Leaf stops charging on L2 chargers

[Bateman]

My Leaf with 1,000 miles on it is suddenly not charging to 100% on my L2 charger at home. It stops charging around 94% and I have to manually restart. I wonder if this is the same problem.

You have a '13 Leaf? Which EVSE do you have? (No, your "L2 charger" is not a charger. The charger is on-board the car.)

Yep, EVSE, not charger. I misspoke. I have the Nissan-branded Aeronvironment EVESE installed in my garage. I have a 2013 Leaf SV with QC+ LED package.

 

[planet4ever]

My Leaf with 1,000 miles on it is suddenly not charging to 100% on my L2 charger at home. It stops charging around 94% and I have to manually restart.

Where are you reading the 94%? Dash "Trip computer"? CarWings? Some smartphone app? one of the meters/monitors described on this board? How many charge bars do you see when this happens?

Ray

 

[wadel1]

The PDM arrives today for my '13 Leaf...been in shop almost 3weeks.

 

[Techie0212]

Is it really the PDM? For now, the dealership is having me wait till the July update in software ... Can they pay for my month of not using the LEAF? It is not the EVSE ...

=======
The ClipperCreek CS-series EVSE communicates with the vehicle via a signal on what is called the "pilot line". This signal tells the vehicle that the charging station that it is ready to provide a charge, and communicates the maximum electrical current available (such as 30 Amps, 48 Amps, etc).

It is then up to the vehicle to initiate the charge ("charge request") and to stop the charge. You indicate that your 2013 Nissan Leaf does indeed initiate a charge. You related that the green charging LED on the ClipperCreek station turns on and you get about 5 minutes of charging before it stops. The ClipperCreek EVSE will stop charging under the following circumstances:

1. The vehicle tells the charging station, via the "pilot line" that it no longer requires a charge.
2. The user has pressed the start/stop button on the front panel of the charging station.
3. The user physically disconnects the J1772 connector cable from the vehicle, interrupting the charge.
4. Power to the charging station is turned off (such as at the circuit breaker, or in the event of an electrical blackout).
5. The charging station safety circuitry encounters a condition that causes it to suspend charging for the protection of the user (such as a disconnected ground or a ground fault).

I assume that the above cases numbers 2 through 4 do not apply to this situation. In case #5, the red Protection LED on the charging station would illuminate. You mentioned that this does not happen. That leaves case #1 as the most likely event, with the vehicle itself suspending the charge. This is further supported by your similar experiences with your 120VAC portable charger not supplying a fully battery charge as well as the same situation encountered at (non-ClipperCreek brand) public charging stations.

It is our recommendation that you take your 2013 Nissan Leaf to the dealership and request the Nissan Leaf Specialist to run tests on the vehicle's battery management system. We've heard of similar problems with the 2013 Nissan Leaf which has resulted in the servicing of this on-board vehicle equipment.

Best Regards,

Gary Gruber
Production Manager,
ClipperCreek, Inc.

 

[davewill]

Is it really the PDM? ...

There's been too many complaints involving too many different EVSEs. Yeah, it's the PDM. It's possible they could develop a software fix...in fact that would be excellent news as it would be crazy expensive if they had to recall all the PDMs out there.

 

[Bateman]

Is it really the PDM? For now, the dealership is having me wait till the July update in software ...

Do you know if that software update requires the car to go to the dealer, or is it over the air via carwings?

 

[Bateman]

My Leaf with 1,000 miles on it is suddenly not charging to 100% on my L2 charger at home. It stops charging around 94% and I have to manually restart.

Where are you reading the 94%? Dash "Trip computer"? CarWings? Some smartphone app? one of the meters/monitors described on this board? How many charge bars do you see when this happens?

Ray

Hi Ray,

Carwings sends me a text stating that charging has stopped (different from 'charging completed' normally recieved.). Also, the car's dashboard batter percentage read 94% and the carwings iPhone app showed the last bar wasn't full. Finally, my Aerovionment L2 charger remained on and without any fault indicated. All signs indicate the Leaf prematurely self-stopped charging. Will try a few more times over the next few days to reproduce.

 

[Techie0212]

Right now, it is to go to the dealer sometime in July ... Thats what they are telling me ... No PDM swap-out ... I guess its just using the 120v EVSE for the time being ... just can't phathom why this is happening, even on the Nissan recommended EVSE (AeroEnvironment).

 

[Bateman]

So I pluggged mine in tonight at 53% and it stopped charging at 87%. No timers set on the car. This is getting very frustrating. :x

 

[sgomberg]

I have a 2013 Leaf and have quite a few problems with chargers. The vehicle was at the dealer twice for a total of 3 weeks. They changed the charging inductor (not sure of the exact part). It works at home on my AeroVironment, but not at my office. My office location has 8 Eaton chargers, everyone else is successful (Leaf, Volt, Tesla, Prius, C-Max).

Any suggestions?

 

[leafraker]

Hello all,

I've had my SV for about 2 months now and have been lurking on this site a bit. I have a very similar situation where my Leaf didn't charge to 100% last night and the EV system warning light was illuminated. I took it to the dealer this AM and about 3 hours later I got a text from my Leaf that charging was complete (as opposed to the charging stopped text I got in the middle of the night). The service adviser called me about an hour later and informed me that they were able to charge it with the trickle charger (they called it this - I know it's an EVSE), but Nissan informed them of a known issue with 240v EVSEs. Apparently, Nissan will be releasing a software update for the Leaf in "about a week." In the meantime, I plan on charging with my 240v EVSE until it stops and then plugging in the 120v. So be on the look out for a voluntary recall soon. If you don't see one, I recommend calling your dealer and asking about this update.

That's the short of it, but there's more to this issue that doesn't involve my Leaf. My boss has a Leaf as well and went through this charging issue about 3-4 weeks ago. His issue had the exact same symptoms, but they replaced his power distribution module main board after over a week of analysis. The story as I understand it is that some component on the board had failed. Interestingly, they didn't replace his board with the exact same one these cars a shipping with. He got a new version of the board that isn't available for order from the dealers. (It may be now, but wasn't at the time)

Even though his fix was much different I think these are the same or closely related. We'll see if my "software update" is truly that. If they found a s/w fix to keep PDM boards from not failing, great! But I wouldn't be surprised if there's more to the fix than that.

-raker

 

[davewill]

... The service adviser called me about an hour later and informed me that they were able to charge it with the trickle charger (they called it this - I know it's an EVSE), but Nissan informed them of a known issue with 240v EVSEs. ...

Delaying tactic. Others on here have reported the same behavior developing after a bit on 120v as well.

 

[jaypup]

I am having this exact same issue. I was using trickle charge for a while (only had my leaf about a month... leasing it). Have charged at various L2 chargers and a L3 twice without issue. Now that I have a home L2 charger... I've discovered after about 4 successful charges on it... now the car quits charging after about 30-45 mins.

I went back to my trickle charger and it worked fine. Just got back from charging at another L2 charger that I had previously used with success and got the same issue... I'm making an appointment at the dealership to have it checked out this weekend. I can get by with the trickle charge for a few days.

Don't be surprised if it starts happening with trickle as well. Other folks who have had this problem reported it in that case as well. You might be better off just getting the car into the dealer while you can still drive it there.

UPDATE: Trickle charger ended up quitting on me as well, I took it in and they confirmed the charging module was bad. It took a week to replace but they took care of everything. I've had my Leaf back for awhile now and it's running perfectly.

 

[Techie0212]

We have to wait till the 120v goes out? That is my only means for now, as the Clipper Creek 220v is being rejected by the LEAF PDM ... weird as it only started doing this after 2 months of charging.

 

[jelloslug]

We have to wait till the 120v goes out? That is my only means for now, as the Clipper Creek 220v is being rejected by the LEAF PDM ... weird as it only started doing this after 2 months of charging.

You need to take it to a different dealership.

 

[wrecker]

The service adviser called me about an hour later and informed me that they were able to charge it with the trickle charger (they called it this - I know it's an EVSE), but Nissan informed them of a known issue with 240v EVSEs. Apparently, Nissan will be releasing a software update for the Leaf in "about a week." In the meantime, I plan on charging with my 240v EVSE until it stops and then plugging in the 120v. So be on the look out for a voluntary recall soon. If you don't see one, I recommend calling your dealer and asking about this update.

I am having the same issue with my 2 month old SV. I took it to the dealership in San Jose, CA. They kept the car overnight and gave it back to me with the exact same line... Nissan is going to release a software update and they will call me when its available. I think they are just adding a "hack" (for lack of a better term) that will basically restart the charging automatically whenever the car senses that the charging has stopped but the battery is not charged to the level set (80 or 100%). I have had this issue for about a week and I hacked together a little script in python that queries Carwings every 5 mins and if it detects the car is not charging sends the "Start Charging" command and I have been able to charge up to 100% on L2 EVSE.

 

[Techie0212]

Share how to "hack" carwings ...

 

[jasper]

I am having the same problem. I have had my 2013 Leaf for 3 1/2 months and last week my home charger started cutting off after 20 to 30 minutes. At first the dealer told me that it was my charger. But they had the same problem when they tried to use their charger on my Leaf. After that the dealer told me that I needed a software update. Now I am being told that this is a problem with some 2013 Leafs and Nissan doesn't know how to resolve the issue.

I followed up with the dealer again today since they have had my Leaf for 5 days. They are telling me that there is no way to resolve this issue and that I just need to wait 30 days for the Lemon law to kick in.

I contacted Leaf customer service at 877-664-2738 on July 1st. and they worked with the dealer on getting my Leaf fixed. Within 24 hours my Leaf was back on the road and running fine. Nissan instructed the dealer to reinstall the PDM software and that did the trick.

 

[cwerdna]

I am having the same problem. I have had my 2013 Leaf for 3 1/2 months and last week my charger started cutting off after 20 to 30 minutes. At first the dealer told me that it was my charger. But they had the same problem when they tried to use their charger on my Leaf. After that the dealer told me that I needed a software update. Now I am being told that this is a problem with some 2013 Leafs and Nissan doesn't know how to resolve the issue.

Just to be clear here, the PDM under the hood of the '13 contains the on-board charger.

The L1 and L2 external units you're referring to are NOT chargers. They're EVSE. See the diagram at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=262630#p262630" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

 

[jelloslug]

I am having the same problem. I have had my 2013 Leaf for 3 1/2 months and last week my charger started cutting off after 20 to 30 minutes. At first the dealer told me that it was my charger. But they had the same problem when they tried to use their charger on my Leaf. After that the dealer told me that I needed a software update. Now I am being told that this is a problem with some 2013 Leafs and Nissan doesn't know how to resolve the issue.

You need to take it to a different dealer.