Outside temp gauge off

I've noticed my outside temperature reading is strange. It has been over 100 the last few days here in Texas. When I get in my car to go home from work it will read like 85 degrees or in that neighborhood. It will stay that way until about 5 or 6 miles down the road and suddenly jump to 102. Anyone else have that?

Normal

It acts like a lot of cars' temp gauges, in that it takes driving a few miles for ambient air to flush over the sensor for a while to register the correct temp.

There's another thread on here about this that garygid started a while back.

...its the same here in San Antonio. I park in a garage at work, and it takes quite a while to adjust to the outdoor temp.

Oddly I was driving down the freeway today past a Nissan dealership and the big sign at the dealership said 86 degrees but the outside temp gauge in the car said 75. Would have made a funny picture juxtapositioning the two.

Oh the clock next to the temp gauge seems to gain about 1 minute every two weeks, whereas the GPS clock on the nav seems accurate. You would think they could make all clocks very accurate these days.

Mine's consistently off by ten degrees. Don't buy the "all cars" story, my Camry manages to be right.

Taxidan said:

Mine's consistently off by ten degrees. Don't buy the "all cars" story, my Camry manages to be right.

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Agreed.

The Leaf temp gauge is simply weird for the first 5 - 6 minutes.

I've had lots of other cars, none of them took this long to display the correct temperature.There are units at the Dollar Store that do a better job for 99c.

Makes you wonder what they did wrong on the design or location of the sensor.

My suspicion is that the same engineer was responsible for us having 2 clocks that don't have the same time.

Ok, well I thought I'd ask for two reasons:

• My Prius was never like this. When leaving my garage, it would slowly adjust the temperature 1 degree at a time as the sensor got colder or hotter.
• In the case of leaving work, my car has been outside all day. In this case, the temperature sensor should already be the same temperature as the air outside. There is no reason the temp sensor would be 85 when the car has been sitting all day in 100 degree weather.

my volvo was never like this.
I would regularly get a kick out of driving the last three miles to the shore and watch the summer temps dip 15 degrees block by block.

Yeah, none of my other cars exhibited a delay like this either. As someone else said, the temperature algorithm must have been designed by the same person who did the clock... It's not the sensor, it is the software.

thankyouOB said:

my volvo was never like this.
I would regularly get a kick out of driving the last three miles to the shore and watch the summer temps dip 15 degrees block by block.

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APPARENTLY:

The trouble is NOT the sensor, but WHEN the sensor is read, and the calculation of the number that is displayed.

The sensor is not even read until the car is moving over (some limit) mph. Then, the results are averaged over a LONG time, and many "corrections" are applied, so even the corrected number is not displayed, but a slowly-changing (in slow, like 5 minute, steps) value that apparently works its way from (what was when you last drove?) some wrong value toward a presumably correct value. But, I do not know if I have ever seen it display a "correct" temperature.

We need to complain to Nissan so they can fix the calculation and drastically increase the convergence speed.

The sensor isn't read until the car is traveling less than 5 MPH.

Edited to remove erroneous info.

mogur said:

I know that isn't true as I see it change from time to time when I am moving at a constant speed... Perhaps UNDER 5 mph?

DarkStar said:

The sensor isn't read until the car is traveling less than 5 MPH.

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Correction, it's 12 MPH per the service manual:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=86079#p86079

Edited to remove erroneous info.

mogur said:

I was traveling constantly over 30 mph this morning and watched the temperature change at least 4 times during that one hour period. So, it appears that the service manual is incorrect on this point, at least on my car...

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Isn't that what it said? From Darkstar's linked post:

The indicated temperature is corrected based on an ignition signal, ambient temperature detected by the ambient sensor, and vehicle speed signal. The indicated temperature is not raised under vehicle speed less than 20 km/h (12 MPH).

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If the temperature sensor is not read unless the car is traveling over 12 mph, then why even display the temperature?? They should display triple dashes or something. Yeah, I know it's just a convenient thermometer - but considering what a great job they did designing a zero-emissions power-train, it's all the more annoying when they fail at something so simple as a thermometer or clock.

My mistake. Somehow I read it to say that it was not updated if the car was OVER 12 mph... Under DOES jib with what I have observed. I wonder if the update is held for just the period it is under 12 or if that triggers a longer inhibit timer...

I edited my other post to remove the info as to not confuse anyone.

davewill said:

mogur said:

I was traveling constantly over 30 mph this morning and watched the temperature change at least 4 times during that one hour period. So, it appears that the service manual is incorrect on this point, at least on my car...

Click to expand...

Isn't that what it said? From Darkstar's linked post:

The indicated temperature is corrected based on an ignition signal, ambient temperature detected by the ambient sensor, and vehicle speed signal. The indicated temperature is not raised under vehicle speed less than 20 km/h (12 MPH).

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Drove 10 blocks normal city speeds. Still reads 66 - current weather says 86 (it's hot out!) - annoying. Stuck on last nights temp...

I just noticed this annoyance for the first time when I went to my car and it said 71 degrees, although it was between 85-90 degrees outside. Took about 10 minutes to reach "equilibrium". What knucklehead screwed up a simple temperature reading?