New Leaf Owner - A few questions/comments

Hi all,

I recently purchased my first Leaf, a 2014 SL, and I am loving it so far. I have a couple of questions and comments maybe some people can help me with.

1) Love the car. Perfect for my situation as a 3rd car in a family of four drivers.
2) The steering wheel heater goes off after some amount of time, and doesn't come back on? Who came up with that brilliant design?
3) The navigation system looks ancient. Looks very similar to the one in my daughter's 2004 Prius! Using it seems to be a real pain too. Maybe I will get used to it.
4) Leaf Spy Pro is a great App. It seems as if for $15 for an app, they could update the interface a little, but that's nitpicking, it's a great app.
5) Nissan Connect shows how great of an App Leaf Spy is. It seems to function less than 50% of the times I try it.
6) Which remote app do you guys use? I see there are some third party apps.
7) Is there a way to set a percentage of charge that I want to charge to? I would like to set the default to 80% and be able to override it to 100% on days that I expect more driving than our standard 20-30 miles.
8) On the Connect EV app, I see where I can set a timer to turn Climate Control on. Does that include the heated steering wheel and heaters?
9) Love the car.

The wheel heater gets too hot and then cools too much before cycling on again. The "solution" is to turn it off and on manually. The seat and wheel heaters will come on with the climate control if the switches are on when the car is turned off. The Nissano app is fastest for quick remote activation of the climate control. This is assuming the car has the telematics upgrade from 2G to 3G. If so, keep an eye on the 12 volt battery voltage.

There is no way to set a charge limit after 2013 in the US. If you are using L-1 charging (120 volt) then it will add 5-6% charge per hour.

Welcome to the world of the LEAF and this forum. You'll learn a lot from others who post here.

LeftieBiker got most of your concerns; here are my opinions/answers too:

1- I too like my LEAF though it's utility continues to degrade despite less that 12,000 miles on an almost 6-year-old vehicle.
2- My steering wheel heater works exactly like yours; you really have to cycle this manually as LeftieBiker said. No idea which engineer designed this piece of equipment, but you'd think over multiple model years it would have been fixed. Not so.
3- The navigation system user interface is indeed ancient, as are the included maps. Some have gotten used to it...I never have and rarely use it for more than the trip home. Suggest using something like your smartphone mapping software or Google's Waze app.
4- When available, I use the Nissan remote app to set climate control on car before I get to the car. As you've learned, availability is less than stellar, and the vehicle has to be in someplace easy to receive and transmit the cell signal. Sadly most multi-story parking lots, and my own garage, do not qualify.
5- On my 2012 LEAF, I can set the vehicle to charge the traction battery to either 80% or 100%...nothing else. The ability to charge to 80% was removed in subsequent models so no, you cannot do this in your vehicle.
6-I used to use an app called "LEAFlink". It was developed to overcome the cumbersome in-car nav system and it worked very well for me. It seems however to have dropped off the earth a couple of years ago. There is also a thread on the forum defining how to use Google Maps to send a route to the LEAF. It worked initially, then didn't, then did again, then didn't, and so on. So again, skip all the headaches and use Waze.
7- Can't help you on whether the steering wheel and sea heaters function when the pre-heat cycle is used in the car...I just don't remember.

Again, welcome to the forum, and I hope you have good luck with your vehicle in meeting your needs.

Thanks very much. So the climate control control is basically like hitting the On-off climate control button in the car? So, when you leave the car, you set everything to what you want it to be on when the timer goes on the next morning? That includes defrost too, right?

jake14mw said:

Thanks very much. So the climate control control is basically like hitting the On-off climate control button in the car? So, when you leave the car, you set everything to what you want it to be on when the timer goes on the next morning? That includes defrost too, right?

Click to expand...

You can't set the climate control modes, AFAIK. You can only have the seat heaters on or off, and I think the wheel heater - although that may come on either way with the remote CC activation. I believe the CC turns on remotely in Auto mode. You can, IIRC, set an interior temp for remote activation, at least in the 2013+ cars.

On my 2012 LEAF, I can set the vehicle to charge the traction battery to either 80% or 100%...nothing else. The ability to charge to 80% was removed in subsequent models

Click to expand...

Actually, they added an 80% charge limit for the car (for non-timed charging) as well as for the charge timer in 2013, but after the EPA messed with the range rating as a result, they dropped it forever in 2014.

We have multiple people in the family that share the car. I assume we can all have the Nissan Connect EV app on our phones and access the car with it?

Mentioned this Juicebox product in another post, but as a 2014 SL owner, it's probably not worth the expenditure just to get 80% charging:

https://emotorwerks.com/products/charging-stations/juiceplug

Interesting idea though, hope someone who buys one decides to post a review on these forums...