Tracking your LEAF

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

garygid

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 21, 2010
Messages
12,469
Location
Laguna Hills, Orange Co, CA
Many have asked if Nissan could locate their LEAF if it was stolen.

It has been reported that Nissan sends location, speed, etc. to any RSS feeds that the car accesses. We do not know if that information is an anonymous "dot" or really has personal identification, like LEAF "name", etc.

Assuming Nissan has the location, we still do not know if they WILL locate OUR car on request, or how to make that request.

Often our auto insurance companies ask us if the LEAF has an On-Star or Lo-Jack type of locator service.

So, how could we locate our OWN car?

Start our own "family" RSS feed, and subscribe our LEAF(s) to it. Then we could:

1. Determine exactly WHAT Nissan is sending out about us.

2. Locate our "family" LEAFs.

3. Send reminder messages, shopping lists, etc. to the driver of our cars.

Maybe somebody will tell me how to set up a simple RSS feed on my server. More later.
 
Good idea. Creating an RSS feed doesn't have to be any more complicated than a text file on your web server if you don't want it to be. I see a few problems with the tracking aspect, though. The position isn't sent continually, only when the LEAF asks for an RSS update, which doesn't seem to be that often. So we'll know where it was, but not where it is. Also, part of the idea of Lo-Jack is that it can't (easily) be disabled by the thief. While I'll admit it will take a long while before the auto theft community twigs to the tracking from RSS feed scenario, and how to turn it off, that might keep it from being accepted by the insurance folks.

Still worthwhile, though.
 
Sure, I could set one of these up. But first let's see how Nissan deals with what I found last Sunday night. If they do not completely pull out the location parameters, you could have two modes:

Voluntarily report a position
Report position every 30 minutes (using the information feed refresh feature)
 
Yet another reason to get rid of this silly Accept/Decline buttons at start...
I think carwings can get the location info every time the car charges. But if thief will disable it at startup, I think even automatic feed updates will be disabled... So those buttons will really benefit thiefs... Nissan should change a prompt in this case to be clear... "If you stole this vehicle, make sure you decline following offer to share your location information with Nissan and legitimate owner"
:)
 
I think Nissan's concern is they must be given authorization from the person driving the car...including the thief.
 
Well... I went ahead and had Lojack installed.

The main tracking thing would do no good if there's no cell phone reception and the thieves could easily just kill the antenna.

I mainly installed it so daniel wouldn't steal mine. ;)
 
I do worry how easy it could possibly be to steal a car with the Leaf style keychain "key". Especially since the Leaf will be able to drive even if the keychain is no longer present.

But at least we know the car would have to be in a 70 mile radius! haha
 
cdub said:
I do worry how easy it could possibly be to steal a car with the Leaf style keychain "key". Especially since the Leaf will be able to drive even if the keychain is no longer present.

If I were ever to get carjacked, I would just turn off the LEAF, open the door and yell "It's all yours!" while running like crazy, and calling 911.
 
A lot of car dealers purposely underfuel their cars to avoid thieves from getting too far... you could do the same with your LEAF.

Although, if you drove a LEAF like you stole it on a full charge, you wouldn't get too far...and it would likely be abandoned about 50-60 miles from its original location.
 
Carwings can "request status" from the LEAF at any time, even when the car is charging, or not charging. Only disconnecting the 12v battery would stop that.

Does the "status" info returned to Carwings include position?

At this point, we do not know.
 
garygid said:
Does the "status" info returned to Carwings include position?

At this point, we do not know.
It's a good bet. I can't imagine why they would sent it to third parties in the RSS requests, and NOT send it to themselves.
 
From what I learned so far, The answer is very likely yes. Otherwise, they would have to make extra effort not to send location in that particular case. While I do not know if the feature was specifically enabled, they may also be able to use the network locate feature to find the car without bothering with the GPS.

To get a real answer here, it probably take a while.
 
I contacted CS... they said that Carwings cannot find your car if it is stolen.

Now whether that is technically impossible or Nissan refuses to offer that service who knows...
 
CS is correct, carwings cannot locate your car if it's stolen. Not because of technical reasons....is just that they don't literally offer that service.
 
The caveat with this is... I had a friend who had his iPhone stolen. He used "where is my phone" and found out where the phone was.

He took the info to the police... and they refused to do anything about it. Bigger fish to fry I guess.

And my friend didn't want to go there... for obvious personal safety reasons.

So... I wouldn't count on this. Lojack is the only way to go... as it is actually used by the police.
 
even if you dont want it to track
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/16/dont-tell-us-where-youre-going-nissan-leaf-driver-we-already/





rainnw said:
From what I learned so far, The answer is very likely yes. Otherwise, they would have to make extra effort not to send location in that particular case. While I do not know if the feature was specifically enabled, they may also be able to use the network locate feature to find the car without bothering with the GPS.

To get a real answer here, it probably take a while.
 
Back
Top