Mon Dec 24, 2018 2:11 pm
The good news is that my EV connect app finally worked for the first time. I was able to start the climate control remotely. The bad news is that it took three weeks, three trips to the dealer, three calls to/from the Nissan Connect EV people, and 15 minutes today and some bizarre car behavior before I was able to succeed. A very polite and helpful woman (Sierra) at the help line handled my second and third calls but was not able to get it working even after the new part had been installed and registered. She said my problem was being "escalated." That was two weeks ago. I never heard from her or Nissan again, but several tries to connect failed in the interim.
Today I tried again and this time I got a message screen I'd never gotten again. It told me to login to the car and it provided me with a "Nissan Connect EV PIN" and a "Nissan Connect EV Password." The message said these are unique to my telematics unit. They were both meaningless jumbles of letters and numbers, not based on my name or the car name or anything I chose. Fortunately during troubleshooting Sierra had walked me through to where the login screen is in the car, as I would never have remembered it from the one time (2011) I used it before. That screen in the car asks for a User ID and Password, not a PIN. I entered the PIN as a User ID and the password, and the car seemed to accept both. It made the "Connect to Information Center" announcement. I tried to start the climate control with the app to test it. I got an error saying it couldn't start the climate control because "the car may be running or plugged in" The heater won't run when the car is on now or plugged in? I turned the car off and tried again and this time it worked - sort of - the car charging lights started flashing as they do when you hit the dashboard button to kill the timer, but the climate control lights did nothing. I had only hit the "try again" button that popped up for climate control, not the app charging button. The car is on timer for overnight charging and I had NOT hit the dashboard kill timer button, either.
I plugged the car in and the lights showed that it was charging. I unplugged it to stop the charging and then plugged it in again. I tried to start the climate control again and it didn't work because it was plugged in. I unplugged the car and tried again with the car off and unplugged, and this time the app started the climate control. With the old Carwings 2G connection I could start the climate control while the car was still plugged in, so that the range wasn't reduced by using battery charge. Now that seems to be impossible and a big drawback, although for me it's not bad since I never need full range. I only use the Leaf for short trips. I don't like having to go out to the garage in my gym clothes when it's low 30s to unplug the car so I can heat it, though. I also don't want to have to start the car, log in, and then turn it off again every time in order to use the app, but hopefully that won't be necessary again. I also feel sorry for those who want to start climate control from their office while the car is plugged into the company charging station in the parking lot. I guess they have to go down to car and unplug it and stand by or sit in the car before starting it in order to get it to proper temperature. That rather defeats the purpose, IMO. I haven't tested the remote charging function since I only charge at home on time, and that works fine without the app. All I can say is that the new STU is not ready for prime time.
2011 SL down to 9 capacity bars
OnWords