Bad Power Distribution Module? Check In Here

[sfiorini]

Nissan 2013 SL, 2300 miles, two months into the lease.

This is my second time in a month that I take the car to the shop. First it was the gas pedal assembly which was fixed in one day. Now, the car does not charge.

I told the leaf tech that I read about problems with the PDM in the forum but he said that the 2013 PDM was redesigned and those problems were only for earlier models. I said, OK, fine, whatever.

So he checked it and said a software reprogram and some other fix would do it. NOT!! So they kept the car because it still does not charge at all, not even for a minute.

After a whole Saturday lost, they put me into a Nissan Quest Minivan and of course said I have to return it with the same gas level as I received it. Really?!. I am getting a bit frustrated. It's not about the technology. It seems that Nissan is still not organized enough for a car that it sells since 2011. I think I will open a complaint with Nissan and ask for my gas money back at least.

I will keep you posted.

 

[Jbbrown9]

Nissan 2013 SL, 2300 miles, two months into the lease.
After a whole Saturday lost, they put me into a Nissan Quest Minivan and of course said I have to return it with the same gas level as I received it. Really?!. I am getting a bit frustrated. It's not about the technology. It seems that Nissan is still not organized enough for a car that it sells since 2011. I think I will open a complaint with Nissan and ask for my gas money back at least.

Call the Nissan EV line. I called them first instead of my dealer and that guy is totally on the case. I get the sense that the EV people are a sort of 3rd party with extra expertise who are not under the ownership/control of the dealers and act more in your interest in order to make people happy with Nissan EVs. I ended up not needing a loaner, but I got the sense he would have backed me getting one for as long as I needed. You should be able to get out of paying for gas, based on what I've seen other people report.

 

[sfiorini]

Nissan 2013 SL, 2300 miles, two months into the lease.
After a whole Saturday lost, they put me into a Nissan Quest Minivan and of course said I have to return it with the same gas level as I received it. Really?!. I am getting a bit frustrated. It's not about the technology. It seems that Nissan is still not organized enough for a car that it sells since 2011. I think I will open a complaint with Nissan and ask for my gas money back at least.

Call the Nissan EV line. I called them first instead of my dealer and that guy is totally on the case. I get the sense that the EV people are a sort of 3rd party with extra expertise who are not under the ownership/control of the dealers and act more in your interest in order to make people happy with Nissan EVs. I ended up not needing a loaner, but I got the sense he would have backed me getting one for as long as I needed. You should be able to get out of paying for gas, based on what I've seen other people report.

Thanks for the suggestion. I just did. It looks like they know what they talk about at the EV line. They guy said he will jump on it right away. I will let everyone know how it goes.

 

[rolo2285]

Hello Everyone. I have joined the PDM failure club. Well my dealer calls it the Power Assembly Box but i think it's the same thing.
My SV is 2 months old with less than 4k miles. Mines would stop charging at 50%, happened 3 days in a row. I took it in on the July 19th and it's still sitting in the at the dealership. They say the part won't be coming in till mid August. A HAVE TO WAIT A FULL MONTH!! I contacted the EV line for gas compensation, they stuck me in a Rogue :evil:. I drive 100 miles a day. Not Happy at all

 

[GRA]

Has anyone been keeping a running total of all the PDM failures? This appears to be so common that it is time to contact some government agency or other, and/or lawyers. It's clearly a systemic problem.

 

[UBUYGAS]

At this point there's no reason a dealer should hold the car since July 19th!

1 Week TOPS!!!


1st Day - Do the Update, test charging, still does not work?, Order PDM.

on the 3rd Day PDM arrives from TN on Nissan Truck or FedEx.

Dealer installs new PDM, charges and Customer picks up on 5the Day!.

Come on NISSAN!!!!!!!

 

[sfiorini]

Update on my car. Looks like Nissan has contacted the dealer and is sending them the PDM directly.
PDM should be at dealer by tomorrow and car ready by end of day or next day top.

I just wonder why Nissan won't recall all Leafs and replace the PDM. It is clear that it basically affects most of them.

 

[LasPaled]

Update on my car. Looks like Nissan has contacted the dealer and is sending them the PDM directly.
PDM should be at dealer by tomorrow and car ready by end of day or next day top.

I just wonder why Nissan won't recall all Leafs and replace the PDM. It is clear that it basically affects most of them.

It's hard to tell how many are bad. Clearly there are many of us here that have had the issue and we represent a small fraction of the Nissan Leaf ownership community so I am certain many that haven't posted are also having the issue. For some the software fix did the trick. I am thinking that the software prevents the glitch from frying the PDM and requiring it to be replaced. For others they had a problem before the software fix was release (people like me) and perhaps before Nissan had their arms around the problem.

So, not sure if a recall is in order... it just sucks for those of us that had to deal with it.

 

[mkjayakumar]

Add one more to the list. A 2013 'S' (belongs to a friend of mine) that stops charging after 30 seconds. The dealer apparently installed a new software and everything is fine now. Not sure how a software update would fix a problem that came out of the blue, and I would have thought that would be a component failure..

 

[braineo]

That is what happen when Nissan did a change in their software not compatible with the J1772 standard. EVS manufacturers had to scramble to create a fix for Nissan's leaky software... it took Nissan over 5 monhts to come up with a fix (to be more exact - it probably took two months to find out there was a problem before trying to figure out what to fix).

In EV's -the software controlling the charger, the battery management system is the heart of the vehicle. Note that electric motors are over 100 years old. Managing lithium batteries charge & discharge cycle is really new technology, playing with the high amperage electronics and controlling those broncos is the new frontier.

 

[TimLee]

That is what happen when Nissan did a change in their software not compatible with the J1772 standard. EVS manufacturers had to scramble to create a fix for Nissan's leaky software... it took Nissan over 5 monhts to come up with a fix (to be more exact - it probably took two months to find out there was a problem before trying to figure out what to fix).

In EV's -the software controlling the charger, the battery management system is the heart of the vehicle. Note that electric motors are over 100 years old. Managing lithium batteries charge & discharge cycle is really new technology, playing with the high amperage electronics and controlling those broncos is the new frontier.

Source? Where did you learn this detail of it being related to a defect in compliance with J1772 standard? First I've read of that.

 

[braineo]

Elementary Mr. Watson.....

How else can you explain a software upgrade can fix all the problems - unless most of the problems were generated by changes from model year 2012 - 201 - including PDM change from 3.3 to 6.0 KW?

They had to improve the firmware of the PDM and then they probably figured out how to fix it via software. That is why people who got an exact PDM replacement had to gett them replaced again.

I also heard this:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=12346&p=284367#p284367" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[Techie0212]

My update:
Had the Nissan USA and the Honolulu dealership all in on the software update and the charging issue ... Until yesterday, was still using the 120V charger. Found out the ClipperCreek was defective and the whole CS40 was replaced. Finally got a full charge without the EVSE tripping off... My new awareness on the 2013 is that the max charge was 80 after starting charge @ 34. The 2013 are suppose to be up to 113 or something like that ... Haven't seen that yet ... Nissan USA said that the max charges is based on my style of driving ... Bogus or Fact ... what is it?

 

[planet4ever]

My new awareness on the 2013 is that the max charge was 80 after starting charge @ 34. The 2013 are suppose to be up to 113 or something like that ... Haven't seen that yet ... Nissan USA said that the max charges is based on my style of driving ... Bogus or Fact ... what is it?

It sounds like you need to get some facts straightened out. The only number like 113 is MPGe. That is nothing like how far you can drive, or what any of the gauges tell you. Saying the 2013 will go 113 MPGe is like asking if you have to put gas in a car every 25 miles because it gets only 30 MPG. It just says that electric cars use energy more efficiently than gas cars do.

As for the max charge of 80%, that is a setting you can change, and yes, that is the way the cars are shipped. It has nothing to do with how far the battery is down when you recharge it. If you need 100% charge for your daily driving, the manual tells you how to change that. Look on page CH-26 and following. Note that there is a different procedure on CH-30 for the S model, but you should ignore that since you have an SL.

Ray

 

[Bateman]

My new awareness on the 2013 is that the max charge was 80 after starting charge @ 34. The 2013 are suppose to be up to 113 or something like that ... Haven't seen that yet ... Nissan USA said that the max charges is based on my style of driving ... Bogus or Fact ... what is it?

It sounds like you need to get some facts straightened out. The only number like 113 is MPGe. That is nothing like how far you can drive, or what any of the gauges tell you. Saying the 2013 will go 113 MPGe is like asking if you have to put gas in a car every 25 miles because it gets only 30 MPG. It just says that electric cars use energy more efficiently than gas cars do.

As for the max charge of 80%, that is a setting you can change, and yes, that is the way the cars are shipped. It has nothing to do with how far the battery is down when you recharge it. If you need 100% charge for your daily driving, the manual tells you how to change that. Look on page CH-26 and following. Note that there is a different procedure on CH-30 for the S model, but you should ignore that since you have an SL.

Ray

Ray, I think Planet's statements are ambiguous and possibly leading to you explaining something other than what he is talking about. I suspect the '113' is a possible GOM mileage range. After a few days of very easy driving, we can get our GOM up to 110-115. (however, it is usually it's around 94 to 101 miles of range.) Given that he speaks of 'max charge', I suspect he is discussing range, not MPGe.

As for the 80% vs 100%, our 2013 Leaf came from the factory defaulted at 100% charge capacity. We would have to adjust the settings in the vehicle to move it down to 'long life' mode. Of course, who's to say the tech doing the PDI (pre delivery inspection) at certain dealers isn't making a change before delivery.

 

[planet4ever]

Ray, I think Planet's statements are ambiguous and possibly leading to you explaining something other than what he is talking about. I suspect the '113' is a possible GOM mileage range.

You meant to say Techie0212; I'm "Planet". My impression was that Techie0212 was conflating the MPGe that shows so prominently on the EPA window sticker with the GOM (Distance to Empty) that shows so prominently on the dash. But we should probably let him speak for himself (or herself as the case may be).

Ray

 

[Deleted member 9549]

Well I just wrote up this word doc, Hopefully it speeds things along.

Anything else you think I need to add to it?

Add me to the list. Your note is great. Had to search for it a while. It should be pinned or made sticky.

 

[Deleted member 9549]

Add me to the list. I think I posted earlier that I was NOT having problems.

But a few weeks later and having crossed 3000 miles, today, ran into the problem.

Don't know if its related, but earlier, sometimes, when the car was getting close to full, the charger fan that you can hear would start spinning up and down. That in itself might be explainable. But on the car's console where it shows charge time remaining at 6 kw, 3kw and 120v, when in this mode, the remaining time would flash between 6 and 3 kw repeatedly, looking like something was wrong and that it wasn't really charging at all.

Today, I was charging from 36% up to 80%. It was a hotter day than usual, outside temp reported by the car at 91-93. As soon as I got home I started it charging because I wanted to run another errand.
I come back out a couple of hours later and it says its still charging and its at 60%. While I'm looking at it with the car powered up (but without pressing the brake), the charger fan starts spinning up and down, the display flashes between 6 and 3 kw times. This time the warning light was lit, the car with the exclamation mark.

I then turned off the car and I heard a click, like when its starting to charge. Except this time it apparently stopped charging. I could not get it to charge again. I tried unplugging and replugging in the J1772. Nothing. I tried starting and restarting the car. Nothing. No charge lights on the top of the dash. The console display for time remaining showed as if it wasn't even plugged in, when it was.

On a whim, I opened the hood. The top of the motor, where the PDM is, has always been cool to the touch regardless of having just used the car, or charging. This time I touched it and it was very hot. Uncomfortable to the touch but not burning. I used an IR thermometer and it read ~110-120 degrees.

Its almost acting like it overheated.

I let it sit for a few minutes and tried again, this time it started charging again just fine. But a couple of minutes later it quit again. Light came on the dashboard again, the car with exclamation mark. No charging lights on top of the dashboard.

I set up a fan blowing on the motor/charger assembly. A while later I tried again and it worked fine and finished charging at 80%.

So... from this thread, it sounds like I have the PDM problem.

We're heading on vacation in our ICE and will have to deal with this when I get back. Any guess if this has damaged the PDM? Does this affect drivability at all? I don't recall anyone being stranded by this problem.

 

[sfiorini]

Update on my PDU replacement status. We are at day 10, and it was supposed to be the day I was going to have my car back. Instead the dealer informed me that the PDU they received had some water tube that was damaged and they will have to order another one.

I am of course disappointed. The Nissan EV rep (from the EV line) told me he was going to reimburse me all the gas expenses and he also gave me his fax to send all the receipts to him.

But I am still on the loaner and who knows for how much longer. I have already left a message to the EV rep again.
I have only 2300 hundred miles in the car, and in 2 months this is the second time in the shop. First time was a smaller problem, this second time not so much.

Don't you think Nissan should give us a Leaf loaner? The situation is quite senseless....

 

[Phatcat73]

I agree with you. Driving electric and going back to gas is quite a step back after owning the Leaf for a while. Nissan should follow Tesla's footsteps and offer a loaded Leaf as a loaner.