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BC3

Active member
Joined
Apr 1, 2011
Messages
30
Location
Encino, CA
Please only post here if you have a known problem with your LEAF's AC and the ability to restart (reported here http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/11/nissan-leaf-idUSL3E7FB0BC20110411. Let us know the details of your issue and how it it getting fixed.

On my commute home tonight I ran the the AC for the first time. Right after it turned on the a warning light went on the instrument panel followed by the EV Charge Fault indicator (car icon with an "!" in the middle of it). I made it home and when I tried to start it it wouldn't move out of neutral, the power steering indicator went on (no power steering), and 12v batter light went on. I called Miller Nissan and they told me to bring it in. 1 hour later it was on a flat bed going back to the dealer. I hope to find out more tomorrow.

I know there is another post with that reported this problem but it has been overrun with 59 pages of mostly off-topic posts (thanks for the pic of your 1985 cell phone). Let's keep a tab of owners who have actually experienced this problem to see how widespread it is.
 
Its a non-issue at this point. Nissan is aware of the problem and they have a solution in place. Take your car to the dealer and they will update the software in your car and you will be good to go. Every owner, next week, will get an invitation to bring their car in for this upgrade if they so choose.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3387
 
palmermd said:
Its a non-issue at this point. Nissan is aware of the problem and they have a solution in place. Take your car to the dealer and they will update the software in your car and you will be good to go. Every owner, next week, will get an invitation to bring their car in for this upgrade if they so choose.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3387

Hey palmermd - it may not be an issue for you but it is an issue for me and others that have been stranded by the failure. I would like to chronicle the "non-issue" to see how many cars were effected. Aren't you curious to see how Nissan and the dealerships handle the issue? I'm working with Miller to resolve the "non-issue" and will report back as to how long it takes and any other impressions on how they handle it.

Please debate the seriousness of the issue on another post and reserve comments here for those that are dealing with it.
 
BC3 said:
palmermd said:
Its a non-issue at this point. Nissan is aware of the problem and they have a solution in place. Take your car to the dealer and they will update the software in your car and you will be good to go. Every owner, next week, will get an invitation to bring their car in for this upgrade if they so choose.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3387

Hey palmermd - it may not be an issue for you but it is an issue for me and others that have been stranded by the failure. I would like to chronicle the "non-issue" to see how many cars were effected. Aren't you curious to see how Nissan and the dealerships handle the issue? I'm working with Miller to resolve the "non-issue" and will report back as to how long it takes and any other impressions on how they handle it.

Please debate the seriousness of the issue on another post and reserve comments here for those that are dealing with it.

I had it 2X but I'm not getting it fixed for a while as I'm tired of taking my car in for repairs, I'll wait for a few more issues and they go in when it's convenient. A far as tracking the issue you will find this to end up as another thread about the issue.
 
BC3 said:
Please debate the seriousness of the issue on another post and reserve comments here for those that are dealing with it.

I'm one of the first ones to have it happen to me, so I earned the right to post on this thread. It's not a big deal now that Nissan has a solution in place. Take your car to the dealership and have them upgrade your software and everything will be fine. We are long past the point of worry on this issue. If it happens to you again before you get it in to the dealership, disconnect the 12v battery and wait for a few minutes and then reconnect and that should get you going again until you can get it to the dealership for repairs. It sounds like you've already had it in for the upgrade, so you're well on you way to being worry free.
 
Issue - non-issue that is the question. Well I was stranded yesterday for 5 hours because of this problem. The first time I use the A/C for more than 1 minute the car fails just like what's being reported. The Leaf would not shift into D or R and had lots of warning lights on as previously mention in other Blogs.

Friday's are my worst days for this to happen. I depended on the Leaf to get me around and so do my 10 employees, because yesterday was to be there payday. But, guess who didn't get paid, because someone was; waiting for a tow truck, riding to the dealer, waiting for a service adviser, waiting for a rental car pick-up, waiting to prepare the rental car or driving back to the office.
 
As I stated I'm not interested in debating issue vs non-issue. Only to document how many are effected and how you are dealing with it.

It happened to me on my way home Friday. I had my LEAF towed to Miller Nissan Van Nuys at 6pm. On Saturday morning I talked to the LEAF technician and he told me what his understanding of the issue. Please don't flame me as I am paraphrasing his paraphrasing of a Nissan technician. Appearantly anything on the LEAF that draws power has a sensor on it to ensure that a particular system doesn't malfunction and drain all the power from the car. The A/C unit works fine but when it is hot out there is less resistance in the circuit so turning it on in hot weather has the appearance of an energy leak and the sensor is tripped. A software update essentially increases the level that trips the sensor to a more reasonable hot weather A/C running environment.

Now back to my situation. I talked to the LEAF mechanic at Miller and he told me that as long as I don't run the A/C, no problem. Nissan has the software update but it hasn't been sent to the dealerships. They tried to send it to Miller via an internet connection but couldn't get it to work. The update is supposed to be distributed to the dealerships today. I went in and picked up my LEAF as I needed my car this weekend and I'm planning to return it tonight after work. I received a frantic call from the service area this morning telling me that the technicians from Nissan were on their way to the dealership this morning to personally oversee the install. I guess I missed that one.

As far as # of LEAFs effected. At a certain point any LEAF getting delivered has the update installed at the port so it should be a rather small population. I should have one of the first updates and will report back with the results.

What does tick me off is that the Miller service tech told me they have known about the issue and, "we knew we'd be seeing you back in here." Then I get a follow up call from my sales guy to ask me how I like the LEAF. When I asked him about the A/C issue he told me he "just found out about it earlier this week." I found it very irresponsible for Miller to know about the issue and not alert owners that there might be a chance this might happen. Had I known, I never would have run the A/C on the way home on Friday. Had it not been for mynissanleaf and the info on this board, I would have been much more worried. That's why I was so frustrated with th 56-page issue vs. non-issue debate with pictures of a 1985 cell phone.
 
The issue has been around much longer than has been posted here and it has been repaired on cars a long time back, it's just not posted here. The reason your dealer may not have let you know is that Nissan was only paying the dealers for the repair if the car had actually failed, not proactively as every paranoid person would be taking their cars in demanding service. I don't see any point in tracking this issue but the way it was described by the tech seems very accurate. There is someone on the forum that figured it out exactly before the dealers were able to. I'm waiting to bring my car in one I know the dealer has the fix in hand so I don't waste time.
 
storeman86 said:
Issue - non-issue that is the question. Well I was stranded yesterday for 5 hours because of this problem. The first time I use the A/C for more than 1 minute the car fails just like what's being reported. The Leaf would not shift into D or R and had lots of warning lights on as previously mention in other Blogs.

Friday's are my worst days for this to happen. I depended on the Leaf to get me around and so do my 10 employees, because yesterday was to be there payday. But, guess who didn't get paid, because someone was; waiting for a tow truck, riding to the dealer, waiting for a service adviser, waiting for a rental car pick-up, waiting to prepare the rental car or driving back to the office.


I'm assuming you had no knowledge of the issue before being stranded as you would have known how to avoid the issue and /or fix it so you could drive, correct?
 
Glad to hear you got your car back up and running. Sorry to hear that you did not read through the thread long enough to get past the old cell phone pictures and into the meaningful discussion about the issue to know that the 12v battery disconnect would have got you going again without the tow. I'm also sorry to hear you were not able to get your dealer to get an early copy of the software update and you'll have to return later this week. I was supposed to have my car in today for the upgrade and it has now been postponed until Friday. I just use A/C with caution, and I'm aware that if the warning shows up on the dash to not turn off the car until I'm in a location where I can take the time to disconnect the 12v battery to reset the condition.

I agree that dealers should have been warning customers about the potential for this issue since it has been known since the last week of March. I told my sales rep who is the only one doing Leaf's that he should warn customers about this when it happened to mine, but I'm not sure if anything has been done in that regard. I would not be surprised to hear it is not being done at the request of Nissan. Now that they have a solution in place they are willing to acknowledge that the issue existed.
 
EVDRIVER said:
I'm assuming you had no knowledge of the issue before being stranded as you would have known how to avoid the issue and /or fix it so you could drive, correct?

Correct. The car has been working like a dream. I love it.

That's what ticked me off. Nissan knew about the issue and Miller knew about the issue but no one bothered to tell me about it. I understand this is new tech, early adopter, non-isssue, easy fix etc.. etc... That's fine. I have no problem driving with no A/C (although the Valley was toasty) and waiting for them to install the update. I just don't think the burden should be on me to go on the internet to find out what went wrong after the fact. Why leave owners in the dark and force them to tow their cars when the issue is so easy to avoid and resolve?

I think Nissan is afraid of the bad PR and was hoping to quietly address the software update.
 
One more thing. When I picked up my LEAF on Saturday I toungue-in-cheek asked the LEAF tech if there is "anything else I should know." He said just don't turn on the A/C and I'll be fine until I get the update.
 
Just to keep everything in perspective, the "update" currently being rolled out is actually, technically, a downgrade for most of the affected cars. They are installing version B of the firmware. Version C is the version that appears to have had the vast majority of the problems. It may be that they have a D version sometime in the future but that is pure conjecture at this point...
 
mogur said:
Just to keep everything in perspective, the "update" currently being rolled out is actually, technically, a downgrade for most of the affected cars. They are installing version B of the firmware. Version C is the version that appears to have had the vast majority of the problems. It may be that they have a D version sometime in the future but that is pure conjecture at this point...

Do you have a reference for this information? Every single person who reported problems in the thread where we report version number has reported version b as the version in the car when it had problems. I've not seen one reported problem from c or a. I could easily have missed it and I hope you can point one out.
 
palmermd said:
Do you have a reference for this information? Every single person who reported problems in the thread where we report version number has reported version b as the version in the car when it had problems. I've not seen one reported problem from c or a. I could easily have missed it and I hope you can point one out.
Incorrect. 5 of 6 reported version ?, now running version B. If that was after the fix, they all got downgraded to B. See:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=3300&start=50&view=viewpoll
 
Stoaty said:
palmermd said:
Do you have a reference for this information? Every single person who reported problems in the thread where we report version number has reported version b as the version in the car when it had problems. I've not seen one reported problem from c or a. I could easily have missed it and I hope you can point one out.
Incorrect. 5 of 6 reported version ?, now running version B. If that was after the fix, they all got downgraded to B. See:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=3300&start=50&view=viewpoll

I've read through all the posts. Nobody reports getting downgraded. The software has only been available as of today. I believe they chose that because like me they were on b and are still on b but there is no choice for that. Can anyone point to a specific case where somebody had a problem with a version other than b? I don't know how this rumor about c to b became so widespread without any evidence.
 
palmermd said:
I've read through all the posts. Nobody reports getting downgraded. The software has only been available as of today.
As I recall, changes to software were made for a number of people, even though the "official" service software is only now available. I don't have time or energy to go through all the posts, but I do recall specifically one person that said they went from C to B. At any rate, if the change works that is all I care about :p
 
Stoaty said:
As I recall, changes to software were made for a number of people, even though the "official" service software is only now available. I don't have time or energy to go through all the posts, but I do recall specifically one person that said they went from C to B. At any rate, if the change works that is all I care about :p

I think this post is causing the confustion. This person had a piece of hardware replaced in his car and it was changed from B to C and it was put into the thread where people were discussing software updates.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=77188#p77188

randy said:
From my service ticket:

Perform EV/HEV C/U reprogram as per Nissan techline

old p/n: 237D0-6NA0B
new p/n: 237D0-6NA0C

Which led to this...http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=3139&start=490

Amarilloleaf said:
I just picked up my Leaf after reprogramming, and my 'Programming, Configuration' reports shows

Part Number before Reprog/programming 237D0-3NA0C

Part Number after Reprog/programming 237D0-3NA0B

That suggested to me that they were rolling the software BACK to an earlier version.

This is the one documented case I've found of somebody getting a software upgrade that was a downgrade. Everyone elss reported version B on the dash display. I'm not even sure that the version displayed on the dash is what is being updated by Nissan. The numbers reported by AmarilloLeaf have a prefix ahead of the numbers that match what is on our dash, but is it the same? Like you I'm glad that Nissan has a solution and that we are going to be able to move beyond this issue. I was hoping to have mine updated today and I'd be able to speak about this upgrade in a more informed manner, but I've been rerscheduled until Friday. I'm sure that somebody else will have the same information earlier at this point. Anyway the whole poll thread was bad and it confused more readers than providing any usefull information. If it were not for that one post, I'm not sure that revison C even existed. That is the only post where somebody mentions having rev C in their car.

Lots of data on the subject.
http://nissanleafwiki.com/index.php?title=Warning_lights_leading_to_LEAF_that_won%27t_run

Here is my real concern:Nissan says, and independant analysys confirms, that the problem is a software setting on the voltage leak detection system that was set too agressive. They are now setting the threshold higher so that we get rid of the false alarms. The problem is that this alarm setpoint has been the same for all cars built to date. Why does the problem only exhibit in the cars delivered in March? What else do these cars have, that when combined with the agressive setting, causes the false alarms? If the software change works, then I'm fine with that, but I'd really like to know a bit more about the root cause.
 
Palmermd said, in part:

Here is my real concern:Nissan says, and independant analysys confirms, that the problem is a software setting on the voltage leak detection system that was set too agressive. They are now setting the threshold higher so that we get rid of the false alarms. The problem is that this alarm setpoint has been the same for all cars built to date. Why does the problem only exhibit in the cars delivered in March? What else do these cars have, that when combined with the agressive setting, causes the false alarms? If the software change works, then I'm fine with that, but I'd really like to know a bit more about the root cause.


An excellent question, that only Nissan can answer, I suppose. That means we will probably never know. :(
 
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