2013 Leaf - Dead 12-Volt Battery every 2 Weeks

[GerryAZ]

Add me to the list. 2015 Nissan Leaf SV with regular 120V charger that came with the car. "12v battery dead" problem started happening a couple of months ago. We would come home and plug it in to charge, and once in a while, we would find it dead in the morning, having to "jump start" it. This was less frequent in the beginning -- weeks between jump starts, and more frequent more recently -- a few days between jump starts.

During this time we took it to the dealer like 4 times, with no luck. Once they replaced the battery, but they said they can't find the problem. This last time they had the car for 8 days and supposedly tried everything, but it did not happen to them. It happens at home, does not happen at the dealer. Wife is frustrated, I'm frustrated, dealer is supposedly frustrated -- they need to replicate it in order to troubleshoot it. Town Center Nissan north of Atlanta, if anyone cares.

I've started to top off the 12v battery with the jump starter as a poor man's charger. I don't know what else to do, but wait it out until STUPID NISSAN AND DEALERS acknowledge this problem and find a solution. This is terrible. I can't with a clear conscience sell the car either. I'm stuck.

Did you have the telematics unit updated? If so, the telematics unit may be trying to transmit plug in reminder or charge complete notices at home. If it is unsuccessful, it may cause the car to not go into sleep mode after charging is complete. With all of the computers (modules) active, the draw on the 12-volt battery can be enough to drain it (failure to sleep probably also inhibits the automatic charging of the 12-volt battery). Unless the dealer's GPS location is recorded in the navigation system as a charging location to send plug in reminders, the issue may never happen at the dealer. As a test, you could go into the menus on the screen and turn off all notifications to see if your 12-volt battery is still drained at home.

[Stanton]

2015 SV - Telematics upgraded and nothing but warning lights and dead 12v batteries since. Dealer useless..."no problems found". Judging by the number of posts around this issue, I think Nissan has a problem with the telematics unit(s), charging software or something else ....Now the dealer wants to charge me for a loaner car while they look for the issue. Looking at the Volt. Maybe the grass is not greener, but anything is better than having the service guys tell you that there is nothing wrong with your vehicle...over and over again while you keep charging cables in your EV to jump your 12v battery!

Hall Nissan Virginia Beach - Not so much.

At a minimum, you should have them replace the Telematics unit; I have no data to support it, but it seems as though there was a "bad batch" of TCU/modems a couple of months ago. Those very early on--like me--and those more recently seem to only have the "fuse pull" issue, without all the dead 12v batteries. There's obviously some sort of software/firmware bug that Nissan can't figure out, but it at least shouldn't be killing your 12v on a regular basis.

[designbug]

@GerryAZ -- yes, as a matter of fact, we did have the telematics unit update recently. I need to double check the dates, but pretty sure this started happening after that. For a fact, this didn't happen in 2015 or 2016, and we did the telematics update this year. On a hunch, consistent with your suggestion, I did "disable" the data transmission. I don't know if I should go ahead and just pull out the fuse or something, but it has been 4 days, so far the battery is sitting around 12.5v. Thanks for the tip!!

Add me to the list. 2015 Nissan Leaf SV with regular 120V charger that came with the car. "12v battery dead" problem started happening a couple of months ago. We would come home and plug it in to charge, and once in a while, we would find it dead in the morning, having to "jump start" it. This was less frequent in the beginning -- weeks between jump starts, and more frequent more recently -- a few days between jump starts.

During this time we took it to the dealer like 4 times, with no luck. Once they replaced the battery, but they said they can't find the problem. This last time they had the car for 8 days and supposedly tried everything, but it did not happen to them. It happens at home, does not happen at the dealer. Wife is frustrated, I'm frustrated, dealer is supposedly frustrated -- they need to replicate it in order to troubleshoot it. Town Center Nissan north of Atlanta, if anyone cares.

I've started to top off the 12v battery with the jump starter as a poor man's charger. I don't know what else to do, but wait it out until STUPID NISSAN AND DEALERS acknowledge this problem and find a solution. This is terrible. I can't with a clear conscience sell the car either. I'm stuck.

Did you have the telematics unit updated? If so, the telematics unit may be trying to transmit plug in reminder or charge complete notices at home. If it is unsuccessful, it may cause the car to not go into sleep mode after charging is complete. With all of the computers (modules) active, the draw on the 12-volt battery can be enough to drain it (failure to sleep probably also inhibits the automatic charging of the 12-volt battery). Unless the dealer's GPS location is recorded in the navigation system as a charging location to send plug in reminders, the issue may never happen at the dealer. As a test, you could go into the menus on the screen and turn off all notifications to see if your 12-volt battery is still drained at home.

[dcarleaf]

Totally agree. Mine has saved me from being stuck. But I keep mine inside the car because I can't get my trunk open when the 12v battery is dead. I find it hard to believe that after four years and over 200 posts about this problem Nissan has failed to find a cause or a fix. To my own surprise I'm beginning to think that my next electric car won't be a Leaf.

[designbug]

Just an update. While not conclusive yet, it's been more than a week, with telematics turned off, so far no battery issues. Voltage seems to fluctuate around the same value +/- 12.5v.

[taloyd]

Hey everyone,

Looks like we can at least put the cause of the issue to rest. As Occam would suggest - in my case at least (2013 car getting the 2G --> 3G telematics upgrade) was the cause of the problem. Nissan (the manufacturer, not the dealership) flew over their engineers who designed the telematics from Singapore to my dealer to look at my car and a few others that were experiencing the problem. Within 2 days they assessed that the telematics unit itself was drawing an inappropriate amount of power, could not be fixed, and their options were:

1) replace the 3G unit back with the original 2G unit which would disable Carwings and also solve the parasitic power-draw issue

2) I could manually disconnect the 12V battery every day upon getting home

3) I could pull the fuse at strategic intervals - the sales person serving as an intermediary was a bit dubious about this, which suggests to me that they were very dubious about that.

I elected to have the upgrade reversed with the 2G unit they had lying around. I haven't got the car back, but as I had 60,000 trouble free miles prior to the upgrade, and the car died within 2 days after the upgrade - I anticipate I'll have a blissfully mundane experience with the car going forward - that of it turning on every day, and not discharging/destroying the 12V battery every several days.

The engineers were going to fly from the CA site to several others across the US, but pending some further troubleshooting might abort that as they are now fairly certain of the nature of the problem.

Cheers,
Tal

[jlv]

That's big news!

[Durandal]

I guess that firms up my decision on not upgrading my 2G telematics unit. That's pure ridiculousness.

[designbug]

Hey everyone,

Looks like we can at least put the cause of the issue to rest. As Occam would suggest - in my case at least (2013 car getting the 2G --> 3G telematics upgrade) was the cause of the problem. Nissan (the manufacturer, not the dealership) flew over their engineers who designed the telematics from Singapore to my dealer to look at my car and a few others that were experiencing the problem. Within 2 days they assessed that the telematics unit itself was drawing an inappropriate amount of power, could not be fixed, and their options were:

1) replace the 3G unit back with the original 2G unit which would disable Carwings and also solve the parasitic power-draw issue

2) I could manually disconnect the 12V battery every day upon getting home

3) I could pull the fuse at strategic intervals - the sales person serving as an intermediary was a bit dubious about this, which suggests to me that they were very dubious about that.

I elected to have the upgrade reversed with the 2G unit they had lying around. I haven't got the car back, but as I had 60,000 trouble free miles prior to the upgrade, and the car died within 2 days after the upgrade - I anticipate I'll have a blissfully mundane experience with the car going forward - that of it turning on every day, and not discharging/destroying the 12V battery every several days.

The engineers were going to fly from the CA site to several others across the US, but pending some further troubleshooting might abort that as they are now fairly certain of the nature of the problem.

Cheers,
Tal

Unbelievable!!
As a side note, my battery is still around +/-12.5v and haven't had any issues --after deleting my address from the system and stopping data transmission.

[lorenfb]

Hey everyone,

Looks like we can at least put the cause of the issue to rest. As Occam would suggest - in my case at least (2013 car getting the 2G --> 3G telematics upgrade) was the cause of the problem. Nissan (the manufacturer, not the dealership) flew over their engineers who designed the telematics from Singapore to my dealer to look at my car and a few others that were experiencing the problem. Within 2 days they assessed that the telematics unit itself was drawing an inappropriate amount of power, could not be fixed, and their options were:

1) replace the 3G unit back with the original 2G unit which would disable Carwings and also solve the parasitic power-draw issue

2) I could manually disconnect the 12V battery every day upon getting home

3) I could pull the fuse at strategic intervals - the sales person serving as an intermediary was a bit dubious about this, which suggests to me that they were very dubious about that.

Another option is to not use Carwings. I only use TCU to update the available charging stations.

I elected to have the upgrade reversed with the 2G unit they had lying around. I haven't got the car back, but as I had 60,000 trouble free miles prior to the upgrade, and the car died within 2 days after the upgrade - I anticipate I'll have a blissfully mundane experience with the car going forward - that of it turning on every day, and not discharging/destroying the 12V battery every several days.

The engineers were going to fly from the CA site to several others across the US, but pending some further troubleshooting might abort that as they are now fairly certain of the nature of the problem.

Cheers,
Tal

Another option is to not use Carwings. I only use the TCU to update the charging stations data.

As mentioned here: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=21573&start=690