GeekEV
Well-known member
I got a call from Nissan today to see if I had any questions. I indicated I had a small laundry list (but that I also LOVED the car) and asked if there was an email address I could send my list to. They said to send it to [email protected] (yes, nissan-usa.com, despite the website being nissanusa.com). I thought I'd share that info with everyone in case you haven't seen that address before. Here's the mail I sent, if your curious what issues I've reported.
Hello Nissan,
Today I was called by one of your reps to see if I had any questions on my new LEAF. I did have one question I would really like an answer to. While she wasn't able to find the answer now, she promised to follow up on it. But I also have a small list of other questions, suggestions and issues that I wanted to send along. She gave me this email address to send them to. I do want to say that, overall, I absolutely love the LEAF - it's a great car. Kudos!
So, here's the $64,000 question that I really want solved:
- Every time I start the car, I am presented with the following legal terms related to CARWINGS and forced to press OK. I feel that since CARWINGS only works if I put in my username/pin, I've already given consent. I shouldn't have to be pestered with this every time. PLEASE let me turn it off, it's very annoying.
Your vehicle wirelessly transmits recorded vehicle data to Nissan per subscription agreement for various purposes, including CARWINGS services, product evaluation, research and development. By touching OK, you consent to the transmission and use of your vehicle data. See Owner's Manual or Nissan website for terms and details.
The following is a list of other related questions and observations you may want to consider addressing (in order of most important on top):
- The rear seat head rests are the same as the front seats. These are way too big and block a significant portion of visibility out the rear window, so I removed them (which isn't safe when I have passengers). Please offer smaller headrests for the back. Take a look at the ones the Toyota Prius uses for an excellent example of low-profile rear seat head rests.
- This may be an issue with iOS, but when using my iPhone in the LEAF, the Bluetooth audio streaming takes priority every time the Bluetooth connects. If I plug in to the USB port or AUX jack before the Bluetooth is connected, I lose my audio because the phone switched to Bluetooth out, but the radio doesn't. Additionally, if I cycle through the sources, the phone switched to Bluetooth as I pass through the Bluetooth source on the radio, but does not return when I switch to USB or AUX. I would like to either: a) have Bluetooth audio streaming take effect only when the stereo is set to Bluetooth, or b) have an option to disable Bluetooth audio streaming support for each connected device.
- When used with an iPod, the USB port locks out control of the iPod itself. This isn't bad on a classic iPod, but on an iPod touch, iPhone or iPad it means we can't use the USB port for other apps, such as Pandora, or use alternative music controls such as FlickTunes. I understand that not locking out controls may reduce functionality, so please implement an option (as some headunits do) that allows me to choose whether I want to lock out iPod controls or not.
- The main screen starts up to the audio screen by default (for me anyway), but I would like to set my own default screen such as the CARWINGS Energy Usage screen (my favorite).
- If I set my headlights to Auto, and turn on the fog lights, I get a beep and a warning to "turn off lights" when I power off the car. I'd like the fog lights to be under control of the auto settings as well, but that warning is annoying, so I've turned them off.
- This may also be an issue with iOS, but if I start playing a Genius Mix from the iPod app on my iPhone, then plug in to the USB port, only the currently playing song shows in the list of upcoming songs. I could live with that, but the currently playing track info does not update when the iPhone starts the next song.
- The car stereo seems "thin" and "weak" overall. An upgraded sound system would be much appreciated.
- I had a weird situation once where the main display said "turn on climate control for -x miles", but the climate control was already on. Turning it off changed the display to "turn off climate control for x miles". After powering off the car and turning it back on everything was fine.
I have a several observations about the iPhone app as well:
- The app should either disable background support, or detect when the session is expired and auto-log back in when resuming from the background (like it does at startup). It's very annoying when the session expires, so I've taken to force quitting the app every time I'm done with it to ensure that it logs me back in every time I use it.
- If you continue to support backgrounding, the option to "refresh at startup" should also trigger a refresh when resuming from the background.
- Logging in, issuing commands to the car and requesting updates takes a long time (the text says up to 5 minutes). It would be so much better if it were more real-time.
- When I wake up in the morning, I often update to check my charge status, it indicates the vehicle is fully charged (the charge bars are all lit, the charge indicator is off, and the battery icon is solid instead of blinking). But, sometimes, it continues to display the "estimated time to charge" as being what it was last time I checked, instead of 0hr 0min.
Thank you for your consideration of these issues!