Nissan admits problems with telematics, is manufacturing a new part to replace defective units

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brenton

Active member
Joined
Sep 17, 2017
Messages
25
I had a royal fight with my Nissan dealership. This is the third time (or fourth? losing track...) bringing the car in for the same issue where the TCU drains the 12v battery and I refused to come get my car until they did something about it.

They finally conceded to have a Nissan engineer look at it when he visited, and today they called me to let e know that they were finally admitting that the TCU had a problem. They said as long as I didn't use the Carwings (NissanConnect) app, it wouldn't cause the drain (I don't believe that) They said that they would be replacing my unit when the new part arrives. Software upgrade is not an option. It sounded like Nissan is actually manufacturing a new different part. No timeline on when that will actually happen.
 
The general issue with all these telematics solutions are that they wake up the car to request information. If the polling is too frequent the car stays powered up and drains the 12v. Or the car takes a long time to go back to 'sleep' (a low power draw state.)

So letting (or forcing) the car to sleep and not waking it up until a drive is in fact a solution, albeit with loss of telematics.

You might be able to stop nagging the car only from the phone App side of things, but you will have to actually CLOSE the app. Don't let it operate in the background.
 
The few times I have had issues happened when I did not get plug in reminder and/or charge complete emails and texts. Therefore, just avoiding the use of the App may not prevent the issue unless you also disable ALL notifications (something I am not willing to do so I tolerate an occaisional fuse pull/DTC clear session). I rarely use the EV Connect App to check status or start climate control, but it is nice to have when I do want to use it..
 
Sadly I think we were told the same thing last year about Nissan having engineers look at this and acknowledging a problem. Sounded like they were going to get a fix out relatively soon.... We still wait. This is absolutely horrible response from Nissan. They have damage customers vehicles and have provided no recourse. As far as I am concerned customers should be able to demand reimbursement for batteries replaced while this issue persists. Once it turns into a cash drain for Nissan then they will spring into action. Until then we are going to keep getting the run around from clueless dealers who look at you with suspicion and mocking when you tell them of this issue. They will not acknowledge it.

So I think we are getting the standard run around response. Once you push back hard enough they will give you the "we know about it and are working on it". We should be able to say then put it in writing, I will put a new battery in here at the dealer and guess who is going to keep replacing that battery until Nissan fixes this? LOL Wishful thinking I know. I am holding off on the TCU upgrade. Which at this rate means I probably will never do it because Nissan will drop support for the cars before they ever fix the TCU.
 
this is why I'm fed up with Nissan...

my Leaf has a 24kWh battery about 60% charged but still this morning the 12 volt battery was at a deadly 9.90 volts!!!!!
why oh why Nissan do you design a bad system like this my Leaf has power enough to keep that important 12 volt battery alive or even feed my whole house
 
bitmanEV said:
my Leaf has a 24kWh battery about 60% charged but still this morning the 12 volt battery was at a deadly 9.90 volts!!!!!
why oh why Nissan do you design a bad system like this my Leaf has power enough to keep that important 12 volt battery alive or even feed my whole house

Because if the 12v battery is bad/defective, no amount of charging would revive it! This issue has been covered extensively in other threads, so no need for another topic just to complain.
 
Hi there.

Many of us are having the same problem. There is nothing wrong with your 12V battery. My 5 y/o battery still holds a charge just fine, even if I replaced it thinking it was bad. The new 3G TCU gets locked 'on' downloading certain data. It remains active until the 12V is dead.

There is a workaround. In your "Carwings" setting in the car:

1. Disable data sharing with Nissan
2. Remove all saved charging locations
3. Disable downloading of data

Essentially, anything that connects to Nissan to download data programmatically needs to be disabled.

With the above done:

- You can still update charging stations manually if you wish. Know that there are phone apps that could serve this purpose better as they show chargers status, history, rating, etc.
- You can send commands to turn your climate controls on/off or program a timer for it.
- You can see your battery charge status
- Your trip data can be retrieved by the mobile or web apps.
- You can still upload your vehicle's data to Nissan if you set it to "when the car starts" (or something like that)
- You can command your car to start charging
- You can send Google Maps addresses to your onboard navigation system

So, overall, not too bad of a compromise. Your battery will no longer drain but the 3G TCU is still crap so once every few months you may lose connectivity to your car. If that happens you can either "pull the fuse" (search this forum) or simply disconnect one of the 12V battery terminals for a few mins to reset it.

Regards,
JR
 
I had the free replacement done on my 2015 and since then I've never actually bothered to set up CarWings again. At first it was laziness, then I started reading about the problems so I've just left it alone. I find I really don't miss CarWings all that much. Or more specifically I do miss some of the functions but the implementation was poor enough that I find it's not much of a loss overall.
 
jdoe000007 said:
Any body have any update to the new part to replace defective units ?
Nothing official from Nissan. I reported the problem to the EV hotline, and they said they knew about the problem and would let me know the problem was resolved.

That was over a year ago.
 
Nubo said:
I had the free replacement done on my 2015 and since then I've never actually bothered to set up CarWings again. At first it was laziness, then I started reading about the problems so I've just left it alone. I find I really don't miss CarWings all that much. Or more specifically I do miss some of the functions but the implementation was poor enough that I find it's not much of a loss overall.

I used it 3 times today: plugged in at lunch (can't pass up "free" charging) and needed status updates.
The truth is, with the (new) modem and (new) iOS app, requests are much faster. Some of it may just be a better app, but some of it is definitely the faster transmission speeds for a 3G modem. I notice that charging station updates (and even driving data uploads) are much faster than they were before.
 
Stanton said:
Nubo said:
I had the free replacement done on my 2015 and since then I've never actually bothered to set up CarWings again. At first it was laziness, then I started reading about the problems so I've just left it alone. I find I really don't miss CarWings all that much. Or more specifically I do miss some of the functions but the implementation was poor enough that I find it's not much of a loss overall.

I used it 3 times today: plugged in at lunch (can't pass up "free" charging) and needed status updates.
The truth is, with the (new) modem and (new) iOS app, requests are much faster. Some of it may just be a better app, but some of it is definitely the faster transmission speeds for a 3G modem. I notice that charging station updates (and even driving data uploads) are much faster than they were before.

Yeah, maybe I'll set it up. Not ALL of the upgraded units are defective, I take it?
 
Nubo said:
Not ALL of the upgraded units are defective, I take it?

As far as I know, there seems to be a bug in the firmware. I would expect to need to pull the audio fuse four times a year to keep it working.
 
Nubo said:
Yeah, maybe I'll set it up. Not ALL of the upgraded units are defective, I take it?
The defect doesn't prevent it from working. It will work just fine up... until till the point locks up and stops giving updates, after which you need to pull the fuse to avoid draining the 12V battery.

I see no measurable difference in speed of updates between the 2G and 3G radios. It still takes almost a minute to get an update from the car (if it succeeds, which it still often doesn't).
 
WetEV said:
Nubo said:
Not ALL of the upgraded units are defective, I take it?

As far as I know, there seems to be a bug in the firmware. I would expect to need to pull the audio fuse four times a year to keep it working.

I haven't had to do a "fuse pull" (over 6 months) since I deleted all my "saved charging locations" (including my home).
 
Stanton said:
WetEV said:
Nubo said:
Not ALL of the upgraded units are defective, I take it?

As far as I know, there seems to be a bug in the firmware. I would expect to need to pull the audio fuse four times a year to keep it working.

I haven't had to do a "fuse pull" (over 6 months) since I deleted all my "saved charging locations" (including my home).

Thanks I'll give this a try. Weather is getting warm and turning on the climate control on the 18th tee will be a nice thing. ;)
 
I've had the 12v battery drain issue for a few years (2013 leaf). The occurrence is unpredictable, except that it usually occurs when the car is not plugged in overnight to charge.

I've done some testing as some have checking the draw on the battery when the car was turned off, and found up to a 2.5amp draw. I plan to start pulling fuses when I see this draw again, but it takes some work as one of the bigger fuse panels is next to the battery and a pain to open up.

Others have determined the TCU fuse is the same as the audio/radio? I may try pulling that first when I see this ghost amp draw.
 
My 2013 LEAF has had this 12V battery problem intermittently from day one. For me, updating to the 3G radio transceiver did not make it any worse, nor better. About a year ago I threatened to return the car under the Lemon Law, then let them keep it for a week to diagnose, and Surprise! It was finally fixed once and for all, no more problems.

Until 2 days ago.

After driving perfectly for a whole year, I took the car in for its 60,000 mile checkup (to a different dealership, I'd moved) and brought the car back home. Two days later the 12V battery was stone dead reading 3 volts, rain was coming, and I couldn't close the windows.

Disconnected the battery, put on a 2 amp charger for 16 hours and connected it back up. Everything works fine, but there is a constant 500mA drain (0.5 amp) as measured by a Fluke model i30s DC current clamp. This afternoon, driving it 10 miles and letting it sit 2 hours, there is still a drain of 500mA. (All doors were shut)

It's going back to the shop tomorrow. First chance I get, I will follow the instructions given above, although the 3G transceiver seemed to work OK. While taking a voltage reading, I heard what sounded like the ABS controller operating, that's odd since the car hadn't been driven before that.

Thanks to all of you for a great forum, it has helped me many times ! Wonderful info and advice, I appreciate it very much
 
Thanks, I plan to look into that. Brought it back the next day, they couldn't find anything. A few days later the 12V battery developed an internal open-circuit.

Put in a new AGM battery, shut off the data reporting and it's much better. But still down to 11.9 if it sits for a week.

Thanks very much for the tip about the service bulletin. Meanwhile as long as it's getting driven, it's fine.
 
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