Bought the tester Nissan Leaf 2020 from the Nissan Dealership. Has been quite a rollercoaster.

[Lori Jeung-Martinez]

Was driving back from Petaluma in Feb, which was a cold & wet rainy day. Battery started to drain. Tried to find charging stations on the way home. Couldn't get the charging station to fully charge my battery in Berkeley. Was trying to make it to San Leandro when the car turtled and we had to get off the freeway. Husband had to push the car to safety and managed to park in front of a house. But car shut down. While we were waiting for AAA towing, battery drained. When we got to the Chademo charging station at Walmart in San Leandro, we couldn't pop the hatch. Had to pay for the 2nd tow (AAA only paid for the first tow to the charging station). When we got home, we managed to pop the hood. We then jumped the 12 volt battery, so now the hatch popped open & we could charge the battery. Since car was still in turtle mode, had to have it towed to the dealer--that also incurred an extra expense since it was beyond 5 miles to the dealership in Fremont. Turns out, there was a problem with the computer since half of the car's history was missing. All this is before my 1st anniversary of owning my leaf since I bought it in August 2022. Since it was under warranty, there was no financial expense.
Next problem around November, the backup camera kept flipping and turning pink. Since it was under warranty, the dealership replaced that camera. That was one of the recalls on my Leaf.
Then my charging cable failed. Went to the dealership to charge my vehicle--they replaced my charging cable for free.
Back in June/July, car started to lose mileage on the drive back from work. My mileage would go from 110 miles (from Berkeley) to 39 miles (back in Hayward). This freaked me out. In the morning, all the alerts & warning lights on the dashboard suddenly lit. Had it towed to the dealership. They asked what was the problem, I told them that it was Christmas on my dashboard. It was my EV cell and the battery had to be replaced. They had my car for the entire month of August before the manufacturer sent a replacement. This fell under my extended warranty. No cost, but a big inconvenience.
Just recently, as I was driving home from work. The dashboard flashed. Something about reduce power. Car ended up in turtle mode. However, this time, my car could still drive at freeway speed. Turned off the radio and climate control, made it home in turtle mode. Towed it to the dealership, but the turtle indicator disappeared. Cost me $274 but the tech could not recreate what happened to my car. They did fix the HVAC (3rd recall); insulated the backup camera (so it will not jostle too much); checked my tires and rotate them (I had another appt on Mon to rotate the tires). When they gave me back my car, I was at 86 % when I got back to Hayward. I then proceeded to work at Berkeley. On the drive home, an alert popped up on the dashboard that my battery was low & I needed to charge my car now. I'm around San Leandro and I was worried that it would turtle mode me again and breakdown. I watch the indicator drop from 13 % to 3% to - - -. At that point, I turned off the climate control, unpluged my CD player. Turned off the radio. That brought my percentage back up to 13% and said I have 31 miles of power left. Made it safely home where I turned off the timer and immediately charged my vehicle. In the morning I was at 100 % but only at 130 miles (normally it should be 140-145 miles at 100 %). No further incidents happened. This morning, battery was at 100% and the mileage went up to 137 miles. So now I'm thinking this cold weather is affecting my car since the Leaf doesn't like extreme weather. So at 50 degrees at night, the car still operates fine. No incidents. The first breakdown occurred in winter, at night, in the rain, --too many gizmos drained the battery until it turtle mode itself to a complete stop. Battery completely died waiting 2 hrs for the tow truck to arrive.
When the dashboard flashed, it was raining earlier, but it was intermittent. My speed dropped from 92 to 80 mph when it said reduce power & turtled. I made it safely home, but the turtle light scared me. Right now, it's working fine. Like I said, my experience owning this vehicle for 2 yrs has been a literal rollercoaster.

 

[Jerther]

A rollercoaster indeed! I went through similar problems too in the first year of owning a 2018. Good thing we both have nice dealers

For the 12v battery drain, have a look at the owner manual if you hadn't already. There's a section about low battery state of charge and it says to turn the car off when it shuts down due to low traction battery, to prevent the 12v battery from draining completely.

I live in eastern Canada in the mountains and the leaf really does not like highway speeds on hills on -20 C days, but I'd venture to say that no EV would like that either.

I'm thinking of installing heat pads under the traction battery to avoid these limitations.

 

[Gpearce]

Use multiple RV wastewater tank heaters. Designed to stick on.

 

[BillAinCT]

This is intriguing! There are 120V 12" x 24" heaters that I think would do well for the Leaf. Though there are 12V versions I would only use this when parked and I would just tuck the cord away. We had a cold spell here and my batter was at 3 bars (below 32F) for 4 days and I used the car and needed to charge. I wished the battery had been warmer. It's the first time I've seen the climate power draw 6kW.

My question is how hard would it be to slide it under the battery shield?

 

[Gpearce]

This is intriguing! There are 120V 12" x 24" heaters that I think would do well for the Leaf. Though there are 12V versions I would only use this when parked and I would just tuck the cord away. We had a cold spell here and my batter was at 3 bars (below 32F) for 4 days and I used the car and needed to charge. I wished the battery had been warmer. It's the first time I've seen the climate power draw 6kW.

My question is how hard would it be to slide it under the battery shield?

One of my concerns was the pads being exposed to the elements but they would be behind the battery cover so yay!
I don’t own a Leaf (yet) so I can’t do this work myself. I would put the rear of the car up on blocks or stands. Drop the plastic cover so you can measure the flatish areas to figure out what size heater pads we can use. From the videos I’ve seen it looks like you need to drop the rear cover and the large cover. The front cover should not need to be removed as it’s only access to the plugs. I thought that 12 x 24 would work good but I don’t know if there’s enough space between the various brackets for them to be attached. The pads will probably contour over the forms of the metal but it won’t go over a bracket. I would guess the outer inch of the adhesive pad probably does not have any heating element in it so that possibly could be trimmed a bit. But without seeing the actual pad there is no way of no way of knowing.

The blue lines are the area it would be safe to put the pads but the red is the brackets that are in the way. There might be a bit more area farther back too. I know the pads come in multiple sizes so hopefully we can find ones that will work. Photo from a Tony Williams post.