugged in, I cannot preheat while plugged in.

Fans and AC work as you describe. Puzzling.

2011 w/3.3 KW charger and no cold weather package.
 
Lothsahn said:
LeftieBiker said:
The way the heaters work on all Leafs is this: they draw power directly from the battery, and any charge added either slows that rate of charge loss, cancels it out, or exceeds it and the car adds charge while heating. I have never seen anyone write that they couldn't preheat a 2011/2012 Leaf while charging.

Interesting. My heater will draw 0 watts for the heater unless in ready to drive mode.. 120 or 240. Since I am unable to go into ready to drive when plugged in, I cannot preheat while plugged in.

Fans and AC work as you describe. Puzzling.

2011 w/3.3 KW charger and no cold weather package.

I actually was wondering the same thing. While I was charging yesterday and sitting in the car, the heater produced no warm air. However, if you turn on the AC as heat, it did (albeit not nearly as warm). The heated seats and steering wheel did get warm, however.
 
cwerdna said:
MotoJer76 said:
IIt may be too late to back out since I've already signed the paperwork. I purchased it for about $7800 with just over 30k miles on it. I have an appointment at a Nissan dealership on Friday to look at it. The selling dealership (Chevy) has agreed to pay some of the repair fees (I'll find out more in about 45 mins).
Eek.

How many capacity bars is it showing? Where did the car reside before (can be found via Carfax/Autocheck)? Is it on its original big HV battery?

Capacity bars are all the way on the right, including the red ones http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Scott_3_bars_s.jpg is a fully charged 3 bar loser (9 capacity bars remaining).

If it is down several capacity bars and on its original battery, you overpaid.

Based on last nights' charge, I have 10 bars...so I'm hoping that what I paid is commensurate to battery availability/capacity. The car was always in MN (I'm the 2nd owner) and is still using the original battery. Not sure I want to pay for a new/refurb unless something significantly larger can be installed.
 
MotoJer76 said:
cwerdna said:
MotoJer76 said:
IIt may be too late to back out since I've already signed the paperwork. I purchased it for about $7800 with just over 30k miles on it. I have an appointment at a Nissan dealership on Friday to look at it. The selling dealership (Chevy) has agreed to pay some of the repair fees (I'll find out more in about 45 mins).
Eek.

How many capacity bars is it showing? Where did the car reside before (can be found via Carfax/Autocheck)? Is it on its original big HV battery?

Capacity bars are all the way on the right, including the red ones http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Scott_3_bars_s.jpg is a fully charged 3 bar loser (9 capacity bars remaining).

If it is down several capacity bars and on its original battery, you overpaid.

Based on last nights' charge, I have 10 bars...so I'm hoping that what I paid is commensurate to battery availability/capacity. The car was always in MN (I'm the 2nd owner) and is still using the original battery. Not sure I want to pay for a new/refurb unless something significantly larger can be installed.

Money spent is money spent--stop worrying about it.

10 bars should give you 45-50 miles range in the winter and more in the summer. You'll be fine for a number of years with your expected commuting distance. In your cold climate, I would expect you to lose approximately 1 bar per year or two years.

Go enjoy your new car! Let us know if you have any other questions or need help.
 
Lothsahn said:
LeftieBiker said:
The way the heaters work on all Leafs is this: they draw power directly from the battery, and any charge added either slows that rate of charge loss, cancels it out, or exceeds it and the car adds charge while heating. I have never seen anyone write that they couldn't preheat a 2011/2012 Leaf while charging.

Interesting. My heater will draw 0 watts for the heater unless in ready to drive mode.. 120 or 240. Since I am unable to go into ready to drive when plugged in, I cannot preheat while plugged in.

Fans and AC work as you describe. Puzzling.

2011 w/3.3 KW charger and no cold weather package.

It's possible that the very early cars behave as yours does, and it was changed for 2012, or when the Cold Weather Package came out. Note the A/C trick posted above.
 
My 2011 was an early unit without the cold weather package and preheating while plugged in worked fine. If heating only works with A/C on in ready mode, the car may have the "heater fix upgrade" from EVSE Upgrade that would keep the heat off unless the A/C was turned on. If so, there is a way to disable that function so read the threads about it. The plug and play kit with switch and wiring harness to take control of the heater is a much better solution. I did not like the EVSE Upgrade heater fix so made a temporary circuit to disable the heater when I did not want it to draw power and would have purchased the kit with wiring harness if the car had not met its demise.
 
GerryAZ said:
My 2011 was an early unit without the cold weather package and preheating while plugged in worked fine. If heating only works with A/C on in ready mode, the car may have the "heater fix upgrade" from EVSE Upgrade that would keep the heat off unless the A/C was turned on. If so, there is a way to disable that function so read the threads about it. The plug and play kit with switch and wiring harness to take control of the heater is a much better solution. I did not like the EVSE Upgrade heater fix so made a temporary circuit to disable the heater when I did not want it to draw power and would have purchased the kit with wiring harness if the car had not met its demise.

Heat works in ready mode regardless of AC mode switch. I wish mine had that--I actually contacted EVSE Upgrade to buy it but they no longer offered it. I did install my own aftermarket heat switch http://betterev.tabetalt.no/Produkt/nissan-leaf-heater-controller-kit-v2 but that's not the cause.

I found that my car does not generate any heat (or show any load on the energy info screen) when not in ready mode. This is true regardless of the AC mode switch control.

However, once I configured a climate control timer (the actual time of the timer didn't matter--just that one was configured), then I was able to get heat while plugged in and not in ready mode. I did have the AC switch enabled in that case.

So I'm not sure if that's normal or not. But it appears that, at least on my car, if the climate control timer is not configured, it will not generate heat unless in ready mode.

Posted in case anyone else has a similar situation.
 
Your heater experience is probably normal. The only way I could reliably preheat while plugged in was with climate control timer or CarWings (now EV Connect). I could sometimes get heat (or A/C) to activate while charging by depressing brake pedal and pressing start button (would not go into ready mode, but the mode it went into would allow climate control use if there was sufficient battery charge).
 
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