No Charge stations showing up

I was wondering if anyone else is having this problem. I can't seem to get any charge stations to showup in my carwings system. I have hit the 'update charge stations' button numerous times and it never seems to find any new stations. At the moment, it only lists 3 charge stations in the greater Los Angeles area: My house, my in-laws house (where I charged up once) and the dealership where I bought my car (about 60 miles away). I know there are other stations that are closer to my house. I have a seen a few at some of the Nissan dealerships close to my house. I also figured that here in Los Angeles, there would be at least a few stations available.

Could this be that Nissan just has not updated their database yet? Or could it be an issue with my carwings and my car not being able to download the charge stations (even though they do exists in the database)? Just curious if other drivers are seeing charge stations in their carwings system.

The other day I was running low (low battery light came on) and the system told me that I might not make it home. It offered to search for nearby charging stations. Unfortunately it found none. I did see a Nissan dealership off the freeway and I was thinking of stopping.. but I figured I could turn off the heater and make it home ok (which I did).

I figured this might just be an early adopter issue.. but I hope that there are charge stations out there and that our cars can find them. Will make it easier for folks who are less savvy than the first round of LEAF owners (I map out every trip i am going to take.. just to be sure).

thanks,
Peter

I don't get any showing up in the greater Sacramento area either...

I have talked to the Nissan Carwings guy about this. They haven't populated the database with any charging stations yet. They did not have any idea of when they would be rolling out data since a contracted party handles all the point of interest data (restaurants, etc) and the chargers are handled by them as well.

-Jeff

Nice. :lol:

Ya, it's sort of fun to just explore on your own for now. I have 8 local L2 stations saved in the Nav so far. I have a few more planned to visit but have not had a reason to go to that area yet. Early EV adoption requires a bit of "frontier" spirit... IMHO.

On a side note, when you find a charge station it makes an impact on you. We are now starting to revisit and hang out at places we usually have not spent alot of time at because they have free L2 chargers. I don't think we are unique. Business's that install charging stations will be attracting EV's like GPS guided moths to a flame! We are also spending money we would have spent on gas at these business's instead! EX; CPK at Fashion Island got a family dinner purchase from us because we were getting free electronz at the L2 station below. The waitress turned out to be a local mom with two kids. It was far nicer giving her a tip and helping out her kids than giving that money to an Oil company.

http://www.evchargernews.com/

u can make em show up. simply plug in and select "update stations" it will be added. that is how i did mine.

So, the NAV system will find charge stations for you, only after you find them???

Can't Nissan at least load all the Nissan Dealers with charge stations into the system?

Is there any way to enter locations, such as from a master list developed by this forum, or others, into the NAV system?

edatoakrun said:

So, the NAV system will find charge stations for you, only after you find them???

Can't Nissan at least load all the Nissan Dealers with charge stations into the system?

Is there any way to enter locations, such as from a master list developed by this forum, or others, into the NAV system?

Click to expand...

Nissan is supposed to send out updates with new charging stations. They don't even list their own dealers as having L2 chargers, so to say they're a bit behind is an understatement.

Your Leaf will automatically 'remember' ANY charging station you use, so as you find new locations, simply plug in for a few minutes and your NAV will 'remember' that place. What, if anything, Nissan does with those 'found' stations remains to be seen.

they should be able to...eventually, but why wait. head to the dealer, plug in, have a cup of coffee, pick up a free 20 minute boost and move on.

actually i am boosting my charging locations today since i have only used one of the 110 volt stations we have, so will be hitting up 4 others today to get them in. granted, only 110 but its still free!!

Since CARWINGS has NO charging locations yet ...
and your LEAF remembers the longitude & latitude of any location where your car charges (usually your home and other "public" locations) ...
we might be able to "build" a helpful "map" of locations from the data in each car.

If the 12v battery is disconnected, those locations might be (probably are) lost. So, your LEAF has a Backup and Restore function that writes your charge-locations to a file on an SD card that you would put in the empty slot behind the Nav screen (seen when you go to load or remove a CD).

If you have visited "public" charging points, and would like to share those locations with others, we might be able to do the following:

1. Create a Backup file from your LEAF.
2. Save a copy, then Zip it and email it to me.
3. I could extract the locations into a small database,
4. check for proximity (presumably duplicates) with others in the database
5. check with Google Map satellite view to see if a new location looks like a residence
6. create a New-Backup file from the "best public entries" (in your state, selected states, or all-states?) and send it back to you.
7. you Restore from the New-Backup, hopefully being able to see more charging locations.

At first it will be an experiment to get the software debugged.

If you would like to contribute a file, PM me for my email address.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Questions:

1. When you visit a charging station, do you have to actually start charging for your LEAF to "remember" the location, or is just plugging in to a powered-on EVSE sufficient?

2. Can you edit these entries in any way, giving them a name, phone number, altitude, etc?

Can you indicate your "home" (or other "private" locations) in any way?

Hopefully I will be able to try editing, and collect some San Diego files this weekend.

If there is any interest, I will start a "Backup Charging Locations" thread as soon as the first few tests are started.

Garygid,

See my thread on editing the Nav data. The address book backup format is not trivial but I have it mostly busted. There are some inaccuracies as I try and calculate far from one of my known reference points. I am not sure the locations I get for Florida and New York are that close.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=2483

I am hoping to do some more testing on the data this week and may improve it.

But I can generate address book entries for anything from my EVChargerMaps database. There are lots of caveats though. If you have a leaf and want to try some data, PM me and I can send a file to upload into your car.

-Jeff

garygid said:

Since CARWINGS has NO charging locations yet ...
and your LEAF remembers the longitude & latitude of any location where your car charges (usually your home and other "public" locations) ...
we might be able to "build" a helpful "map" of locations from the data in each car.
If you have visited "public" charging points, and would like to share those locations with others, we might be able to do the following:

1. Create a Backup file from your LEAF.
2. Save a copy, then Zip it and email it to me.
3. I could extract the locations into a small database,
4. check for proximity (presumably duplicates) with others in the database
5. check with Google Map satellite view to see if a new location looks like a residence
6. create a New-Backup file from the "best public entries" (in your state, selected states, or all-states?) and send it back to you.
7. you Restore from the New-Backup, hopefully being able to see more charging locations.

At first it will be an experiment to get the software debugged.

If you would like to contribute a file, PM me for my email address.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Click to expand...

I think there's an option you have to turn on in the car for it to remember charging stations, no? I forget exactly where it is, but I do remember seeing it when I was poking through the menus...

MrZorg said:

I think there's an option you have to turn on in the car for it to remember charging stations, no? I forget exactly where it is, but I do remember seeing it when I was poking through the menus...

Click to expand...

Yes, there is an option but it defaulted to on for me. I have logged about 5 public stations plus my house on my system.

Jeff,
I was not intending to try and "create" entries, but just copy LEAF-Created entries, so I do not really need to decode each entry. However, I will post some decoding thoughts in your thread.

I do not yet have a LEAF to test with.

the Leaf only recognizes special chargers, not 110 volt outlets. to store them as charging locations, go into address book, save location from map, then edit to label as charging station

DaveinOlyWA said:

the Leaf only recognizes special chargers, not 110 volt outlets. to store them as charging locations, go into address book, save location from map, then edit to label as charging station

Click to expand...

Not true in my experience. No special procedure required.

i thought the same, but plugged into 2 different ones today and neither popped up which i thought was strange, but still could label them as charging stations anyway since the address book gives you the option;

for anyone creating a database, i have a few

Lacey Timberland Library 47.02.37N / 122.49.19 W
Lacey City Hall (has 2 about 50 feet apart) 47.02.41N / 122.49.14 W
Ralphs Thriftway 47.02.46N / 122.52.32W
Bayview Thriftway 47.02.41N / 122.54.25 W

all are 110 volt.