Loss of acceleration

[rogersleaf]

An incident happened today where my leaf would barely accelerate. I had stopped at a traffic light, when the light changed attempted to accelerate away. The car would hardly accelerate and would not go faster than 8 mph. Was able to limp it into a parking lot where I pumped the accelerator several time and it began to run normally. Afterwards, the car was driven over 50 miles without any further problems.

There were no warning lights or alarms during the incident. The traction battery was @ 90%, was sunny & dry, air temp was 25F. The only thing out of normal was the car had been parked for the past 4 days (on 65% battery, unplugged from the EVSE in an unheated garage ~45F). The car had worked flawlessly for over 12,000 miles.

Has anyone seen this type of problem, or know a source or fix?

[cwerdna]

Never experienced this. Any ice on the road or slick roads? I could envision traction control kicking in which should coincide w/a flashing skid light in the dash.

[DNAinaGoodWay]

Nothing was impeding the pedal?

It's drive by wire, so maybe whatever the switch or sending unit is can be tested?

[JeremyW]

The pedal sender itself is comprised of a dual potentiometer and a failure of it has never been seen before on this forum. That said, there may be diagnostic codes stored, and it might warrant a check at the dealer.

[GerryAZ]

The pedal sender itself is comprised of a dual potentiometer and a failure of it has never been seen before on this forum. That said, there may be diagnostic codes stored, and it might warrant a check at the dealer.

Pedal sender is redundant, but the computers may error on the side of caution and take the reading which results in the lowest power request if the readings do not match. Your recommendation to have dealer check is appropriate unless traction control was the cause (should have been flashing amber light on dash if traction control was limiting power).

Gerry

[JeremyW]

If you did have the traction control light flashing (and a wheel was not slipping) you could have a wheel sensor (probably a front one) going bad (or have a bad connection). Again, you should see some diagnostic code set for something like that.

[rogersleaf]

Thanks for the replies. To answer the questions...ground was dry, no ice or anything on the surface that would trip the traction control. The pedal was not obstructed, first though was the floor mat but it was fine. The car just simply went lame, and cleared up as fast as it failed. It was more of a WTH moment, then was OK.

2nd thought was a 12v battery problem or voltage drop effecting the computer. A Multi-tester across the terminals is showing 14.5v with the car turned off and 14.6v with the car running and lights & fans on high, so doubt the 12v system has a bad cell or can't handle the power draw.

Think talking to the leaf guy at the dealer is the next step. I ordered an ELM327 connector, maybe can see some codes. The car is pushing 13K miles so likely time to run leafspy on the traction battery anyways.

[DNAinaGoodWay]

Could it be a loose wiring connection?

[Bob]

Some have had bad cells in the battery pack or bad connections in the battery pack. If this happens, then a fully charged battery might behave like a near-empty battery and put you into turtle mode. Your symptoms sound like turtle mode.

As others have suggested, get to a dealer to check trouble codes and run diagnostics. The car is under warranty so they should fully support you on this.

Bob

[planetpapi]

I have similar problem with 2014 LEAF. A few months ago while driving on freeway suddenly acceleration dropped and Turtle Mode and EV light came on. I managed to pull over. Rested few panic minutes and restarted and went home OK. Then again it happened few more times in the later weeks. Some times restarting works some times you have to wait up to 5 minutes to restart. I took it dealer and they said the accelerator pedal was the problem and fixed it on the 2nd try. The first time they said they fixed, I pulled out of dealer parking lot and within a mile, the problem returned!

Now after 3 months, on Christmas day the problem resurfaced while coming out of Walmart parking lot. Then again last night while at the stop sign the car went into limp mode. In all these cases, it's nothing to do with outside temp or snow or heat. It's just random. I have lucked out of all these situations with out getting into accidents. But this is now scary to drive LEAF. Taking it to dealer again today.

One more failure and it will be called Lemon under lemon law.