Any way to get a Nissan Dealer to fix broken Chademo charger?

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jake14mw

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 12, 2017
Messages
180
Location
Connecticut, USA
Hi All,

I am very happy with my 2014 SL that I recently purchased. However, there is only one Chademo charger within a 25 minute drive from my house. This is Middletown Nissan in Middletown, CT. From reports on Plugshare, their Chademo charger has been out of service for 2 years! I stopped there recently, and asked about it. A sales guy said, oh, it just got fixed. I said oh, great! He walked me out to it, and nope, not fixed. He acknowledged that it had been broken for a long time. He suggested I contact Nissan Corporate to put pressure on them. I went to the Nissan USA website, and filled out a question about it. Just got a useless email back saying Nissan dealerships are Independently Owned and Operated.

Has anyone had any luck getting their dealership to fix theirs? I won't need to use it very much, but it would be nice knowing that if I forgot to charge the car one day, I could get it charged quickly. Given that Nissan has chosen to stay with lower range for the 2018 Leaf, I think they need to provide a fast charging network.
 
Dealerships are franchises that have very little to do with the corporate brand. You get some standout excellent dealerships but most are crap. Unless there is a corporate mandate to have working chargers installed, there is nothing corporate can do to force the dealership to make it work.

You are asking the dealership to spend more money to fix something that not only cost a lot of money to install but costs a lot of money to maintain and brings in zero revenue. It could be argued that it actually hurts their sales when people show up to charge their car and hang around for a half hour. While the people on the edge of buying an EV or not look at you and say... Nah, I'll go buy a gasser.

It's a tough sell.
 
Yeap, dealers sometimes have nothing to do with the corporate centers. They can be totally separate companies with little liability.
 
You could happen to mention the 2-year outage while a prospective LEAF buyer is in the showroom. :twisted:
 
jake14mw said:
He suggested I contact Nissan Corporate to put pressure on them. I went to the Nissan USA website, and filled out a question about it. Just got a useless email back saying Nissan dealerships are Independently Owned and Operated.
Correct. In most places in the US, automakers can’t own dealers. Google for tesla franchise laws if you want to see the battles Tesla’s been facing.
 
Damn... There's a few near me and the one that is closest to work has been broken for 6+ weeks. They keep saying a part is on the way to fix it, but I think that's bull. There's no way lead time on a part could be that long.
 
Tsiah said:
Damn... There's a few near me and the one that is closest to work has been broken for 6+ weeks. They keep saying a part is on the way to fix it, but I think that's bull. There's no way lead time on a part could be that long.

6 week lead time is actually extraordinarily good. I think the dealer is feeding you BS, it will still be broken in 6 weeks. But in general that low of a leadtime is very good. Components usually have a 12-40 week leadtime. Vishay is the leader in my eyes of terrible leadtimes, usually approaching a year. Then you need to actually manufacture whatever it is plus shipping a few times and installation. So if whatever it is that's broken is not sitting on a shelf, even a few months is pretty good.
 
2k1Toaster said:
Tsiah said:
Damn... There's a few near me and the one that is closest to work has been broken for 6+ weeks. They keep saying a part is on the way to fix it, but I think that's bull. There's no way lead time on a part could be that long.

6 week lead time is actually extraordinarily good. I think the dealer is feeding you BS, it will still be broken in 6 weeks. But in general that low of a leadtime is very good. Components usually have a 12-40 week leadtime. Vishay is the leader in my eyes of terrible leadtimes, usually approaching a year. Then you need to actually manufacture whatever it is plus shipping a few times and installation. So if whatever it is that's broken is not sitting on a shelf, even a few months is pretty good.

Not really, EvGo fixes their chargers within 24-48 hours around 90% of the time, sometimes it takes a little longer, but not much, so it can be done.

As for the OP, try calling Nissan Consumer Affairs, this is the same number that is in your warranty book for out of warranty repairs, I have had good luck in having them help get Nissan dealers to get their chargers fixed.
 
I personally rallied some dealers in my area and Nissan to go back to the manufacturer and get some satisfaction. In my area, the problem equipment was manufactured by ABB. Dealers supposedly had the ability to choose between suppliers but in this area they only had one choice.

The 20 kW chargers were problematic from the start but were under warranty. They would frequently break down but eventually be repaired sooner or later. Parts are/were expensive and once the machines were out of warranty the dealers did not want to start to have to pay high repair costs on proven problematic equipment.

ABB (the manufacturer) knew the equipment was junk and was interested in selling the dealers new 50 kW equipment. Now, you have to remember that any dealers who have Quick Charge equipment, asked for it and paid for the equipment, and Nissan Corp paid for the install and dictated the layout and design as they do with everything at a franchisee.

Dealers did/do not have to provide Quick Chargers. So originally dealers that chose to provide it shelled out around $15,000. Repairs per episode were costing in the thousands and sometime many thousands of dollars. Once out of warranty, dealers lost all incentive to spend that much in repairs for equipment that was doomed.

Customer complaints to Nissan and dealers, rallying dealers, and customers/dealers pressuring Nissan to go to the equipment supplier to pressure them into supplying supposedly better units. In this case, 50 kW units. These units are throttled back due to the initial equipment underground is not robust enough because it was only set up to handle 20 kW.

My advice is to be nice to your dealer(s) and talk to those at the top. I also suggest talking to the equipment manufacturing company and tech (if possible), become actively involved, and do what you can with them and Nissan to leverage the equipment manufacturer to repair or replace the lemon equipment. It has worked in my area! I just wish the the equipment could work at it's 50 kW rating. Good Luck!
 
^^^
Hence the joke is that ABB = Another Broken Box. I am a bit surprised though, as ABB is a huge company and I figure their stuff should be pretty robust.

But, yeah, if I were a business owner, I wouldn't be too keen on spending thousands of $ on something that's not reliable and doesn't pay for itself.
 
cwerdna said:
^^^
Hence the joke is that ABB = Another Broken Box. I am a bit surprised though, as ABB is a huge company and I figure their stuff should be pretty robust.

But, yeah, if I were a business owner, I wouldn't be too keen on spending thousands of $ on something that's not reliable and doesn't pay for itself.
I find ABB boxes to work overall, except the ones at KIA dealerships, those rarely work.
 
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