Is Carwings glitchy for you?

[walterbays]

Is there somewhere we should call to make them aware?

They seem to pay more attention to Facebook than to this forum, or to customer service phones, or to the Leaf Advisory Group. http://www.facebook.com/nissanleaf

The main impact for me is that I no longer get email that my charge is complete, which always used to reassure me that my unreliable Blink EVSE was working. Well, my Blink has been very reliable for months and - irony - it never fails to send me email notifications. Secondary impact is loss of ability to remotely start the heater.

 

[mkjayakumar]

the problem is, walking down to the car to turn on heating is different from turning it on from the app, mainly because doing it manually in the car requires you to turn the car on, and keep it 'running' which is additional drain on the battery..

 

[SalisburySam]

And the saga continues. It took me 3m25s just now to update my LEAF status using the Nissan LEAF app on my iPhone5 at home on Wi-Fi. Then I opened LEAF Link to do the same and it took less than 10s. I'm guessing this means the slow part of the process is from CARWINGS to and from the LEAF itself; I'm in a strong AT&T LTE area.

I called Nissan Customer Service (877-664-2738) and the rep who answered said they are working on "server difficulties" and have for about a week. He did not have an estimate of time-to-repair, but offered to create a case and call me back when the problem(s) is(are) resolved. I accepted, and have an active case number on this. I'll post whatever further I learn.

By the way, here are the Customer Service line options:

phone options:

1- options in English
2- options in Spanish

then:

1- roadside assistance
2- if you know 6-digit specialist extension
3- purchase more than 1 LEAF
4- purchase LEAF for individual use
5- questions/concerns after purchasing LEAF
6- CARWINGS, telematics questions/concerns
9- repeat this menu

 

[DanBaldwin]

I have been able to get updates, at least sometimes, but for the last couple of days CarWings thinks that my climate control is already running, so it won't let me start it. Anyone else have that problem?

 

[zowland]

Climate control timer failed to turn the heat on again this AM. Darn, it's supposed to snow tomorrow, so the windshield will probably be a sheet of ice tomorrow morning.

I called the above customer service number, but the rep seemed a little behind the 8-ball, wanting to know what phone I was using and what was the phone #. (I use the PC and the Apple App on the iPad; never use the phone.) Kept repeating that most of the time I can't even connect to their server via the Nissanusa.com/owners Web portal.

She said she would reset devices in my car over the airways. Can't wait to see if I will be able to get the car started after work...

I don't think they have a clue at this point. Oh well, similar problems with a new software roll out over at Tesla.....Guess I'll have to go back to driving the ICE-mobile again until the programmers can get their code to work....

 

[mwalsh]

I seem to be doing OK this morning. The iPhone app thought my cc was still on from yesterday, so I had to send a cc off request first, before I could even try a cc on request. Both went through fairly quickly, and without incident.

 

[Nubo]

Still hit-or-miss for me this morning. One update failed, one CC request failed and when I retried it about 15 minutes later took about 3 minutes but finally worked.

edit: Per a chat session, they acknowledge a known issue with Carwings. I gave them some specifics and they promised an email when they have identified a resolution.

 

[mwalsh]

Still hit-or-miss for me this morning. One update failed, one CC request failed and when I retried it about 15 minutes later took about 3 minutes but finally worked.

Yeah, my cc off request failed as I was leaving for the office.

 

[lc96]

I called and she said she'd had a couple of people call. She is going to look into it and call/email me back.

 

[FalconFour]

I also just called and went through a 30-minute phone call/diagnostic process with a very cool support rep who knew what CyanogenMod was. :lol:

He also confirmed that the car update request on his end was taking far longer than it should, and it probably failed on his end too. I mentioned it appeared to be a system-wide problem as evidenced by the posts in this thread, and he said they have been getting a number of calls about it (so keep it up! ).

 

[ksnogas2112]

FYI, the problems don't seem to be app-related.
The failure to communicate is the same either with the Owner's portal web site, or the Android app.

Yup and it's still FUBAR (at least this a.m.)

<<edit>> And the Nissan web just timed out too trying to get a response.

"Vehicle Status: Request failed
Your request to update vehicle status failed. blah blah blah..."

 

[FalconFour]

Updated the original post...

-- UPDATE and THREAD SUMMARY - 12/18/12 --
This is definitely a system-wide issue, confirmed to be "still spotty" by a Nissan social rep, but as of this time, still not resolved.

Summary of past 7 pages of replies: "Yep, it's messed up for me too." :lol:

It's:

• not related to geography
• not resolved by resetting the car's TCU (telemetrics communications(?) unit)
• not a problem with the app, phone, or the browser
• kind of a huge pain in the rear

Please continue to post your findings as Nissan is said to be monitoring this thread for information on the problem. Personally, I think it's a server-on-fire problem: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=10936&start=10#p250535" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

---

Also, forgot to reply to this!

Are you asking about my poor editing skills after 4am, or the Avcon adapter + dryer plug + SPX charging station ? Those do take a lot of space.

LOL. Not your editing, I didn't even see that. I'm wondering about that "Avcon adapter + dryer plug + SPX charging station" thing... what's that do? Is it, like, a faster charger that's used with the CHAdeMO port or something? Making me wish I had money to spend on these cool geeky "life as an EV pioneer" adaptations to the LEAF...

 

[ChrisBriley]

I have the same problem. I'm a new Leaf owner (only had it a couple of weeks!) I'm thrilled with it except that carwings usually times out 9 times out of 10. I had assumed that it was poor cell coverage at my house, but I have the same problem at the office, or anywhere I've tried. It doesn't feel good to see that this is has been an open issue for almost a year.

Chris

 

[RegGuheert]

I have the same problem. I'm a new Leaf owner (only had it a couple of weeks!).

Welcome!

It doesn't feel good to see that this is has been an open issue for almost a year.

This thread and this issue are only a few days old. Carwings has never been rock solid, but it has been particularly bad recently. Hopefully you will get to enjoy its benefits soon!

 

[TomT]

It's dead again for me as of this morning... No CC control...

 

[penorman]

I'm having the same problems. Can't turn on climate control with Android app or from Nissan site. Status update requests usually don't go through, but sometimes do. This has been happening for 5 days or so. Carwings does show up-to-date info.

 

[WetEV]

I only had to try three times to start a charge remotely today. I feel ... lucky ....
And later attempts to start climate control failed twice, and I finally just went to the car.

 

[ChrisBriley]

oops. Sorry Reg. I don't know what date i was looking at when i wrote that last post. I hope you are right and that carwings boosts its signal (or whatever).

C

 

[FalconFour]

oops. Sorry Reg. I don't know what date i was looking at when i wrote that last post. I hope you are right and that carwings boosts its signal (or whatever).

C

It's a problem with the infrastructure on Nissan's side - the servers crunching the data are (I'm about 95% certain) mis-configured and overloading themselves, dropping requests. It's a self-compounding problem - when requests come in too quick, it starts dropping them, and when requests get dropped, they usually get repeated until it works. So it's already swamped and overloaded, but everything is getting done twice (or thrice, or more) when it fails... overloading the servers even more. Hence, what we in the IT world call, "servers on fire". Not literally, but close enough

I'm just concerned that Nissan might be outsourcing their datacenter operations, meaning THEY might not even have control to check on the actual servers themselves. It could be this exact problem and people within Nissan would have no idea how to check it. Only if they get in touch with an IT guy that actually manages those systems can they know if that's the root cause (and I'm still betting it is). Streamline the runtime loading process for the request-handling, reduce the execution time of each request, and for every 1-second you shave off the processing time, you save 60 seconds of processing time over 60 requests, and everything moves quicker - problem(s) solved, past and present. And I'm totally available as a consultant FWIW

Hope it gets fixed soon as with everyone else. It's kind of an awesome ability to pre-heat the car, and I was looking forward to it once the nice weather ended...

 

[mig]

As much as I like the idea of sending a command from my house
to the car in the driveway via internet to servers in Japan then back
to the car over some ad hoc cellular service, I sometimes wish there
was just a button on the keyfob... These were my thoughts this morning
after loading kids into icy car and waiting 15 minutes for heater to warm
up enough to defog/defrost the window.

I think I'll just be walking out to the car and turning CC on from now on.
I have to go out there and check anytime after trying to use carwings anyway...