Thank you so much for posting this video. The weather is a freezing zero degrees here at the moment and my Leaf which was well charged when last used about 3 weeks ago. was effectively dead today, not a spark of any kind when I pressed the start button. with no power it would not even open the charge flap. Your explanation to open the car, flap and the diagnostics when car was dead was most informative and I am now sure I will be able to get car going again on Monday when the typically variable English weather rebounds back to10+ degrees. Very informative and helpful
Just had this happen to our Leaf. It's currently -4 degrees where I am, and I had no idea the 12 volt dying would effectively kill the car, including receiving a charge. Wish I had found your video sooner. Ended up jumping the car to open the charge port (as I couldn't sort out how to open it manually), and then jumping it again to start the charge. What a fiasco. Sad they couldn't identify the issue. Cheers/
Thanks Rob. All you can really do is monitor what you do each night, and report it if things go awry again. Random electricity brownouts, spikes, surges or brief outages, upsetting the electronics, could even be the culprit. Intermittent electrical faults can be nigh on impossible to pin down. Let's hope that it's a one-off. It doesn't inspire confidence though.
That is annoying not to be able to pin down what caused it. My dealer couldn't do the Rapid gate update at the service two weeks ago, they're going to do it on 10 April. Took three attempts to get them to do it. Great videos by the way.
Form my 2 years ownership. Drive it every second day to scrub the pads n rotate the tyres. This will charge the 12v too. Don’t leave type2 plugged in, remove it after charge if you leaving it for a day r two. And third I bought a smart charger to top it off on a Sunday or when ever I think of it. Leaf doesn’t do the best job keeping it. But it better than Hyundai. The leaf won’t charge 12v if left plugs into wall box .
My Leaf stopped last night on the A1 around midnight, blocking the inside lane just after a climb which left the car unsighted to traffic. The car had been running fine, I'd got 5% charge left according to the car and 7Kw according to leaf spy. I was about 3 miles from home. The range on the dash had just disappeared when the car suddenly lost all power (just after overtaking a truck), I'd been cruising at 65 mph, there was no real warning although it had just said find a charging point and as I was going home I was confident that I would have enough charge. I slowed quickly and put on the hazards - the truck blasted his horn etc, not surprisingly, and managed a very late overtake. The car quickly stopped, said EV battery fail and I was unable to restart-tried everything off no joy. Rang Nissan breakdown and put through to RAC-3 to 7 hour wait! At this point I was blocking the inside lane, no hard shoulder, it was very dark and rainy and I had the dog in the back. I decamped and rang 999, they arrived quickly and coned off the lane but although I got clear of the car it was pitch dark and raining with nowhere to pull off, I tried pushing it but no joy ( because I had the door open I think), eventually recovered by police so car is now in police pound awaiting collection-£220 to start! A really frightening experience and I wait to see what is the problem. The 12v battery was OK as it ran the hazards for an hour. Anyone any ideas?
Hi William, Sounds like a terrible experience. Glad you're safe though. I think your question might get more responses if you post it to the Leaf groups on Facebook. I would have guessed the 12v battery, but you've already ruled that out. LeafSpy would let you look at any error codes, but other than that I don't know what else to suggest. If you're near Herts I could posdibly lend you an obd dongle...
Hopefully you've got a more timely reply but AFAIK you're looking at two different measures. The capacity of the battery refers to the amount of charge it can still deliver. But there is another constraint - voltage. The Leaf shuts down the battery depending on the voltage of the lowest cell in the battery. If you place the battery under stress when low - hill, relatively high speed - then the voltage could drop below the threshold, especially if the heater/air con has just kicked in. It's not great software design for it to cut off without warning - although 30mph Turtle mode could be just as dangerous in the A1. Did you try to restart it after a minute or so? In theory the voltage should have picked up by then, although maybe there's software to prevent a restart without a charge.
So sorry for your terrible ordeal, really. But there is no way that Spy Leaf reported 7 kW left with the dash showing only 5% left. You did not specify your Leaf's model year and battery size but this is what 7 kW left in the battery would have shown for the 24 kWh = 31%, the 30 kWh = 23% and the 40 kWh= 19%. Also, it is quite normal to have the estimate range indicator "disappear" at between 5 to 7%, just like petrol cars do. Simply because the computer cannot make a reliable prediction with so many variables against so little energy left. So even though you were only 3 miles from home, you carelessly played with fire by still driving on the highway at 65 mph AND accelerating, sorry... You best recourse at that time would have been to slow down, get off the highway and find the nearest public charger. Or use urban streets and really slow down to get home, while turning off heating or A/C and maximising the regeneration. It works ! Plus, I don't know what was your EV experience at that time but I suspect that you were relatively new to the Leaf. And yes, I know that this comment is certainly outdated and that the owner probably doesn't own the car anymore but I'm leaving it for others who might still own an older model Leaf, which is a great car. As is the 2016 that I still own and drive ! 😉
We had to figure out the hard way how some EVs (definitely not all) can have this issue of the 12V dying for no apparent reason. There are some things that can cause it but in our case we had the manufacturer battery that started dying on us. Thought it was due to improper charging at first but that wasn't the only issue it seems. After it went dry the 3rd time we replaced the battery and everything was fine for 2 weeks when it started failing again. And we made sure we charged the car properly this time. Took it to the dealer and they said it's the battery's fault and we should return it to where we got it from as it was deemed defective by the dealer. Like in your experience, they didn't know what the issue was and instead tried to blame the 12v battery. We exchanged the 2 week old battery for a brand new one and long behold it failed again the same day we got it!!! Needless to say we are going to do what some others seem to have had to do and get a smart charger for the 12V and keep checking on the battery's health. We had the car charging at the dealer right after we installed the new battery. So I believe that wasn't wise. Something in the vehicle causes the 12V battery to be drained and it not getting enough charge in return. Will have to see if this can be managed with a few new devices to keep the battery healthy. Seems like the car itself ain't good enough to do just that.
Heard of this somewhere else on the internet and there conclusion is that this can happen sometimes with the factory battery and that installing a bigger 12v battery than oem sorts it out
I’ve 63k on mine 2018. I use a ctek regularly to top it off when I’ve time and I reconnected it once , as the plates sulphate as no Alternator & Reg. Ramming high dc current thru it. The ctek reconditioning is supposed to be good. Black Friday deals CTEK MXS 5.0 Fully Automatic Battery Charger (Charges, Maintains and Reconditions Car and Motorcycle Batteries) 12V, 5 Amp - UK Plug www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FC42HAA/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_MHZOFbQT0GSBS
![ค้างคืนโรงเก็บกระสวยอวกาศร้างกลางทะเลทราย [Around The World Ep. 3]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/E5bWZQhABJE/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you so much for posting this video. The weather is a freezing zero degrees here at the moment and my Leaf which was well charged when last used about 3 weeks ago. was effectively dead today, not a spark of any kind when I pressed the start button. with no power it would not even open the charge flap. Your explanation to open the car, flap and the diagnostics when car was dead was most informative and I am now sure I will be able to get car going again on Monday when the typically variable English weather rebounds back to10+ degrees. Very informative and helpful
No worries, I saw your other comment.
Hi RSThinks, really weird about the 12volt battery, lets hope it dont reoccur again, nice work as always, please keep the video's coming.
Just had this happen to our Leaf. It's currently -4 degrees where I am, and I had no idea the 12 volt dying would effectively kill the car, including receiving a charge. Wish I had found your video sooner. Ended up jumping the car to open the charge port (as I couldn't sort out how to open it manually), and then jumping it again to start the charge. What a fiasco. Sad they couldn't identify the issue. Cheers/
Glad you got it sorted. Maybe consider getting a new battery, depending on it's age. Most garages/service centres can run a diagnostic to check.
Thanks Rob. All you can really do is monitor what you do each night, and report it if things go awry again. Random electricity brownouts, spikes, surges or brief outages, upsetting the electronics, could even be the culprit. Intermittent electrical faults can be nigh on impossible to pin down. Let's hope that it's a one-off. It doesn't inspire confidence though.
That is annoying not to be able to pin down what caused it. My dealer couldn't do the Rapid gate update at the service two weeks ago, they're going to do it on 10 April. Took three attempts to get them to do it. Great videos by the way.
Form my 2 years ownership. Drive it every second day to scrub the pads n rotate the tyres. This will charge the 12v too.
Don’t leave type2 plugged in, remove it after charge if you leaving it for a day r two. And third I bought a smart charger to top it off on a Sunday or when ever I think of it. Leaf doesn’t do the best job keeping it. But it better than Hyundai.
The leaf won’t charge 12v if left plugs into wall box .
Good advice. Thanks for sharing.
My Leaf stopped last night on the A1 around midnight, blocking the inside lane just after a climb which left the car unsighted to traffic. The car had been running fine, I'd got 5% charge left according to the car and 7Kw according to leaf spy. I was about 3 miles from home. The range on the dash had just disappeared when the car suddenly lost all power (just after overtaking a truck), I'd been cruising at 65 mph, there was no real warning although it had just said find a charging point and as I was going home I was confident that I would have enough charge. I slowed quickly and put on the hazards - the truck blasted his horn etc, not surprisingly, and managed a very late overtake. The car quickly stopped, said EV battery fail and I was unable to restart-tried everything off no joy. Rang Nissan breakdown and put through to RAC-3 to 7 hour wait! At this point I was blocking the inside lane, no hard shoulder, it was very dark and rainy and I had the dog in the back. I decamped and rang 999, they arrived quickly and coned off the lane but although I got clear of the car it was pitch dark and raining with nowhere to pull off, I tried pushing it but no joy ( because I had the door open I think), eventually recovered by police so car is now in police pound awaiting collection-£220 to start! A really frightening experience and I wait to see what is the problem. The 12v battery was OK as it ran the hazards for an hour. Anyone any ideas?
Hi William,
Sounds like a terrible experience. Glad you're safe though.
I think your question might get more responses if you post it to the Leaf groups on Facebook.
I would have guessed the 12v battery, but you've already ruled that out.
LeafSpy would let you look at any error codes, but other than that I don't know what else to suggest.
If you're near Herts I could posdibly lend you an obd dongle...
Hopefully you've got a more timely reply but AFAIK you're looking at two different measures. The capacity of the battery refers to the amount of charge it can still deliver. But there is another constraint - voltage. The Leaf shuts down the battery depending on the voltage of the lowest cell in the battery. If you place the battery under stress when low - hill, relatively high speed - then the voltage could drop below the threshold, especially if the heater/air con has just kicked in.
It's not great software design for it to cut off without warning - although 30mph Turtle mode could be just as dangerous in the A1.
Did you try to restart it after a minute or so? In theory the voltage should have picked up by then, although maybe there's software to prevent a restart without a charge.
So sorry for your terrible ordeal, really. But there is no way that Spy Leaf reported 7 kW left with the dash showing only 5% left. You did not specify your Leaf's model year and battery size but this is what 7 kW left in the battery would have shown for the 24 kWh = 31%, the 30 kWh = 23% and the 40 kWh= 19%. Also, it is quite normal to have the estimate range indicator "disappear" at between 5 to 7%, just like petrol cars do. Simply because the computer cannot make a reliable prediction with so many variables against so little energy left. So even though you were only 3 miles from home, you carelessly played with fire by still driving on the highway at 65 mph AND accelerating, sorry... You best recourse at that time would have been to slow down, get off the highway and find the nearest public charger. Or use urban streets and really slow down to get home, while turning off heating or A/C and maximising the regeneration. It works ! Plus, I don't know what was your EV experience at that time but I suspect that you were relatively new to the Leaf. And yes, I know that this comment is certainly outdated and that the owner probably doesn't own the car anymore but I'm leaving it for others who might still own an older model Leaf, which is a great car. As is the 2016 that I still own and drive ! 😉
We had to figure out the hard way how some EVs (definitely not all) can have this issue of the 12V dying for no apparent reason. There are some things that can cause it but in our case we had the manufacturer battery that started dying on us. Thought it was due to improper charging at first but that wasn't the only issue it seems. After it went dry the 3rd time we replaced the battery and everything was fine for 2 weeks when it started failing again. And we made sure we charged the car properly this time. Took it to the dealer and they said it's the battery's fault and we should return it to where we got it from as it was deemed defective by the dealer. Like in your experience, they didn't know what the issue was and instead tried to blame the 12v battery. We exchanged the 2 week old battery for a brand new one and long behold it failed again the same day we got it!!! Needless to say we are going to do what some others seem to have had to do and get a smart charger for the 12V and keep checking on the battery's health. We had the car charging at the dealer right after we installed the new battery. So I believe that wasn't wise. Something in the vehicle causes the 12V battery to be drained and it not getting enough charge in return. Will have to see if this can be managed with a few new devices to keep the battery healthy. Seems like the car itself ain't good enough to do just that.
Heard of this somewhere else on the internet and there conclusion is that this can happen sometimes with the factory battery and that installing a bigger 12v battery than oem sorts it out
I bought an Optima Battery and put a Triple charger on it weekly or every two weeks.
I’ve 63k on mine 2018. I use a ctek regularly to top it off when I’ve time and I reconnected it once , as the plates sulphate as no Alternator & Reg. Ramming high dc current thru it. The ctek reconditioning is supposed to be good.
Black Friday deals
CTEK MXS 5.0 Fully Automatic Battery Charger (Charges, Maintains and Reconditions Car and Motorcycle Batteries) 12V, 5 Amp - UK Plug www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FC42HAA/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_MHZOFbQT0GSBS
mrankalnik kvo tolkoa e stanalo..umrql e akumulatora