Car won't start OR charge - RESOLVED

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

BestPal

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 3, 2013
Messages
90
Location
San Diego, CA
Just a couple of days short of 1 month old 2013 S with 6.6kW charger. 1379 miles on the odometer. In the morning I ran some errands - no problem. Late afternoon I took the car through an automatic car wash - came out nice and pretty. After the car wash, I drove about 20 miles. 30 min stop, car off. Then started it, business as usual and drove now 17 miles back to the house, came home with about 34% charge left, plugged it in - nothing, one beep and a couple of clicks under the hood but no blue dash lights. Won't charge - I'm still charging on 110 at the house. Nissan EVSE shows charge status - green light - ready to charge but not charging. Pressed timer off - nothing. Unplugged a couple of times and tried a different outlet - same results. Tried to start the car - it won't start, with a foot on the brake pedal it will go into neutral, but wont go into "READY". Yellow round brake warning indicator with exclamation mark stays lit when other lights come on for a few seconds and then go off. Taking my truck to work tomorrow and will call the dealer to have my Leaf towed and checked out; but I am also wondering if anyone has any ideas of what it might be. Could it be some blown fuse after a carwash? If so, what/where should I check? Keeping in mind that I drove 37 miles with one 30 min stop after the wash just fine... I checked the 12V battery and it shows 12.29V. Nothing else was abnormal on the way home. I'm bummed to "celebrate" 1 month of ownership in this manner.
 
Perhaps a reboot of the car will help.

Car unplugged, everything off.

Make sure that the J1772 socket is clean and dry
(blow air with a straw if necessary).

Dsconnect the 12v battery minus side
(the bolt, both loosen the clamp on the battery post.

Leave disconnected for 5 to 10 minutes, and reconnect.

Maybe everything will work, but you need to check
the timers, and possibly reset the driver's window
auto-up function.
 
garygid said:
Perhaps a reboot of the car will help.
...
Dsconnect the 12v battery minus side
...

That was my initial thought too, but for the time being I decided not to. Even if it resets, it's not OK for a car to decide not to take a charge or start and I'd like for the dealer to figure out what the underlying problem is. Hope whatever errors are stored in the memory will help them with diagnostics.

BTW, I did blow compressed air into both ends of the charging connector.
 
BestPal said:
garygid said:
Perhaps a reboot of the car will help.
...
Dsconnect the 12v battery minus side
...

That was my initial thought too, but for the time being I decided not to. Even if it resets, it's not OK for a car to decide not to take a charge or start and I'd like for the dealer to figure out what the underlying problem is. Hope whatever errors are stored in the memory will help them with diagnostics.

BTW, I did blow compressed air into both ends of the charging connector.
What's the voltage on your 12v battery?
 
Resolved! Had it towed to the dealer for diagnostics to find out what happened and why. What did they do? Exactly what Garygid suggested to do - they disconnected the 12v battery for 10 min, let the car reset - and it was fine, so they charged it up and I picked it up tonight - all seems to be fine. Never figured it out what caused the problem and the memo on labor stated that it was a glitch and resetting the car resolved the issue :S Oh... K... hope the glitch never happens again.
 
BestPal said:
Resolved! Had it towed to the dealer for diagnostics to find out what happened and why. What did they do? Exactly what Garygid suggested to do - they disconnected the 12v battery for 10 min, let the car reset - and it was fine, so they charged it up and I picked it up tonight - all seems to be fine. Never figured it out what caused the problem and the memo on labor stated that it was a glitch and resetting the car resolved the issue :S Oh... K... hope the glitch never happens again.
That's good news.
Next time, you might want to ask them if there were any stored DTC's (Diagnostic Trouble Codes) and what they are. It might not even be too late to call them back and ask.
 
I just had this exact same issue:
1) Plugged Leaf in and it began to charge
2) Within 10 seconds I removed the plug to re-route the cable or something
3) Plugged it back in - single beep, but no blue lights and charger did not "click" like normal (Siemens 220 charger)
4) Closed charging door and tried to start leaf - no "chime" and it would not start. The same way as if you did not pres the brake and tried to start
5) Brake LED was always on on the dash (!) - almost like Leaf could not sense that I was pressing the brake
6) The Upper LED (with the spedeometer) showed both a yellow and red alert, but main dash screen had no info about these alerts
7) I read this thread and removed the negative cable from battery under hood. Left off for maybe 30 seconds and re-attached. All is good now.

Car is 1 month old and has 1100 miles on it.

I am going to leave a socket and ratchet in the glove box. This will not be good if it happens again and it's my wife or daughter driving.
 
jkallen21 said:
I just had this exact same issue:
1) Plugged Leaf in and it began to charge
2) Within 10 seconds I removed the plug to re-route the cable or something
3) Plugged it back in - single beep, but no blue lights and charger did not "click" like normal (Siemens 220 charger)
4) Closed charging door and tried to start leaf - no "chime" and it would not start. The same way as if you did not pres the brake and tried to start
5) Brake LED was always on on the dash (!) - almost like Leaf could not sense that I was pressing the brake
6) The Upper LED (with the spedeometer) showed both a yellow and red alert, but main dash screen had no info about these alerts
7) I read this thread and removed the negative cable from battery under hood. Left off for maybe 30 seconds and re-attached. All is good now.

Car is 1 month old and has 1100 miles on it.

I am going to leave a socket and ratchet in the glove box. This will not be good if it happens again and it's my wife or daughter driving.


Great info, thanks....is it also a 2013 S like BestPal ride?
I too will carry some tools.


Fred
 
Wennfred said:
jkallen21 said:
Sorry - yes, it's a 2013 S with 6.6kW charge option. Just like the OP has.

Thanks, sounds common to 2013 S models, wonder if any others or different years glitched like this.

Fred



Sounds a lot like my laptop running Windows?
 
Yesterday my Leaf would not charge at all with the Nissan L1 charger and would kick off after a few seconds with the L2 charger. The orange trouble symbol was lighted but went away after turning the car off and on. I had enough juice to get to a dealer so I left the car there.

They said there was no error codes set and it worked after they reflashed the Leaf. It worked fine yesterday and it is charging now as I write this. I really think the processor glitched. If it happens again I will try removing power.
 
Interesting. The problem Glenn had is a slightly different version of the problem. In mine and the OP, it was "no charge - no start". Glenn's was "no charge - but would start". Definitely some bugs in the charging system. I imagine that Nissan is overly cautious with the charging system until they get more experience with it.
 
I got in my 2012 to go to work but the ready light wouldn't light. Acted like my foot wasn't on brake.
Took my ICE to work. I was concerned about Leaf's reliability.
Thanks to the posts here and other topics I was able to troubleshoot my issue.
First I tried a reboot / reset by disconnecting the negative cable. While I was waiting the 10 minutes I measured the 12v battery. Got about 9 volts. Tried to charge it but the needle gauge on charger was erratic. I put the cable back on and tried to start but now got a Can't find the key fob message.
12 v battery is no good. It's failure is not common. Normally one can charge a weak 12 volt back up to 12 volts. How long it holds the charge determines how quickly it needs to be replaced. This one was partially fried. Getting a jump was impossible.
Next day go to AutoZone and buy the best one they got. Duralast Gold with 5 year . Ended up getting a $20 rebate.
The guy at AutoZone gave me a funny look when I wanted a 12v battery for my electric car.
Installed it in the Leaf without any issues. So nice that the terminals are not all corroded in the Leaf.
Runs great now. I swear I'm getting better range.

The information in this forum is very informative and valuable. I considered towing it to the dealership. They would have charged me quite a bit for that battery and who knows what up sale stuff they would have tried.
 
Great to hear that you got your problem fixed with a reasonably small (under the circumstances) amount of hassle.

Disheartening to read yet another example of an engineering failure to "bring up the system" in a fashion that begins from a minimal set of verifiable resources, (like "this 12V supply that everything depends on: is it good-to-go?") and adds/enables capabilities only as they are verified to work.
 
PowayDon said:
I got in my 2012 to go to work but the ready light wouldn't light. Acted like my foot wasn't on brake.

I saw this same exact behavior in my 2012 SL last week (after 4+ years and 53K miles). I've never seen it before. Got to work, charged up, moved my car around front at lunch time once it was done charging (so it worked fine then). When I came out to leave work it was just as if I was not touching the brake (note that this is NOT the same issue as the OP of this thread). Car refused to go to READY and I was getting the little icon to put my foot on the brake and hit the power button (it was going into ON state though). I can't quite recall, but the battery meter might have been blank and --- in the GOM (which I knew was wrong).

I went back to the office for a few minutes and then went back out and tried again and it started fine. Been working normally ever since, but I'm glad you posted because I will keep an eye on my 12V battery. As far as I know it's in good shape according to LEAFspy, but I haven't actually measured the voltage with a multimeter.
 
lpickup said:
As far as I know it's in good shape according to LEAFspy, but I haven't actually measured the voltage with a multimeter.
Typically LeafSpy will give the the voltage of the 12V battery while it is being charged by the traction battery. This voltage will not give any indication of whether or not your 12V battery is O.K.
 
Back
Top