Nissan LEAF - General

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#2895047 1-Apr-2022 08:38

Ah, the joys of having put 149,000km on your 30kWh Leaf. When I first got it I could drive Warkworth-Newmarket and back, and just plug in when I got home. This morning I stopped to charge twice just to get it to the GVI workshop in Penrose. Hopefully the 12V battery discharging issue is straightfoward because it's probably worth $3K to me to have the traction battery fixed up with the weak cell replaced, but not if the car still won't last a day without the 12V battery going flat overnight...

Their workshop has moved. It's now about 1.5km away from the dealership which is where I went at first. On one of the back streets there were some roadworks. A concrete mixer has pulled about 3/4 into the road out of the cement works driveway and is stopped. I'm third in line waiting. Mr. Ford Ranger stops behind me, briefly, before deciding he doesn't have time for this bullshit.

Pulls onto the wrong side of the road and guns it. Then about 1s later slams on his brakes so as not to collide head-on with the oncoming cars.

You know, the ones that have the green light for the road works.

I make eye contact as he reverses back into place.

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#2895065 1-Apr-2022 08:53

@SaltyNZ perhaps the 12v battery drain is also draining the traction battery as it tries to charge the 12v.

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#2895122 1-Apr-2022 09:31

RunningMan:

@SaltyNZ perhaps the 12v battery drain is also draining the traction battery as it tries to charge the 12v.

It is possible the issues are linked but probably not like that. No, there's a weak cell in the traction battery: it will go from "80%" to "20%" in a matter of about 5km. If you check it in Leafspy at that point you see 2 cells are about 150mV below all the rest. So although the vast majority of the battery is still reasonably well charged the BMS has to tell you you're about to run out because it cannot allow the weak ones to get into the danger area.

The car will still drain the 12V battery over no more than 2 nights even if the traction battery is fully charged - I've tested this while it's been sitting unused for the last couple of weeks. Earlier in the week I just disconnected the 12V altogether and fully charged it so that I could reconnect it this morning to start the car and drive it to the workshop.

Every time you recharge/reconnect the 12V there are a slew of error codes to clear in LeafSpy, but many of those are known to be related to a low 12V battery so it is unclear whether they are the cause or the symptom of the issue. Anyway - now it's at the workshop where the experts can figure it out.

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#2895212 1-Apr-2022 10:38

My Leaf used to be plagued by 12v battery discharge issues. I discovered it was ultimately Leaf-Spy/OBD2 dongle triggering the problem (which also explained why non-geeks didn't have the problem). I now turn the dongle off when I'm not using it, and haven't have a single flat battery in 3 years.

Cause: When the car is off, but anytime there is activity on the CAN bus, the Leaf powers up the brake module and the dash display module. Anything you do that sends data across the CAN bus will cause the brake & display modules to power up for a couple of minutes (unlock the car, turn on the lights, depress a pedal, transmit data on OBD2, play with random dash switches etc). (I suspect it is a safety thing - if it sees what is assumes is human induced activity it turns on the brake pedal power assist). If the Leaf is off, but the blue tooth dongle is on and your phone is sending data to it, the brake and display module stay powered up due to all the CAN bus traffic from the dongle/phone.

Once this happens once, even if it is for a short time that doesn't flatten the battery, you will have have trouble later. The display module will never go to sleep again until you totally remove 12v from the car. The battery draining down to 8v will stop the car from starting (and cause it to throw lots of random diagnostic codes as you have seen) but 8v isn't low enough to reset the display module so, so you can end up with a flat 12v battery on successive days until it goes proper-flat - like 0v flat. For this reason, if you often use an OBD dongle and you also get a unexplained flat 12v battery, I highly recommend disconnecting the negative lead for 20 seconds to properly reset the modules and clear ongoing issues. This also means you can induce the fault one day and think you got away without a problem (and think that guy on geekzone was wrong), but several days or a week later, it runs the battery down too flat to start the car.

A big clue for me that it was in this persistent fault mode was when first starting the car after being parked for >8 hours, Leaf Spy showed the 12v battery was at the very low end of 12v (eg 12.0v or 12.1 v) and not the high end (12.6 - 12.9v), revealing that the 12v battery had been draining while parked, but not to the point where the car no longer started.

The brake pedal occasionally did a few weird things as well (uneven/scary progression from Re-gen braking to disk brakes etc), and this came right once I left OBD2/Leafspy off when driving.

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#2895215 1-Apr-2022 10:41

Yes, I've known about the dongle issue from the early days - I always remove it after I've used it. I've had the car for over 4 years, and it's only started doing this in the last 6-8 weeks or so.

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#2895225 1-Apr-2022 11:02

SaltyNZ: Yes, I've known about the dongle issue from the early days - I always remove it after I've used it. I've had the car for over 4 years, and it's only started doing this in the last 6-8 weeks or so.

Understood.

Did you ever disconnect the 12v battery to reset the display module? (a "flat" 12v battery isn't necessary flat enough to reset the display module).

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#2895234 1-Apr-2022 11:15

tripper1000:

Understood.

Did you ever disconnect the 12v battery to reset the display module? (a "flat" 12v battery isn't necessary flat enough to reset the display module).

The first time it went flat I decided it was just an old battery - it was the original one still! - so I had it replaced at that point. It's been sitting for a week with the battery disconnected so that it didn't do it again, until this morning. It's at the workshop now. Will be interesting to see what ensues.

Got to say though, it's a crappy design...

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nic.wise

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#2895237 1-Apr-2022 11:27

SaltyNZ:

Yes, I've known about the dongle issue from the early days - I always remove it after I've used it. I've had the car for over 4 years, and it's only started doing this in the last 6-8 weeks or so.

Where in NZ does one get a dongle? Looks like there are a couple of options around. iOS + Leaf 2014 if it makes a difference.

And I presume the other end of it is this: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/leafspy-pro/id967376861

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

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#2895239 1-Apr-2022 11:32

I think I got mine off AliExpress originally.

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tripper1000

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#2895246 1-Apr-2022 11:44

SaltyNZ: Got to say though, it's a crappy design...

Are you surprised? Nissan was early to the party and did their best to control costs, so the Leaf is a compromised car (no battery thermal management, built on a ICE chassis etc). It was an early adopter of electric assist brakes and Version 1 is never the best (ICE have vacuum assist brakes). Besides ICE could do the same thing if people fiddled with the OBD2 as much as a Leaf.

Other cars get flat batteries. The Ford Rangers are notorious for flat batteries as the infotainment system is a big drain and the charging system is compromised (alternator gets turned off by the ECU to save fuel). ICE (like the Mazda 3) have mechanical clutches on the alternators now days, which add a new dimension of wear and failure.

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#2895524 1-Apr-2022 21:25

nic.wise:

Where in NZ does one get a dongle? Looks like there are a couple of options around. iOS + Leaf 2014 if it makes a difference.

And I presume the other end of it is this: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/leafspy-pro/id967376861

Hi Nic,

I got one of these about 3 years ago - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000097113021.html The first "color", Icar Pro BT 4.0, is er lthe one I use with my iPhone. It works a treat and has never let me down - I've used it with multiple phones, cars (Leafs and non-leafs), and apps, and everytime it just grinds into action.

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#2896997 5-Apr-2022 06:51

Does anyone know the digit that changes in the Leaf VIN for a UK vs. Japan car?

Looking at one locally but keen to avoid a UK import.

E: OK looks like it's the first letter - S for UK (Sunderland, presumably), J for Japan.

Jase2985

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#2897001 5-Apr-2022 08:02

GV27:

Looking at one locally but keen to avoid a UK import.

could you provide some reasoning for this?

GV27

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#2897058 5-Apr-2022 08:31

Jase2985:

could you provide some reasoning for this?

Salt.

tripper1000

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#2897159 5-Apr-2022 11:52

Do they not use salt on the roads in Japan? The pre-purchase photos of my car showed it in a snowy car lot in Japan and I assumed the salt situation would be be same/similar to the UK.

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