2016 Leaf won't start

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Brat567

Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2017
Messages
5
Anyone had problems with their Leaf not starting? While driving dash warning lights came on. After stopping and turning the car off it will no longer restart. Shifter goes into park and neutral.
Car was involved in a minor front end collision. Hood, bumper, radiator and core support were replaced. Nothing in the motor or electrical system was damaged. Car always started and ran. Put about 600 miles on it after repairs.
 
The codes keep coming back as a high voltage (high resistance) problem. Do you think the 12V battery would cause those codes?
 
A failing 12 volt battery can cause all kinds of 'phantom codes' that aren't indicating real problems. Replacing the battery may reset the codes. Test the 12 volt battery's voltage at rest, and if it's below 12.2 volts or so it's bad. If it's 12.3-12.5 volts, charge it up. Make sure the replacement battery, if needed, is fully charged BEFORE installation, or right afterwards, before the car is used. Leafs don't always charge that battery fully or properly.
 
LeftieBiker said:
A failing 12 volt battery can cause all kinds of 'phantom codes' that aren't indicating real problems. Replacing the battery may reset the codes. Test the 12 volt battery's voltage at rest
...
Leafs don't always charge that battery fully or properly.
Yep. All sorts of weird stuff can happen when the 12 volt battery's low, including a no-start (can't go to READY mode (green car with arrows light)) condition.

Yep. OP should measure the 12 volt voltage at rest.
 
I've had this exact same problem, at least 4 times over the past 5 months on my 2016 Leaf SV. Most recently today.

Each time it happened the car was driving, in motion, and suddenly it shifted into neutral and I got the error "T/M system malfunction, see dealer".

In the first three cases, it happened while I was driving at low speeds (either in traffic on surface streets, or in a parking garage), and I would simply pull to the side of the road, put on my hazard lights, turn the car off, then turn it back on while depressing the brake. Sometimes it took up to three off/on cycles to get the "ok to drive" green car symbol to light up, and I'd continued on my way with no further problems for weeks/months. I knew it wasn't a good sign, but it wasn't enough of a hindrance to come to the top of my priorities, and I also suspected that an error this sporadic would be hard duplicate/prove at the service department and didn't have a lot of time to waste taking a car in only not to be able to demonstrate the problem.

Today was the worst manifestation (which is what led me to finally research this). It happened while I was traveling 65 mph on the freeway, with my entire family in the car, fortunately right as I was getting onto an exit ramp. The car suddenly went from drive to neutral, same error message. I was able to coast down the exit ramp onto a side residential street, cycle on/off a couple times, and regain the ability to drive.

I'll be taking it in to the dealership some time this week. Just bought the car last October, and as I said have experienced the problem several times in just 5 months. I previously had a 2014 Leaf S. In the 2.5 years I had that car I never experienced this problem once.

If it really is just a bad battery, it seems odd that the error would manifest so sporadically (the first time within a week of obtaining the new car in October, the most recent time today). In my ICE cars of the past, a dead battery meant it stopped being able to start the car and that was that. At least it also didn't affect the car once you had the engine running. It surprises me that a bad 12 V battery can randomly cause you to lose power at 65 mph on the freeway. Yeesh.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Test the 12 volt battery's voltage at rest, and if it's below 12.2 volts or so it's bad. If it's 12.3-12.5 volts, charge it up. .

Based on your advice, I tested my Leaf battery when the Leaf was turned off, using a multi-meter. Max value I got was 12.0 volts. Typical was 11.8. Based on your criteria, that implies the battery is bad. To the dealer I go for what I hope will be a warranty-covered replacement.
 
dgalvan said:
LeftieBiker said:
Test the 12 volt battery's voltage at rest, and if it's below 12.2 volts or so it's bad. If it's 12.3-12.5 volts, charge it up. .

Based on your advice, I tested my Leaf battery when the Leaf was turned off, using a multi-meter. Max value I got was 12.0 volts. Typical was 11.8. Based on your criteria, that implies the battery is bad. To the dealer I go for what I hope will be a warranty-covered replacement.
It should be covered under warranty. My used Leaf was 2 years and a few months old when they replaced my 12 volt for free under warranty: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=12448&p=440419&hilit=12+volt+bad+replaced+warranty#p440419. Incident at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=440106#p440106.

For your loss of propulsion issue, I'd file a safety complaint w/NHTSA at https://www.safercar.gov/.
 
You should be able to charge the battery enough to safely get to the dealership. Ironically, though, doing that may result in them saying it's "fine" if they only do a voltage check instead of a load test. So make sure they use a capacity tester, and do that load test.
 
Thank you all for the info. Car has been at the dealer for two weeks while they periodically do process of elimination. Seems they have to talk to reps at Nissan and there are only a few there knowledgeable on the Leaf. Therefore it can sit for days before they work on it. Hubs went this morning to test the battery. It tested between 12.2 and 12.7V. The tech said they ran a test on the battery pack and it is showing a dead short. Now they are pulling it down to open it up and will test each cell individually.
 
Brat567 said:
Thank you all for the info. Car has been at the dealer for two weeks while they periodically do process of elimination. Seems they have to talk to reps at Nissan and there are only a few there knowledgeable on the Leaf. Therefore it can sit for days before they work on it. Hubs went this morning to test the battery. It tested between 12.2 and 12.7V. The tech said they ran a test on the battery pack and it is showing a dead short. Now they are pulling it down to open it up and will test each cell individually.
It's idiotic of the "tech" to even HAVE a test that can deliver a result of "this here battery is shorted", because anything that "shorts out" an EV's battery (assuming it's got anything like a reasonable state of charge) is going to EXPLODE. According to the Smithsonian's web page, roughly one megajoule is released by exploding a stick of dynamite. Well, a LEAF battery, fully charged, stores about EIGHTY times that amount of energy. And the mid-link pack is a fuse, so a few milliseconds into any kind of shorting-it-out incident, that'll probably be what explodes (in a decently controlled/contained way) rather than whatever the externally-connected "short" is.
 
They found one battery module has a cell leaking inside of it. It is leaking fluid into the battery compartment. All of the other batteries tested ok.
 
In my case, the Leaf tech at the dealership (Nissan of Van Nuys) said that the Azuga Insight device I had plugged into the OBDII port was not compatible with the Leaf's systems, was causing it to throw upwards of 20 codes sporadically, and that they tested the 12 V battery and found that it was healthy. So they simply unplugged the Azuga Insight device and found that no more codes were being triggered. They surmised that the device was somehow causing the loss of power issues I was having, and said not to use it.

I was surprised as I had not even thought of it. I was using the Azuga Insight device as part of the California Road Charge Pilot program. It monitors number of miles driven and GPS location of the vehicle, and transmits that to Azuga so they can keep track of how much I am driving and produce a simulated "road charge fee". No money actually changes hands, this is just a pilot test to see how much people would pay if California decided to remove charge BEV drivers for road usage (since we don't pay gasoline tax and yet the roads still need fixin').

Anyway, the device had definitely had problems operating as it was supposed to (it took forever and troubleshooting sessions with Azuga to get it actually recording and transmitting), but I never considered that it might be throwing codes in the car itself, or that it could potentially lead to loss of power.

I'm skeptical that it's the real cause, but now that it's unplugged and the pilot program is over, I'll just wait and see if the problem occurs again over the next 6 months. If not, I'll conclude the tech was right.
 
Update: The Azuga device was NOT the problem after all.

After receiving the car back and not having the Azuga device plugged in, the car exhibited the same symptom: When backing out of a driveway onto a busy street, when switching from reverse to drive, the car suddenly lost power and shifted itself into Neutral. I had to get out and push the car (containing my whole family) back into the driveway. After about ten minutes of turning the car off and on, eventually it started with the green car icon again.

I took the car back into Nissan of Van Nuys, and now after a couple of days they claim they have found the problem. It is with the "ECM" (Engine Control Module, I think). They don't have the part in stock, so they have to get the part shipped in, and they tell me it will take 2-3 weeks (!). Since it is a safety issue, they can't give me the car back until they get it fixed, so they're just letting me drive a loaner car for the next couple weeks.
 
Update:
The same problem re-emerged less than a week after getting the car back last time. Took it back in and the service department has had it for over a month at this point. They got a Nissan Corporate Engineer to help troubleshoot, and were able to replicate the problem. They replaced a different component, tested, and found that replacement also did not solve the problem. They have now installed a new "harness", and say that they will complete another test to see if it fixed the problem tomorrow.

(The dealership has provided a loaner to me for over a month at no cost. As far as I can tell the dealership and Nissan are doing their best to repair, but I am not all that confident they will be able to.)

Meanwhile, I pursued lemon law action with Nissan Consumer Affairs. They have made me an offer to repurchase the vehicle. They repay to me what I already paid for the car (down payment plus monthly payments) LESS a "usage fee" (which in my case is just over $1,700 for the ~8k miles I put on the car in the 6 months preceding when I first brought it in for this problem), and LESS the gap insurance fee and theft deterrent device that the dealership forced me to have installed. I can apparently get the gap insurance fee back, as I'll just have to cancel the insurance, but it looks unlikely that the dealership is willing to refund the $1k I spent on the theft deterrent device. Also, if I sell it back to Nissan, I have to re-pay my $2,500 California State rebate back to the state.

So now I will likely be looking to take the buyback option and go find a different EV. Looking at either a new Hyundai Ioniq EV (just came out, has 17 miles more EPA range than the Leaf, at 124) or a used Toyota Rav4EV. Upside for the Used Rav4 is that it is longer range and more interior volume, likely greater utility. Downside is the uncertainty regarding getting decent service on the Rav4EV if things go wrong. Even if I get an extended warranty from Toyota, from what I hear it's hard to find dealerships with techs trained to work on the vehicle, and even if you do their time may be limited.
 
Since I have had issues with dealer-installed anti-theft equipment (or installation/removal) on two vehicles and the LEAF's computer systems are deeply integrated, I strongly suspect your problems are related to the anti-theft device or damage done to the wiring harness during installation. If you like the Leaf otherwise, take the lemon law buyout and start over with another LEAF (but choose one without dealer add on). If another EV would suit your needs better, you have a lot of choices in California. Couldn't you transfer the CA credit to another new EV (or pay back the one on the 2016 Leaf and get another on the new EV)?
 
GerryAZ said:
Since I have had issues with dealer-installed anti-theft equipment (or installation/removal) on two vehicles and the LEAF's computer systems are deeply integrated, I strongly suspect your problems are related to the anti-theft device or damage done to the wiring harness during installation. If you like the Leaf otherwise, take the lemon law buyout and start over with another LEAF (but choose one without dealer add on). If another EV would suit your needs better, you have a lot of choices in California. Couldn't you transfer the CA credit to another new EV (or pay back the one on the 2016 Leaf and get another on the new EV)?

Thanks for your response!

I did end up taking the buyback option on the 2016 Leaf and then leasing a 2017 Hyundai Ioniq Electric, which we like because it has a real 125 mile per charge range.

Interesting regarding your anti-theft equipment hypothesis. I hadn't thought of that. I suppose I'll never know if that played a role. I will say though that the Nissan engineers did replace the "harness" on the Leaf, and the problem persisted. I will also say that, since the dealership would not issue a refund for the anti-theft device, we had the third party company transfer the anti-theft device to our new car (the Hyundai). No issues with the Hyundai so far.

Also, I was able to transfer the CA rebate ($2,500) from the Leaf to the Ioniq. The rules are apparently that you have to have the vehicle for at least 2.5 years (30 months) to be free and clear with the rebate. If you re-sell the vehicle before that time, you either have to pay back a prorated portion of the rebate, or "transfer" it to another EV you purchase or lease. Since I leased another 100% BEV (the Ioniq electric), no money changed hands, the state just "applied" the rebate they had already sent me for the Leaf to the Ioniq. It was just an update of the database on their end, and saved me from having to pay them back from the rebate.
 
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