Carwings can't connect

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

evanmf

Member
Joined
May 8, 2011
Messages
14
When I try to update stations or do anything that requires the telematics to connect to the back end, I get a time-out message saying it failed to connect. Anyone else having this issue?

Is there a simple "reboot" to fix it?
 
It happened to me once a few weeks ago. I justed waited for a while and it worked. Did not reboot the car (never have). 3G and internet stuff are inherently prone to transient failures. I would save rebooting the car for more severe problems.

I just tried to get my car status from the iPhone app and is working. Try this to see if yours is working. That would tell you if the connection is completely down or if its only carwings data update.

Keep us posted :)
 
Well it doesn't appear to be connecting to the "information center" either from within the car or being able to ping the car from the website. Surprised that no one else has had this problem?
 
So I called up the dealership (Campbell Nelson) whom I purchased it from and the service department there indicated I'd have to bring it by so they could take a look at it and there wasn't anything that I could do. Also it would probably take an hour or so to take a look at it. [I did have a good experience buying the car from them and they've been great so far... just out of the way when I'm at work]

Well they're a little out of my way from work so I dropped by another dealership (Eastside) and asked to talk with the Leaf specialists. The service desk said it would probably be an hour, but I asked to talk with the guy anyhow. Well Aaron (who contributes to the board here) indicated that he's seen the problem in at least 3 other cars and that Nissan is aware of the issue. Basically when the cell radio looses signal, it never gets it back - for some reason it's not re-acquiring the network.

Solution is pretty simple. Turn off car. Wait 5 minutes. Remove the terminal lead from the battery. Wait 30 seconds. Replace the terminal lead. And now the cellular modem will reconnect to the carwing service - problem solved!
 
I will add though that this is a temporary fix. Also make sure you wait the 5min for the VCM and BCM to fully power down or you will set false codes in several systems.
 
We heard that there was a temporary firmware "re-boot" Update to become available that would accept a special series of buttons to trigger essentially a power Off re-boot of the car (only when not moving, I presume) so that disconnecting the 12v battery would no longer be required to re-boot the car (as needed to "reset" the Lost Carwings Connection Problem).

Is that re-boot firmware "fix" available yet?

If so, does it require the "A/C & SOC" firmware Update first?
 
Thank you for posting this. It has been bothering me all week that I could not seem to get carwings to connect to the service station.

I haven't been able to get the status to update on the owners website either since May 11th. It just errors out that it can't connect to the car, which I assume is related.

With having the car for only 9 days, I am still learning what is to be expected or not expected.
 
garygid said:
We heard that there was a temporary firmware "be-boot" Updste to become available that would accept a special series of buttons to trigger essentially a power Off re-boot of the car (only when not moving, I presume) so that disconnecting the 12v battery would no longer be required to re-boot the car (as needed to "reset" the Lost Carwings Connection Problem).

Is that re-boot firmware "fix" available yet?

If so, does it require the "A/C & SOC" firmware Update first?



As of about 20 mins ago there is no firmware update available for the carwings issues. I will let everyone know as soon as I have better info.
 
I still cannot connect even after disconnecting the battery. I did not turn the car back on.
 
Well:

1. Try turning the LEAF ON to let it fully reboot.

2. Did you disconnect the 12v for at least 10 minutes? Others have reported that 3 minutes worked, 5 minutes did, and did not, and 10 minutes did.
 
One side note - sometimes the failure to connect might have to do with the Carwings server being down. You can confirm by logging into Carwings through the Nissan Leaf portal web site. (https://zeroemission.nissan-carwings.com)

If the website is down then just hang tight until the service is restored.
 
Carwings stopped working for me about five weeks ago. It says "No service" when I try to connect, which is ridiculous since one of my smartphones has a strong AT&T signal. About two weeks ago I got the firmware update but I forgot to tell them that Carwings was not working and the firmware update did not cause it to suddenly start working. I was never that impressed with Carwings in the first place, but I was assuming it would get better in the future.

If the problem is that it stops working permanently when it loses a data connection, that's obviously just useless. I park in an underground parking garage at work every day. Until a permanent fix is available I'm going to ignore Crapwings.
 
Mmm, parking garage. My Carwings has been down since yesterday, and while it could somehow be related to getting the car washed, I find it much more likely that being underground is the cause. I happened to be at an EV show here in Encinitas, and I also happened to note that my phone had no service while in the parking structure. So I'm asking if anyone else that was at that show is experiencing the same problem. I plan to reset the electrical system tomorrow.
 
Yesterday when I picked up my car, they couldn't get Carwings to fire up and accept my user/pass.
Is the Carwings site still down, and my account wont register because of it? Or is there something in the car which must be activated that the tech might have missed?

I had the internet manager scratching his head over this for an hour (the tech had left for the weekend already)..

Thanks in advance. :)
 
the carwings ap on my iPhone ap does not work and has not worked for days, I now see this is a broader problem. I too park sort of below ground. A call into the dealer has not resulted in a reply yet.
g
 
One problem is that Nissan doesn't provide much in the way of diagnostic messaging.

When you send a command to the car, or a status poll, via the iPhone app, any of the communication links could fail:

  • iPhone app makes an outgoing data connection to Nissan servers. AT&T, Verizon, iOS..
  • Nissan (SOAP?) servers have to receive that request and shuttle it to Mission Control
  • Mission Control sends a message to the SMS gateway (Jasper?)
  • The SMS host sends a message to AT&T
  • AT&T sends the message over the GSM network to the TCU in your car.
  • The TCU has to receive this message, check the CAN bus state, and wake up the VCU
  • The TCU makes an outbound packet data connection via AT&T to Nissan's server.
  • Nissan's server has to receive and process the data from the TCU
  • Nissan sends the data over AT&T or Verizon to your iPhone.

Whew.

It would be much easier (and faster) if we could just send a TXT message to the car directly.
 
You missed a step:
  • The car beeps :D

Well, that certainly helps to explain how it takes like a full minute to get a response. It would make sense if we could access it directly--although that would still entail a trip to T-Moblie, to AT&T, to the car, etc. But still.

Anyhow, I did disconnect the battery today, and it did bring Carwings back to life. So a big thanks to the group for finding that fix. For the record, I turned the car off for 5 minutes and then left it disconnected for 5 minutes. Carwings came back without my having to turn the car on.

Now, I wonder if it's practical to get at the telematics power connection without having to bring down the whole car. I took that little door off the glovebox but didn't see anything promising.

I also took the opportunity to measure the current drain from the accessory battery. Actually I was looking to measure the input from the "solar panel". I think I should find a more appropriate thread for that, or start one.
 
And it worked every time until it stopped functioning and hasn't worked since... lame!
g

GroundLoop said:
One problem is that Nissan doesn't provide much in the way of diagnostic messaging.

When you send a command to the car, or a status poll, via the iPhone app, any of the communication links could fail:

  • iPhone app makes an outgoing data connection to Nissan servers. AT&T, Verizon, iOS..
  • Nissan (SOAP?) servers have to receive that request and shuttle it to Mission Control
  • Mission Control sends a message to the SMS gateway (Jasper?)
  • The SMS host sends a message to AT&T
  • AT&T sends the message over the GSM network to the TCU in your car.
  • The TCU has to receive this message, check the CAN bus state, and wake up the VCU
  • The TCU makes an outbound packet data connection via AT&T to Nissan's server.
  • Nissan's server has to receive and process the data from the TCU
  • Nissan sends the data over AT&T or Verizon to your iPhone.

Whew.

It would be much easier (and faster) if we could just send a TXT message to the car directly.
 
Back
Top