Possible battery or heater issue

[CRLeafSL]

I chose this title cause I'm really not sure what is going on with my car but here is what it's doing. I'm charging using the EVSEUpgrade EVSE connected to a 240 volt outlet so L2 charging. The car seems to be charging just fine, says hours to completion and you can watch on Carwings on where the state of charge is. I charge to roughly 80% maybe a little more but certainly not up to 100% and I don't want it sitting at 100%. It then sits overnight (yes outside, don't have a garage) and in the morning Carwings still says I have the same charge as the night before even though our temps have been very cold as in -20 degrees F or even colder. I preheat the car for about 10 to 15 minutes and then I go out and get into my car and turn it on. It shows only 3 battery bars (not the little capacity bars, but the big battery bars) and within a couple minutes of driving it says reducing power due to low battery and the turtle shows up and the yellow triangle. Now here is the weird part, if I turn off the heater, which is really hard to do since it's so freaking cold the battery bars slowly start to reappear as my range is increasing and it will raise to about half the bars being there, not the 10 I should have for the charge I put into it. It will finally raise enough to shut off the reduced power warning and the lights disappear, until I turn the heater back on and then it drops the battery bars again. Anyone have any idea what might be causing this? I already contacted the dealer and it's going in Monday just was wondering if anyone had any ideas before it goes in.

 

[HPJ]

Sounds like a heater problem, just my guess!

 

[Tomasz]

To me it looks like the heater has a short somewhere and causes the battery voltage to drop. Doesn't discharge it fast enough so when you remove the short the battery pack recovers, but the voltage drop misleads the computer to think the pack is discharged.

 

[planet4ever]

in the morning Carwings still says I have the same charge as the night before even though our temps have been very cold as in -20 degrees F or even colder.

Are you sure that you have gotten an update from the car for that reading? i.e. you should have seen a spinning circle for a while that finally stopped, and then showed you a new percentage. If so, the percentage at that point in time should match the number of bars that would show on the dash at the same time if you you went out and turned the car on. If it says 83% then you have ten bars. 10/12 = 0.8333...

I preheat the car for about 10 to 15 minutes and then I go out and get into my car and turn it on. It shows only 3 battery bars (not the little capacity bars, but the big battery bars)

There is no way that heating the car for a quarter hour or less could really use more than half the energy the battery is capable of holding. The heater can't use even as much as 6 kW. In a quarter of an hour, that would be less than 1.5kWh.

within a couple minutes of driving it says reducing power due to low battery and the turtle shows up and the yellow triangle. Now here is the weird part, if I turn off the heater, which is really hard to do since it's so freaking cold the battery bars slowly start to reappear as my range is increasing and it will raise to about half the bars being there, not the 10 I should have for the charge I put into it. It will finally raise enough to shut off the reduced power warning and the lights disappear, until I turn the heater back on and then it drops the battery bars again. Anyone have any idea what might be causing this?

Yes. The computer that calculates how many bars to show is getting confused. Either it is getting bad numbers from the battery computer or it is making errors itself. The latter may be because of a logic error in its algorithm or because it is getting, and trying to recover from, program checks.

Tomasz could possibly be right. A drop in traction battery voltage would cause the battery computer to give bad numbers to the dash computer. But if there is a short in the heater, where is the energy going, and why wouldn't a fuse blow? My personal guess is that the real source of your problem is that the 12v battery is not putting out enough voltage for the computers to work reliably, and the traction battery is not putting out enough amperage for the motor, heater, and DC/DC converter to all work simultaneously. The DC/DC converter cuts off, so can't charge the 12v battery.

If I'm right, both the traction battery and the 12v battery need to be tested.

Ray

 

[ksnogas2112]

Definitely sounds like something's wrong with the heater/connections. It's not helping that the battery temp is probably sitting at 2 bars or less which would be part of the reduced power possibly.

Has anyone seen how much power the battery warmer takes? If he's outside at night in subzero temps the battery warmer needs to run all night.

 

[CRLeafSL]

Ok to answer some of things that have been stated here. Yes my car does sit outside all night. Also yes I know carwings updates cause I have it set in my android phone that whenever I sign in, it automatically updates and I do get the confirmation stating that carwings updated successfully so yes the reading I'm getting off of carwings is current.

I think you guys might have been onto something with the 12 volt battery being low cause the car did sit Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday without being used since those were my days off and it was simply too cold to go anywhere. I haven't taken any readings of the battery because:

Last night I set the charging timer to 80% and I left it plugged in all night until I left at 5:30 am for work. I did preheat with the car still plugged into "shore power" which worked just fine. The only thing still a miss is when I went out and unplugged the car and turned it on to go to work, I had all 12 battery bars when I should only have 10 since I did a timer to 80 % and again carwings showed 80% so I still don't think it's reading the battery level correctly. However the car acted normally otherwise. No major battery drop even running the heater. Granted we are above zero during the day and dropping to about -8 to -10 overnight, but warmer than it has been. I'm still concerned that it's not correctly reading the battery. I'm still probably going to take it in just to have it looked at.

 

[Reddy]

I had something "similar" happen with my 2011 Leaf, though I can't be sure. I had 3 battery bars left and pre-heated via the internet before leaving work (yes, it was cold, but only around 10 F). When I turned on the car and started driving, I saw the yellow triangle ! and was limited to 25 mph in D and only 20 mph in ECO. I restarted the car, but still had the same error, so I drove home at 25 mph (it was 6:30pm on Dec 31st). Once home, I charged and restarted the car a couple of hours later and the error went away. I charged to 100% and planned to take the car into the dealership when Leaf tech got back from vacation. They did two software updates and the worthless battery check. Anyway, the tech said there wasn't much data available about the event, except that the battery had been at 10% when it happened. He said if it happens again, to leave the car ON and get it to the dealership so that he can pull the codes.

 

[adric22]

To me it looks like the heater has a short somewhere and causes the battery voltage to drop. Doesn't discharge it fast enough so when you remove the short the battery pack recovers, but the voltage drop misleads the computer to think the pack is discharged.

That thought occurred to me too. But then I thought, where would the energy be going? I mean to pull that much power from such a large battery, the energy has to go somewhere. If it is a short then something should melt almost immediately. Of course the car should have breakers or other safety mechanisms in place to prevent that.

 

[CRLeafSL]

Well I thought it was getting better, I was wrong. I didn't charge the car last night cause it was still sitting around 70% charge and our low was going to be right around 0 so I figured it would be alright. Woke up this morning and refreshed carwings, yes read that again I DID refresh carwings and it said I was still right at the same level of 70%. I preheated for 10 to 15 mins like I do every morning. Went out and turned my car on and I indeed did have 7 battery bars. I drove literally about a mile if that and I got the same message Reducing power due to low battery. On a battery over half charged? Are you freaking kidding me. Same as before the remaining battery bars started falling very fast so I killed the heater and drove to work with it off. It was about 5 degrees this morning which it was pretty much all night last night as well so not really cold. Something is definately wrong here when it's telling me I'm low on power with over half battery charge.

 

[vegastar]

It could be a bad cell that sags too much in low temperatures but behaves more normally in normal temperatures. Turning the heater on draws an extra 6kW from the pack wich can be the tipping point for the LBC to assume that the cell is past the voltage knee and so it will be empty soon. This explains the fast drop in charge bars.

You should test if driving faster with a higher continuous discharge current gives the same result, with the heater off.

 

[ksnogas2112]

Time to take it to the dealer

 

[CRLeafSL]

Well I'm kind of torn if it really needs to go in or not. Last few days have been in the low to mid 30's and the car seems to be acting normal now. Not sure what was wrong but everything is working fine so not sure if the dealer is going to find anything now. I'm sure there might be something in history, but not sure if it's going to be worth giving up my leaf for a couple of days. My appointment is for Tuesday but I work tuesday thru Friday so they were going to have me bring it in Monday and give me a loaner so they could have it Tuesday.

 

[planet4ever]

Well I'm kind of torn if it really needs to go in or not. Last few days have been in the low to mid 30's and the car seems to be acting normal now. Not sure what was wrong but everything is working fine so not sure if the dealer is going to find anything now.

If it is a bad 12v battery they should be able to spot it even if there aren't any immediate symptoms. If it is a sagging voltage in the traction battery the Lithium Battery Controller will almost certainly have logged the problem, and they can read it out. Their tests would find a bad cell in the traction battery, if that's the problem. You might not be so lucky if it is the PDM, but you did have a very serious problem, and Nissan needs to find and fix it under warranty. Take it in. You'll be very sorry in the next cold spell if you don't.

Ray

 

[Joefixer]

My 2013 Leaf S with 3500mi., heater went out this AM. Leaf at Nissan Service Dept. now awaiting troubleshooting and fix.

 

[CRLeafSL]

Well my Leaf is at the dealer. I'm in a 2013 Nissan Juke hopefully for a short time. My appointment is for 1 pm tomorrow so we will see if anything shows up or they can find anything. I will let you guys know if they do or not.

 

[CRLeafSL]

Dealer called me today and said there were 15 Can codes saved in the car. He didn't specify which particular codes but said there were 15 of them. Of course everything is checking out O.K. now that the weather is better, but they are keeping it for another day. The Leaf tech is going to charge it up overnight and clear the codes tomorrow and take it for a drive and see if he can get any of the codes to come back since these are older codes. So I guess another day in the Juke.

 

[CRLeafSL]

Since nobody is responding, not sure if anyone is following this or not or even cares but I thought I would post an update. Car is still at the dealer. They charged it overnight and cleared the codes. Then they drove the car with the heater on till Low Battery warning and none of the codes returned. They are going to try it again tonight charging it up again and tomorrow they are going to drive it again with the heater on and see if any codes return. If no codes they are going to return the car to me. The Service guy said that they would probably have to have the car if the temps drop really low again so they can recreate exactly what it was doing. So far everything they have done tests out fine so they have no idea what happened or what went wrong.

 

[vegastar]

Thanks for the update. They really need to test the car in the same conditions (very low temperature).

 

[6yearstilbreakeven]

Since nobody is responding, not sure if anyone is following this or not or even cares but I thought I would post an update. Car is still at the dealer. They charged it overnight and cleared the codes. Then they drove the car with the heater on till Low Battery warning and none of the codes returned. They are going to try it again tonight charging it up again and tomorrow they are going to drive it again with the heater on and see if any codes return. If no codes they are going to return the car to me. The Service guy said that they would probably have to have the car if the temps drop really low again so they can recreate exactly what it was doing. So far everything they have done tests out fine so they have no idea what happened or what went wrong.

Thanks for the update. My 2013 Sl has been at the dealer for over 30 days now. It took about 3 attempts for them to determine the ptc box was bad. I had to purchase a digital thermometer, and bring the car to them when the heat failed. Once they saw it was blasting cold air with the heat on high, they took the car and started fixing it. The thermometer is cheap (20 or so bucks) and easy to use. That would be my advice for you, hope that helps.

Good luck, and keep us updated.

 

[CRLeafSL]

Ok. To keep everyone in the loop, basically they found nothing. The codes that were stored in the computer were for communication issues. The Tech charged my car up and cleared all the codes and then drove it with the heater on and yes my heater works just fine. He drove it to low battery and then checked to see if any codes returned and they did not. He tried again last night charging it up and then checked again this morning for any codes and none. Everything is working as it should so I have my car back now. They also did my yearly battery check since I was about a month away from needing it done anyways, but didn't get a sheet with stars or anything on it so don't know how I rated. Just says on my work order that it was done. The only thing they could suggest was pretty much same as you guys said make sure carwings actually updates as it's supposed to. If it gets really cold again and it acts up I guess I will just have to take it back.

I don't think my heater was ever at fault cause I always had heat during this entire problem. The problem I think was more related to the car not really knowing what level the battery was actually at and therefore prematurely sending the car into "limited power" mode.