Turtle and EV warning lights came on while driving!

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planetpapi

Member
Joined
Oct 8, 2014
Messages
9
Sorry if this has been posted. I checked (and searched) up to 22 pages and didn't quite find any for my satisfaction.
My 2014 LEAF SV got these lights a total of 3 times in a months period. First 2 occurrences, I was driving within the parking lot so I just restarted the LEAF and problem went away. But yesterday I was about to take an exit to go on freeway about 50ish miles per hour and all of a sudden the car dropped acceleration and I have to pull over. This time restarting didn't work. Called Nissan Customer service and was told to take it dealer ship. After the call, when I restart the lights went away and I drove home no problem. In all these 3 occurrences I have enough battery left (76% yesterday). Fixed an appointment with dealer this Friday.
Any one faced similar problem? I see posts on Turtle modes and EV warning lights but not while driving. Is this serious? Thanks in advance.
 
There is another thread just like this.
If I recall correctly, turned out to be bad 12V battery.
Dealer should do capacity test on the 12V battery.
12V battery is covered for free replacement under the 3 year / 36,000 mile warranty.

If the LEAF does weird strange things of this nature or on braking, 90+% of the time it is bad 12V battery.
 
TimLee said:
There is another thread just like this.
If I recall correctly, turned out to be bad 12V battery.
Dealer should do capacity test on the 12V battery.
12V battery is covered for free replacement under the 3 year / 36,000 mile warranty.

If the LEAF does weird strange things of this nature or on braking, 90+% of the time it is bad 12V battery.

Thanks for the reply. Can a bad battery cause a serious deceleration issue while driving? Once car is moving it should be Lithium Ion business. If it's not that's dangerous! I hope this never happen again(to any one of us).
 
There are numerous reports of a bad 12V battery causing significant braking problems.
A fairly new one is currently on the Active Topics page.
I agree that is troubling considering how poorly the LEAF maintains the 12V battery.
 
It is important that you make sure the dealership lets you know of any codes that are stored after these incidents, and come back and post them. Hopefully those codes will give the dealer enough information to find the offending piece of hardware. If there are no codes, I would suspect a total loss of 12 volt power somehow.
 
Since the car was on and running when the turtle came on and you had a high-ish SOC, I would not suspect the 12V at this time. An outright failure of the 12V bus would cause the car to go dark.

Besides running out of charge (which you didn't do), there's a few other reasons the turtle light can come on. It is used as a fail-safe for various scenarios.
They generally fall into two categories:
-Inverter/motor/DC/DC problems: Overheating or another electrical fault. This could include cooling system functions (bad pump, blockage in the system, etc) that are causing problems for the inverter, motor, or DC/DC.
-Traction battery problems: Bad component such as a voltage or current sensor, or module such as the BMS board, or a bad interconnection between battery modules (we HAVE seen the latter, it's in a thread from early 2013 but I don't have time at the moment to look it up).

Codes should be stored which will point out which component (or components!) are not happy. If you have Leafspy pro you can read the codes yourself and post them here. Just don't delete them! Hope this helps! :)
 
Updating my own post. Actually it's nothing to do with 12V battery. The dealer reasoned the accelerator pedal mechanism was the problem. They replaced the part. 3 months went good. GOD. Now as of yesterday the problem resurfaced. It happened at stop sign and I had to limp it to the next driveway with flasher lights on. Then again lost power within 6 miles after restarting! It's really dangerous to drive a LEAF with this kind of problem. Some one can easily rare end and it's going to be a serious mess.
Taking it to dealer again today.
 
planetpapi said:
Updating my own post. Actually it's nothing to do with 12V battery. The dealer reasoned the accelerator pedal mechanism was the problem. They replaced the part. 3 months went good. GOD. Now as of yesterday the problem resurfaced. It happened at stop sign and I had to limp it to the next driveway with flasher lights on. Then again lost power within 6 miles after restarting! It's really dangerous to drive a LEAF with this kind of problem. Some one can easily rare end and it's going to be a serious mess.
Taking it to dealer again today.

I don't see how in any path the accelerator pedal will immediately effect the low battery drive settings. The pedal just tells the ECU how fast the monkey behind the wheel wants to accelerate and that's where the logic of the pedal stops. The ECU then takes into account battery levels, ECO mode, and other stuff. Sounds like a poor diagnosis, they never fixed anything.
 
planetpapi said:
Updating my own post. Actually it's nothing to do with 12V battery. The dealer reasoned the accelerator pedal mechanism was the problem. They replaced the part. 3 months went good. GOD. Now as of yesterday the problem resurfaced. It happened at stop sign and I had to limp it to the next driveway with flasher lights on. Then again lost power within 6 miles after restarting! It's really dangerous to drive a LEAF with this kind of problem. Some one can easily rare end and it's going to be a serious mess.
Taking it to dealer again today.

I'd be giving someone at the dealership a rare end. :evil:
 
planetpapi said:
TimLee said:
There is another thread just like this.
If I recall correctly, turned out to be bad 12V battery.
Dealer should do capacity test on the 12V battery.
12V battery is covered for free replacement under the 3 year / 36,000 mile warranty.

If the LEAF does weird strange things of this nature or on braking, 90+% of the time it is bad 12V battery.

Thanks for the reply. Can a bad battery cause a serious deceleration issue while driving? Once car is moving it should be Lithium Ion business. If it's not that's dangerous! I hope this never happen again(to any one of us).

a moving car out of control is dangerous. one rolling to a stop is not nearly as much. the Car's brains run on the low voltage. its like having a car without brakes. which is safer? continuing to go or having a car smart enough to know it can't stop and cutting power?

10906150_10205981336120403_1919834430846742365_n.jpg


something I saw yesterday. too bad he didn't tell me ahead of time what he was going to do so I could get it on video!
 
planetpapi said:
Updating my own post. Actually it's nothing to do with 12V battery. The dealer reasoned the accelerator pedal mechanism was the problem. They replaced the part. 3 months went good. GOD. Now as of yesterday the problem resurfaced. It happened at stop sign and I had to limp it to the next driveway with flasher lights on. Then again lost power within 6 miles after restarting! It's really dangerous to drive a LEAF with this kind of problem. Some one can easily rare end and it's going to be a serious mess.
Taking it to dealer again today.
Hmm. Well... it's tough to do diagnostics when it's a rare event. Obviously this is a safety issue so it needs to be corrected for good asap.

I'd put the blame on the VCM (master computer). It's the one doing the measuring of the accelerator position, and there's a *very rare* chance the input circuitry (like the analog to digital converter, or the internal power circuitry for it) is sh!tting the bed. Otherwise it's a weird wiring issue, but I don't see how it would be ok for 3 months then go out again.

Edit: Forgot that you saw EV system light and turtle. That should set some codes for sure. Can you get them from the dealer next time?
 
Sure I will get the codes. Is it a good idea to talk to Nissan directly? I'm kind of scared to drive it and lost confidence that it will be fixed for good.
 
Got the LEAF back after 2weeks with dealer. The codes are P2127 and P2138. It's a major repair to replace the "Engine Room Harness". Technician pretty much took apart everything to the extent of skeleton, including bumpers, side panels, steering column, center console, brake assembly....the list goes on and on for 2 pages on the invoice. Was told the tech spent 25 hours to take it apart and put it back. More time than actually building the car itself at factory. Will drive it for a week and report back.
 
Wow, that sucks. The wiring harness is probably a good thing to replace. Even if it isn't directly the problem, there could have been a bad connection with one of the computers so replacing ensures that all of those connections will be re-connected, hopefully correctly. These types of issues are the hardest to figure out because it is almost always something electrical and usually a bad connection somewhere. But finding it is often the problem, especially when it happens so intermittently.

Oh.. and yes, I could see an accelerator pedal causing a problem like that. (for whoever it was saying it couldn't be that) It can certainly throw codes even on a gasoline car. I believe most throttles require 2 potentiometers. That way if one is failing, there will be a discrepancy and the computer will realize something is wrong with the pedal. So instead of trying to figure out which potentiometer is bad, it will not trust either one of them. Obviously, we can probably rule this out at this stage, but it was a viable possibility before. Although, I think usually there will be a code in the computer explaining that.
 
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