Is Nissan Connect (Carwings) worth it?

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Silverfish

Active member
Joined
Jun 21, 2018
Messages
29
I've had my 2013 Leaf SV for about 2 months now. When I got the chance, I stopped sending data to Nissan. I still get the nag screen.

Is Nissan Connect worth it? It seems weird to me to pay money to Nissan just to send them data that benefits them more than me. I don't need to start the heater or AC before I get in the car.

So what do people like about Nissan Connect?
 
I did not even know it existed when purchased my Leaf. I was lucky the upgrade was free for 2015 owners. BTW, you do not pay for the service, Nissan does and it is free for now and looks like for Leaf owners going forward. The $199 is for upgrading older 2G unit to 3G. There is some value collected by Nissan for us consumer as we can look into historical efficiency data. It is more useful on latest Leafs where end user functionality was dramatically expanded by 10 times at least. I think Leaf 2018+ offers more features than Tesla app. Older models are not a lot of features, may be charging station updates and traffic info, ability to plan route and upload it to the car Nav, but I think it is not practical as the car range is small for long trips to benefit from planning ahead.
 
To me, CarWings/NissanConnect is definitely worth it.
As mentioned above, it is important to realize the $199 is for upgrading the TCU modem from 2G to 3G.
Nissan will (apparently) continue to offer the service at no cost indefinitely...which was something we never dreamed of 7 years ago.
 
Depends on your situation. When public charging it's very helpful to know when charge is complete and/or keep track of charge level so you don't end up hogging a spot. That was important to me when I'd charge at work. Being able to remotely activate the AC can be wonderful especially if you're outdoors in oppressive heat.
 
Interesting. I didn't realize the service was free ongoing. Since I bought the car a couple of months ago, should I update Nissan that I'm the new owner? Or is that information irrelevant because they just focus on the car's metrics?

Thanks, all.
 
Silverfish said:
Interesting. I didn't realize the service was free ongoing. Since I bought the car a couple of months ago, should I update Nissan that I'm the new owner? Or is that information irrelevant because they just focus on the car's metrics?

You should always maintain accurate ownership information with any service tied to your vehicle...and telematics devices are no different.
 
Any service that only works half the time isn't useful, IMHO. I gave up on Nissan Connect, after contemplating a TCU upgrade, because it caused me more frustration when it wasn't working than satisfaction when it was.

I know some people have had better experiences with it, but for many people who paid to have their TCU upgraded it's been a huge PITA.
 
alozzy said:
Any service that only works half the time isn't useful, IMHO. I gave up on Nissan Connect, after contemplating a TCU upgrade, because it caused me more frustration when it wasn't working than satisfaction when it was.

I know some people have had better experiences with it, but for many people who paid to have their TCU upgraded it's been a huge PITA.

How can I tell if my car's TCU has been upgraded? I've only had it for a couple of months. I do believe it's still sending info to Nissan, from the nag screen that appears when I turn the car on.
 
Silverfish said:
alozzy said:
Any service that only works half the time isn't useful, IMHO. I gave up on Nissan Connect, after contemplating a TCU upgrade, because it caused me more frustration when it wasn't working than satisfaction when it was.

I know some people have had better experiences with it, but for many people who paid to have their TCU upgraded it's been a huge PITA.

How can I tell if my car's TCU has been upgraded? I've only had it for a couple of months. I do believe it's still sending info to Nissan, from the nag screen that appears when I turn the car on.

You can try updating charging stations in the Navigation/CarWings system. Touch the blue (Zero Emission) button to open the energy menu and the touch the Update Stations icon. The telematics unit is working if it updates stations.
 
Silverfish said:
the nag screen that appears when I turn the car on.

Nag screen appears even when you don't have the upgrade. The car might be trying to send data to Nissan over the old phone network that no longer exists, and wants to you approve that... :roll: :lol:
 
How can I tell if my car's TCU has been upgraded? I've only had it for a couple of months. I do believe it's still sending info to Nissan, from the nag screen that appears when I turn the car on.
Visit https://owners.nissanusa.com/nowners/ and try to setup your car and try to enable Carwings /NissanConnect EV - it will tell you if you need your car unit upgraded.
 
Leaf15 said:
How can I tell if my car's TCU has been upgraded? I've only had it for a couple of months. I do believe it's still sending info to Nissan, from the nag screen that appears when I turn the car on.
Visit https://owners.nissanusa.com/nowners/ and try to setup your car and try to enable Carwings /NissanConnect EV - it will tell you if you need your car unit upgraded.

Thanks, I'll try that.
 
Silverfish said:
Is Nissan Connect worth it? It seems weird to me to pay money to Nissan just to send them data that benefits them more than me. I don't need to start the heater or AC before I get in the car.

So what do people like about Nissan Connect?
What do I like:

Remote status: Where I work we have dozens of shared EVSEs. When I park in the morning half the time I don't get to plug in immediately, because the car next to me is already charging. With the app I can query the car around lunch to see if it's already been plugged in; otherwise I need to go out and plug it in (everyone who goes out to the garage swaps any plugs to cars waiting to charge, so often someone has already plugged me in).

Remote HVAC: Some days in the summer (this week when it's been >90°F every day) I want to turn on the A/C before I head out to the car to cool it off (even though it's in a garage and generally not too hot already).


What do I dislike:

It's slow. Really slow. Starting the Android app can take 10-20s, and querying status can take 1-2 minutes.

It's unreliable. Sometimes I turn on the A/C while in the office and when I reach the car 5 minutes later it is still not on. Or it just doesn't respond at all. Or Nissan has an outage that lasts days to weeks.

The upgraded 3G modem has a serious bug that causes it to lock-up and continually consume power, eventually causing the 12V battery to die. (lots of threads on this). Although I haven't had to do a fuse pull to reset the TCU in 3 months or so.


Talking to other EV owners (we have many at work), it seems almost every remote access system suffers from slow and unreliable access, except Tesla.
 
Question regarding registration on Nissan Connect: I bought my Leaf second hand a couple weeks ago and after registering on Nissan Owners website, I am having trouble adding the Leaf's VIN number. After I enter the VIN number and press Submit, nothing happens. The VIN number is correct:(
I wonder if my previous owner previous registration could have something to do with it? How does Nissan get informed of new ownershiP
 
Zleaf said:
Question regarding registration on Nissan Connect: I bought my Leaf second hand a couple weeks ago and after registering on Nissan Owners website, I am having trouble adding the Leaf's VIN number. After I enter the VIN number and press Submit, nothing happens. The VIN number is correct:(
I wonder if my previous owner previous registration could have something to do with it? How does Nissan get informed of new ownershiP

You need to call the EV Help Line 877-NOGASEV and get the car put in your name. I had to send in a copy of the purchase contract when I bought mine.
 
Silverfish said:
Interesting. I didn't realize the service was free ongoing.

When I was "Leaf-shopping," I just assumed that if the car had a cell phone service, then I would need to pay something monthly for that (like OnStar). It seems strange to me that EV makers are internalizing that cost: I'd think it would add $1k per car, over the life of a car (last I looked, IoT LTE access cost about $7/month). The only way it wouldn't add to the car's cost is if the car maker sells data about your driving/location/etc.
 
For OP, is it worth getting? It's free, so sure, it's worth that.

Next question, is it worth USING? Well, that depends. For me it takes a very loooong time to connect, and it fails to do so at all in most cases with my iPhone6 and my wife's iPhoneSE, ditto my and her iPads. When I first got my 2012 SL new, I used the app several times a day both to learn and see the new ways I can capture my driving experience, and it was something I'd never had for a vehicle before delivering stuff beyond what OnStar and its other automotive companions delivered. Over time, I've cared less and less about the details provided and have found LEAFSpyPro far more useful to me for those bits of data. Still need the Nissan app to control the pre-heat/-cool though and that's my only use for the app today. And it's a crapshoot if it's going to work even for that limited feature.

Earlier on, Nissan had made noise about beginning to charge for the app and/or the CARWINGS service. Many, many posters in this forum said that if that actually happened, they'd just discontinue using the service, given its flakiness. I felt the same. At any rate, Nissan hasn't begun to charge and likely will not, at least not until it becomes far more reliable and useful and there appears to be little appetite at Nissan to make that happen. That's only my opinion of course, worth everything you paid for it.
 
So glad I didn't do the TCU upgrade, as so many owners have had nothing but problems. Absolutely stupid design in the first place. The TCU should have a SIM card slot and built in WiFi, leaving it up to the owner to choose the connectivity.
 
alozzy said:
The TCU should have a SIM card slot and built in WiFi, leaving it up to the owner to choose the connectivity.

Owner supplied SIM and network would cost you about US$1000 more, over the life of car. Retail vs wholesale. Might be a lot nicer, is true. Network connection rather than SMS would be much faster.

WIFI that connects to home network? Or hotspot in car?
 
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