2023 Leaf S - ~10,000 Miles - Died on highway 65mph -> 0

[thaq]

Not sure where this goes, but posting here. New 2023 Leaf S - took possession last Dec.

Last week, driving home one night, going about 60 mph on the highway, car just died. No power to motors/wheels. Dash lit up with various errors. Towed to dealer, no feedback yet on what the problem it. Thankfully i was already on an exit ramp, otherwise it was a potentially fatal accident waiting to happen as my car slowly drifted in neutral.

Once it came to a stop, it was in neutral, would not start again. Applied parking brake to keep it from rolling.

Errors on dash:
- When Parked Apply Parking Brake
- Service 12V Charge system Apply Parking Brake
- Key System Error See Owner's Manual

Just posting here for visibility and awareness to others. There is a design flaw in the system that caused the car to lose all power to wheels while at highway speeds. Will post updates when i hear what they learned.

Nissan doing little in terms of communications or even a loaner at this point.

 

[Toby]

Looks like a 12v battery problem.

 

[Learjet]

"There is a design flaw in the system that caused the car to lose all power to wheels while at highway speeds. Will post updates when i hear what they learned."

would love to hear what this design flaw is? Failure yes, design flaw?

 

[knightmb]

Just posting here for visibility and awareness to others. There is a design flaw in the system that caused the car to lose all power to wheels while at highway speeds. Will post updates when i hear what they learned.

Nissan doing little in terms of communications or even a loaner at this point.

Actually, sounds more like a safety system tripped instead. If you've ever shorted out your 12V system, it will do exactly that. You can actually reboot it out of safe mode by disconnecting the 12V battery, waiting for the computer to cycle off, then hook the 12V power back up and hope nothing was damaged. This may not be what happened, but the behavior sounds identical.

 

[LeftieBiker]

It can be considered to be a design flaw to have the 12 volt battery, which is needed to start the car, remain a critical component while driving.

 

[Toby]

It can be considered to be a design flaw to have the 12 volt battery, which is needed to start the car, remain a critical component while driving.

Considering the need for reliability one wonders why a better 12 volt battery wasn't used. The answer, of course, is cost. This is a classic example of a company passing a cost to the end user. The powers that be do this because they know they can get away with it.

 

[thaq]

So after being at the dealership for about two weeks, they concluded that the culprit was the ELECTRONIC SHIFTER ASSEMBLY. It was replaced and all is well with the car again.

Didnt get any details on why/how that module failing would cause the car to behave the way it did.

 

[TAS]

So after being at the dealership for about two weeks, they concluded that the culprit was the ELECTRONIC SHIFTER ASSEMBLY. It was replaced and all is well with the car again.

Didnt get any details on why/how that module failing would cause the car to behave the way it did.

I just experienced this exact same situation you described where the motor stopped but the car power was still on. Couldn’t shift into any gears and had trouble turning the car off. Got all of the warning messages as well. Interesting that the electronic shifter assy was faulty - did you ever receive an error message about the shifter being out of place (something to that effect) prior to this in incident? I’ve recently had 3 or 4 occurrences of this message.