2015 leaf s

Just joined the forum. I picked up a used leaf around a year ago, and was happy with the purchase until recently. I drive home from work one night, and all is fine. I plug in the charger as usual and go to bed. The next day it had only partly charged, and would not go into drive or reverse. Since I still had a little over 2 weeks left on the high voltage charging system warranty, I had it towed to the dealer. That was the last day of august. After hearing the dealer tech first tell me it was a heater problem, then an air conditioning compressor problem, then he did not know what the problem is yet, I am starting to think he has no clue about electric cars. He admitted to not following the diagnostic manual, as he likes to "check the easy stuff first", so I am wondering if this is common with EVs. Are the dealer techs commonly this incompetent or clueless about electrics? A simple google search of the problem before I had it towed to the dealer gave me a lot of info to use if I were doing the work myself. I only took it to a dealer because it appeared the likely problem was still under warranty.

Check the resting (car off for 15+ minutes) voltage of the 12 volt accessory battery. I suspect that you will find it below or right at 12 volts. Anything below 12.4 volts is problematic, and lower voltages can cause bizarre malfunctions and error codes. Do you leave the car plugged in for long after or before it charges? That can drain the 12 volt battery, amazingly enough.

And yes, find a Leaf-certified Nisan dealer with a good reputation.

gametech said:

Are the dealer techs commonly this incompetent or clueless about electrics?

Click to expand...

Yep. My Leaf went to 3 separate dealerships to deactivate the TCU (cellmodem) based on a published Nissan TSB. None of them could complete the operation correctly. The two dealerships I went to both had a Leaf certified technician and good reviews overall, but honestly, in my area, there are so few Leafs that nobody really knows how to work on them.

I agree with Leftie. Given the problem appears to be random and migrating around, it's likely just that the 12V battery is providing insufficient voltage and need to be either charged or replaced. While I don't disagree with the "check easy things first", it sounds like the tech is way past that, given what he's finding. I wonder if his "check the easy things first" involved checking the 12V resting voltage...

If you do replace the 12V battery, use an AGM to avoid this problem in the future.

The 12v battery was my second check. After finding that the car would not go into drive or reverse, I hooked up a scantool with leafspy to check for error codes. I wrote down the codes, but I had the radio playing while I checked them, as well as the ventilation blower was running. After this I checked the battery and found 12.4 something volts (I don't remember the other 2 decimal point numbers). I would have to find where I wrote down the codes, but 2 of them were related to the high voltage charging system, and there were a couple of others about the brake system. My research led me to believe the brake codes were caused by the high voltage problem. Also, I believe if the problem had anything to do with the 12v battery, the dealer tech might have figured that out in the last 2 and 1/2 months.

Sorry guys, I thought I replied to your posts, but my response never showed. The 12v battery was my second check after checking fault codes with leafspy. I do not remember the exact voltage, but it was 12.4??. The fault codes were something about the high voltage charging system, and a couple of brake system codes. Research has led me to believe the brake system codes are a direct result of having a high voltage problem. Also, I have a hard time believing even the most inept of dealership techs would not have tried to check the 12v battery sometime in the 2 1/2 months they have had the car.

Sorry about the late post approvals: somehow they dropped off the first page before I saw them.

I found where I wrote down the codes.
C118C
C1A6E
C1A70
P3176
P311C