2013 Leaf - Dead 12-Volt Battery every 2 Weeks

[dudleypippin]

I, too, appear to be affected by this. Late 2013 Leaf, purchased this winter with telematics updated shortly after purchase. Swapped out the 12v battery to no avail. I've had it into the dealership twice but no help there. "It might be your charger". Turning off the data transfer doesn't appear to help. Will try and leave the fuse out to see if that helps.

[Stanton]

Looks like we can at least put the cause of the issue to rest. As Occam would suggest - in my case at least (2013 car getting the 2G --> 3G telematics upgrade) was the cause of the problem.

So how do we explain all of the other upgrades (like mine) that seem to work (at least most of the time)?
Or is this something specific to the 2013 MY?

[JRoque]

Hello dudleypippin, try this: take the 12V battery out of your car and charge it with a LA battery charger for at least 12 hours. If you can give it a full 24hr charge, even better. If you can run the charging cycle twice over those 24 hours, that would be best. The point is to fully charge and condition your battery before you return it to your car.

If you still have your old battery, charge it outside of the car as well and see if it doesn't hold ~12.5V at rest, I bet it does.

Regards,
JR

[Snlj]

I just wanted to offer a quick update on the battery drain issue I was experiencing.

After getting the car back from the dealership, my wife and I changed our driving routine to ensure that we never drove the car on those 5-minute, 2-3 mile trips more than six times in a row. Since making this change, we have not experienced a dead 12V battery once!

Based on this and the gradual voltage loss over time I observed with LeafSpy, I'm comfortable saying that the dealer's suspicion (and that of some here on the forum) that the car wasn't able to keep up with the accessory drain over those short trips was correct.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone down the line

[cliff]

This seems odd to me. If the battery has no drain at start up(unlike ice car),
and charge voltage goes to a high level at start up, and does not lower until
some time after driving the car, then the short trips should be the best for
charging the 12 volt battery. I now drive in the winter only 6 miles per day
on an over 5 year old 12 volt battery, and see no problems.

[LeftieBiker]

There is a brief drain approaching 10 amps at startup, and the 12 volt amperage while charging is low. When the car is being driven the converter handles all loads, but doesn't quickly recharge the accessory battery like an alternator/regulator would do. So you need longer trips to charge the 12 volt battery back up.

[cynicl12000]

For what it's worth, I did my TCU upgrade in January, pretty much as soon as my dealer had it available. I've had to occasionally pull the fuse when it decides it doesn't want to work, but other than that, it was fine until yesterday.

Went to go run some errands and the battery was dead. Jump started it, drove around for about 30 mins and swung by an AutoZone to test the battery health - they said it was fine, but this morning, the battery was dead again (volt meter yesterday and today in the dead state read 5 volts).

Mine is a MY 2013 SV

*********** UPDATE *************
Turns out, my issue probably really was a dead 12v - took it back to AutoZone in its low state and it reported back as having a dead cell. I've replaced the battery (and bought a jump starter), and - fingers crossed - all appears to be working fine again.

[taloyd]

Ummm... I really, really doubt it's a dead battery. My battery was 3 years old when I had the TCU updated - and died THE NEXT DAY. Occam's Razor suggests it was the TCU - which turns out later it was.

I'd make an appointment at your Nissan dealer sooner rather than later and put your foot down about them testing it well and looking into it. After all is said and done I was out of a car for about 6 weeks spread over 5 visits due to this.

Just my $0.02, but based on firsthand experience.

Best of luck,
Tal

*********** UPDATE *************
Turns out, my issue probably really was a dead 12v - took it back to AutoZone in its low state and it reported back as having a dead cell. I've replaced the battery (and bought a jump starter), and - fingers crossed - all appears to be working fine again.

[DaveEV]

There is a brief drain approaching 10 amps at startup, and the 12 volt amperage while charging is low.

Yeah, primarily because the DC-DC only floats the battery at 13.0V once it determines that the 12V has had enough juice at 14.4V for a brief time after powering on.

I wonder if hitting the wipers (which gets you a bit more time at 14.4V) would be enough to handle the short-trip once-a-week charge issues. It's pretty ridiculous that these kinds of workarounds are necessary. There must be some sort of workaround for this or another way to trick the car to keep the DC-DC running at 14.4V longer.

(This ignores the total lack of QA which is causing the 3G telematics battery-drain issue which is separate!)

[LeftieBiker]

Yeah, primarily because the DC-DC only floats the battery at 13.0V once it determines that the 12V has had enough juice at 14.4V for a brief time after powering on.

That determination is the basis for the problem, I think. It's almost as if it thinks it's connected to a fast-charging lithium battery instead of lead-acid.