2018-2019 Leaf 2.0 "Service EV System. Unable to restart after power off"

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knightmb said:
My guess would be, they probably had no way to balance the cells when the pack was open and just going to let time do it's thing. There is a way to balance them out, but it's a long and tedious process of running down the pack slowly using LeafSpy as a guide and then charging back up after pack shutdown, then waiting some time (like days or weeks) and repeating the process until you get the balance where you want it. It took 3 attempts to balance my wife's 2018 40kWh pack when she bought it, it was actually more out of balance than yours was, so it's probably possible if you have time and patience and access to a good L2 EVSE nearby. :)

Can you provide more details on the procedure to balance the cells? I have a L2 charger at my home. Thank you.
 
my 2018 SV went through a defective cell replacement at 8k miles. The balancing procedure is they basically make the new module match existing cell voltage range using some special tool that charges/discharges it to a proper value. Mine was always above rest of the pack ever since even two years later.
 
sch1wend2 said:
Looks like I'm part of this club now. I'm currently experiencing the same warning message and will need to get my 2018 LEAF (65,172 miles) towed tomorrow. Good thing the car is parked on my driveway and did not happen at work!

Hi! How did you solve the problem?
 
addyionut said:
sch1wend2 said:
Looks like I'm part of this club now. I'm currently experiencing the same warning message and will need to get my 2018 LEAF (65,172 miles) towed tomorrow. Good thing the car is parked on my driveway and did not happen at work!

Hi! How did you solve the problem?

Does anyone had this error on a Leaf with more than 60k miles, and been solved on battery warranty? I just opened a case against Nissan, because my car is in service for more than 3 months, and no plan to be repaired. My odo shows 70k miles.
 
On a 2020 Nissan Leaf S PLUS, which is leased in December 2020, I had the same message "Service EV System - Unable to restart after power off" back on November 22 at just over 33,000 miles.

To everyone who might Google this in the future, I would like to point that there appear to be 2 different error messages. There also appears to be one which is "Service EV System - No Power" and that appears to be remedied relatively quickly and easily by getting a new 12V battery. But "Service EV System - Unable to restart after power off" is the message which appears to be caused by a bad battery cell in the main traction battery.

Fortunately when my car did not want to start again on November 22 I was able to use Nissan's Roadside Assistance for free, to be towed to a dealership, since I was still within the 3 year 36,000 mile warranty.

Getting a loaner vehicle required a lot of calls to the dealership, as it was just before Thanksgiving and all their loaners were with customers and Hertz and Enterprise were not having any Nissans available either which they could give to me. Through my persistence I ended up getting a loaner, funnily a Murano so now I spend $50/week for gas to get to work while with the Leaf it was much less or free.

Yesterday as the vehicle was in service for 2 weeks and 2 days already, they told me how the Leaf tech is still in the process of checking all the individual battery modules. They said that the Leaf tech also has to work on other urgent repair jobs inbetween, which is why it takes longer. I was informed in case it might be just a module or two which needs to be replaced, then it would be a quicker process to finish the repair, but in case a whole replacement battery would have to be ordered from Nissan, that would take months. They brought me into the back of the service area, and showed me how they had the Leaf battery lifted up there, coned off, so that the Leaf tech could work on checking the modules.

I am grateful that I received a loaner for free, so I can still get to work, at the same time I am also frustrated by the slow pace of the diagnostics process.

This is my 4th Nissan Leaf (2012, 2016, 2018 and now a 2020), and I never had any major problem. Recently even my brother got a Leaf, and I wasn't able to tell him about any problem I had with any Leaf. Now I am not sure to what extent I could recommend the Leaf to anyone; I understand how others can recommend the vehicle when they had no problem, but in my shoes now it feels different.

While this thread is about 2018-2019 in the title, I just wanted to add to it that obviously this issue can affect 2020 Leafs as well.

Finally my question: for anyone who had this issue before that a cell needed to be replaced, did the bad battery cell issue ever pop back up again later?

The reason I ask is that I actually bought out the lease on the vehicle before the problem happened, and now I am seriously thinking about to what extent I should buy the Nissan original Nissan Security+PLUS extended warranty with 8 years 120,000 miles. As far as I remember, there is a dealership from California which sells those for a lower price over the internet.
It appears that without the extended warranty, one might not get a loaner in cases like this. And in case the inverter stops working or the high voltage system and it is out of warranty coverage, I don't want to see how much it would cost to have the shop work on it for days or weeks on end when one might have to pay out of pocket for it.
 
I too have the dreaded codes
Service EV system
Unable to restart after power off
p31e7 000B EV/HEV restart inhibition EVC 310
P0AA6 1Ao0 Ev HEV Hybrid batt volt sys isolation EVC157

2019 Leaf 42,000 Kms on it and its going in to Nissan tomorrow. from reading online it does seem to be modules. I only hope they offer a loan if your waiting weeks or months for modules to be shipped. The guys at the dealership don't even seem to know what they are doing with the EV side of things. It went in for service before Christmas as I had to clear this error and they couldn't replicate or find it. I showed them the codes and they didn't want to even know about it. We shall see tomorrow what they say. I bet I will get come back Monday when we find out more and diagnose the problem
 
Joining the club with my 2018 Leaf 'SV, Service EV System. Unable to start' club. (bought the car new May 2018)
As my username indicates, my first Leaf was a 2015 -S. I still have my 2015 Leaf with 85k miles and none of this problem. This is the reason I bought another leaf in 2018. My oldest daughter now uses the 2015 Leaf to commute to school 20 miles one-way.

After reading the whole thread, I realized that even though I have this current problem, i may still be lucky. I have 104k miles of driving with no problems at all with this 2018 SV.. Should I be happy or should I expect more from Nissan? I drove most of my ICE cars before up to 200k, but of course I had to spend a lot on repairs and maintenance. i leave in So Cal, so I never get the problems of icy cold weather.

I will try to follow all the suggestions here and give an update. The thing is I want to get from this forum are suggestions on whether should I had to repair it or junk the car? I am well over the warranty period in miles, not in years for the HV system. if I was to have it repaired, how much do you think would be my maximum for me to spend and keep the car. What else could go wrong? The 12V battery seems to be holding up. (I still have the original 12V on the 2015 Leaf). If I have bad cells in the HV battery, should i get it repaired?
 
I also own a 2022 Leaf trim S.
I have experienced a similar issue "service EV system, power reduced stop safely", "no power, stop safely", "service EV system, no power" for 4 times in the past 3 months. The car basically wouldn't start.

1st time: local Nissan Torrance dealer cleared the code and it drove again
2nd time: replaced the 12V battery and it drove again
3rd time: dealer couldn't duplicate the problem and cleared the code. It drove again
4th time: It's in the dealership at the moment. I filed a case to Nissan HQ, hoping they can send more competent engineers to repair this issue.

The car is very unstable. You don't know when you will or will not be able to drive at any given day. I had a 2018 Leaf before and never had such problem. We are losing faith on the new Nissan Leaf. Any suggestion for the fixes or how your local dealership fixed the problem?



https://ibb.co/vPRyQ1V
 
Elliskenny100 said:
I too have the dreaded codes
Service EV system
Unable to restart after power off
p31e7 000B EV/HEV restart inhibition EVC 310
P0AA6 1Ao0 Ev HEV Hybrid batt volt sys isolation EVC157

2019 Leaf 42,000 Kms on it and its going in to Nissan tomorrow. from reading online it does seem to be modules. I only hope they offer a loan if your waiting weeks or months for modules to be shipped. The guys at the dealership don't even seem to know what they are doing with the EV side of things. It went in for service before Christmas as I had to clear this error and they couldn't replicate or find it. I showed them the codes and they didn't want to even know about it. We shall see tomorrow what they say. I bet I will get come back Monday when we find out more and diagnose the problem

Do you have an update with Nissan? I am interested in how your issue was resolved, if at all. We have the same problem, but mine happened with a lot more mileage.
 
Yes bad modules in the pack. It took 2 weeks of fighting with them to get it fixed under warranty. I had to threaten them to get another car when it went in. Took 2 weeks to replace modules. But now when i log in to leafspy i have a 191Mv diff on the cells. They didnt balance it so im back on to Nissan tech again to get it re balanced. It will have to go back as with unbalanced pack im getting reduced range and the range under 40% SOC drops off. Nissan havent a clue and dont follow procedures
 
Newbie said:
On a 2020 Nissan Leaf S PLUS, which is leased in December 2020, I had the same message "Service EV System - Unable to restart after power off" back on November 22 at just over 33,000 miles.

[...]

I feel like I owe an update on the story - the Nissan dealership was not very communicative through the process, at the same time, on January 21, 2023, I finally received my Leaf back, and it was repaired. While about 3 weeks before when I had reached out to the dealership before for an update, I was told "Only a few more days", on January 21 I was in the area and stopped by at the dealership to receive an update, and then I was told "Oh, you can drive home in your own car today, it is ready." At the same time, the dealership had to "written up" the vehicle, so created the bill for Nissan, so I was told I might have to at a later time basically stop by and sign. Instead, four days later without any further communication I received an email from the service advisor with a PDF bill over $0 for the repair, and that was it.

Since then, the Leaf is driving fine again. Now reading the other posts here, I feel like I need to get Leaf Spy now, to make sure that there is no imbalance, because I am only at 33,500 miles and as of now still under warranty. In the big picture though, I am happy to have the Leaf back. Besides saving on all the gas money I had to spend for the Murano loaner, the Leaf drives much better. And maybe some day, there might be a 400 mile range compact car for $20,000 on the market, but for now, there is nothing else on the market I would reasonably get instead of keeping the Leaf, so I plan to keep it still for a couple of years.
 
WhytLeaf15 said:
Joining the club with my 2018 Leaf 'SV, Service EV System. Unable to start' club. (bought the car new May 2018)
As my username indicates, my first Leaf was a 2015 -S. I still have my 2015 Leaf with 85k miles and none of this problem. This is the reason I bought another leaf in 2018. My oldest daughter now uses the 2015 Leaf to commute to school 20 miles one-way.

After reading the whole thread, I realized that even though I have this current problem, i may still be lucky. I have 104k miles of driving with no problems at all with this 2018 SV.. Should I be happy or should I expect more from Nissan? I drove most of my ICE cars before up to 200k, but of course I had to spend a lot on repairs and maintenance. i leave in So Cal, so I never get the problems of icy cold weather.

I will try to follow all the suggestions here and give an update. The thing is I want to get from this forum are suggestions on whether should I had to repair it or junk the car? I am well over the warranty period in miles, not in years for the HV system. if I was to have it repaired, how much do you think would be my maximum for me to spend and keep the car. What else could go wrong? The 12V battery seems to be holding up. (I still have the original 12V on the 2015 Leaf). If I have bad cells in the HV battery, should i get it repaired?


My 2018 Leaf SV just displayed the "Service EV System" message this morning. I'm in so cal too and have about 90k miles. Just wanted to know if your Leaf is fixed? If you did, what was the problem and which dealer did you go to? Cost? Thank you
 
I too had this message on my 2018 Leaf. The specific codes I had on my LeafSpy indicated the following:

"P31E7 000B EV/HEV Restart inhibition EVC-310"
"P0AA6 1A0B EV/HEV Hybrid Batt Volt Sys Isolation EVC-157"

My vehicle went into the dealership for repair on 11/5/2022, and I'm told the repairs are finally complete on 3/14/2023. The dealer diagnosed an A/C compressor and PTC heater failure. I went through 4 loaner vehicles before I returned the last one due to a safety recall on it. The PTC heater recall that was announced on 1/31/2023 further held up repair efforts on my car. I don't think an addendum to the owners manual is the appropriate fix.

Based on everything else in this thread, I'm thinking I'll get a call on 3/15/2023 shortly after 10am saying the "cold test" didn't work and that the error condition still exists. I've asked them numerous times to check the battery. They claim it's fine. I hope a proper recall comes out and fixes these issues for everyone.
 
That sounds suspiciously like there was a low 12 volt battery throwing erroneous codes, and the dealer just went ahead and replaced everything the car told him was bad...
 
I wish it were the 12v, but I replaced that before this all began. I got the car back on 3/17 and it drove fine for 24 hours, then threw the same isolation fault again after charging. The dealer charged it to 100% one time according to their paperwork, but I picked it up with 70% charge. I drove it down to 10% and charged it up. Came out to an 86% charge level and the same error codes I had 5.5 months ago. The newly replaced A/C and PTC heater wouldn’t work in that error state.

I don’t have any other EV repair options than the dealer I brought it to, since I’m in rural Montana. The only other dealer is too far away. I reset the DTC’s to drive the car and charge it, but the codes came back. :(
 
It would be interesting to know what the voltage on the (connected) 12V battery is prior to resetting the DTC. And if there is a change after resetting the DTCs (always wait 5 min).
 
I will report the 12v battery voltages before DTC reset, and 5 minutes after reset. I’m not convinced the dealer got the diagnosis right either, but they’re my only option in my region. They didn’t even have a certified EV technician on staff when my car originally started having issues in October 2022. Part of my wait was waiting for their tech to get EV certified.
 
An opinion and comment that will hopefully benefit everyone who reads this thread:
I would bet that ~90% of the issues in this thread are due to weak/bad modules in the traction pack...not the 12v starter battery.
The only solution is replacement of those module(s)...which is not easily done.
I recently replaced a weak/bad module in my (replacement) 40 kWh pack, so I speak from experience. I felt bad about leaving a ~80mV delta between the module I replaced and the rest of the pack (my fault when "preparing" the replacement module)...until I read about ~200mV deltas left from (supposedly) experienced Leaf techs!
 
The “service EV” issue happened again this morning when it was 17 degrees outside. The voltage reading on the 12v was 12.0v. After resetting the codes and driving to work, the voltage climbed to 12.48v. Isn’t the 12v battery supposed to charge when the car is plugged in at night or when the vehicle detects the 12v has a low charge?
 
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