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lucasgary said:
Just wondering if anyone has tried to get Telematics working in a 2016 Nissan Leaf originally sold in the USA but now located in Canada.

I was able to get registered on Nissan USA. And when I drove near the border I could sign in.

But I can't roam in Canada, as soon as I get a bit to far from the border I lose service.

I'm assuming it's unrelated to the 2g/3g issues described here as I assume the 2016's have 3g service.

It has everything to do with the registration of the SIM card in the TCU modem and nothing to do with 2G/3G service.
Remember, Nissan provides wireless access for "free", so they determine how/where they will pay for coverage...and in NA that means you can't cross borders from where the car was purchased (and SIM registered). I'm sure there are some old threads on this topic if you search the forum.
 
The 2G USA units allowed roaming, and would work in Canada, but that incurred the international data charge. I believe that Nissan took advantage of the 2G/3G update situation to disable international roaming, since they are paying for it and international data use is much more expensive.
 
Stanton said:
lucasgary said:
Just wondering if anyone has tried to get Telematics working in a 2016 Nissan Leaf originally sold in the USA but now located in Canada.

I was able to get registered on Nissan USA. And when I drove near the border I could sign in.

But I can't roam in Canada, as soon as I get a bit to far from the border I lose service.

I'm assuming it's unrelated to the 2g/3g issues described here as I assume the 2016's have 3g service.

It has everything to do with the registration of the SIM card in the TCU modem and nothing to do with 2G/3G service.
Remember, Nissan provides wireless access for "free", so they determine how/where they will pay for coverage...and in NA that means you can't cross borders from where the car was purchased (and SIM registered). I'm sure there are some old threads on this topic if you search the forum.

Do you have any additional information? There may be other, older threads but if there are I can't find them.

Is it well known that roaming is dead for everyone everywhere?

I guess I'll drop in on my local dealer and see what they say.

Thanks!
 
^^^
There's no way Nissan would want to pay for international roaming. When I roamed to Canada from the US on AT&T in 2010, I received an automated SMS telling me voice was 79 cents/minute and data was $15.36/megabyte (!). I found https://www.att.com/travelguide/coverage/coverage_details.jsp?CIDL=124&MNC=CING, which makes not as bad, but still.

I turned off roaming and/or put my phone in airplane mode at that point.
 
cwerdna said:
^^^
There's no way Nissan would want to pay for international roaming. When I roamed to Canada from the US on AT&T in 2010, I received an automated SMS telling me voice was 79 cents/minute and data was $15.36/megabyte (!). I found https://www.att.com/travelguide/coverage/coverage_details.jsp?CIDL=124&MNC=CING, which makes not as bad, but still.

I turned off roaming and/or put my phone in airplane mode at that point.

The leaf uses almost no data comparably. With AT&T, international data is about $40USD/mo for 200MB which is more than enough. But that's not how these deals work. Generally the companies negotiate a huge contract to blanket coverage, they aren't paying per vehicle. Also nowadays, roaming is so cheap because it is already negotiated between all the companies. If you were to divide it down per car, I bet it is in the couple of dollars per year range per vehicle.
 
My understanding is that it's SMS messages.

So not even 'data' per se.

I came across the SMS protocol / serialization they use and it's pretty minimal.

I can't imagine it's costing Nissan much of anything.
 
Also it is possible to piggy-back cell connections. You can get a local cell connection (like Bell or something) connected to a cell repeater than broadcasts as a TMobile tower. The Leaf will connect to your fake tower and then relay everything over the network through the Bell connection.

Also a great way to spy on people with cell phones... All the phones query and try to connect to your fake tower giving you their IMEI's and basic location for free.
 
lucasgary said:
My understanding is that it's SMS messages.

So not even 'data' per se.

I came across the SMS protocol / serialization they use and it's pretty minimal.

I can't imagine it's costing Nissan much of anything.

Don't take this personally, but this kind of mindset just kills me.
For the record, the telematics function uses both SMS and data, but the data usage is minimal.
What I don't get is: Nissan is giving us a free service (airtime/servers/back-office/etc) for thousands and thousands of cars...and people think "it's no big deal". The fact is, the telematics service has been (and will continue to be--lucky for us) a "loss leader" for the technology...and minimalizing Nissan's contribution is short-sighted. If they charged for the service (as we originally though they would after the initial 3 year period), then things might be different...but they don't .
 
Leafboy said:
Stanton,
Can you direct me to the information in your signature: "Low power heater mod"?

The thread (with ordering instructions) is here http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=20446
IMO, this is the most cost-effective (and essential) mod for extending range on 2011-2012 Leafs.
In my climate, I pretty much leave it in "heat off" mode most of the year.
 
Stanton said:
lucasgary said:
My understanding is that it's SMS messages.

So not even 'data' per se.

I came across the SMS protocol / serialization they use and it's pretty minimal.

I can't imagine it's costing Nissan much of anything.

Don't take this personally, but this kind of mindset just kills me.
For the record, the telematics function uses both SMS and data, but the data usage is minimal.
What I don't get is: Nissan is giving us a free service (airtime/servers/back-office/etc) for thousands and thousands of cars...and people think "it's no big deal". The fact is, the telematics service has been (and will continue to be--lucky for us) a "loss leader" for the technology...and minimalizing Nissan's contribution is short-sighted. If they charged for the service (as we originally though they would after the initial 3 year period), then things might be different...but they don't .

I'm confused? "This kind of mindset kills me"? Seriously, it's SMS messages and perhaps bit of data.

If you have specific details on the data being sent I'd love to see it.

If Nissan had serious cost issues they could make it easy to swap in / out the telematics units / sim cards so as to minimize cost. Bear in mind we're talking about a 38k car that doesn't have power seats, I'm sure Nissan is making money on these vehicles.

Ultimately it would be quite straightforward to make it simple to swap out sim cards and or other components to make it easy for imported vehicles to gain full functionality.

I'm assuming Nissan has chosen to NOT do that in order to better control and influence the market and discourage cross border purchasing. I think that is a fundamentally flawed set of assumptions.

I did drop in on my local dealer today, unfortunately their leaf tech's weren't in. I'll follow up with them in the next few days.
 
lucasgary said:
Bear in mind we're talking about a 38k car that doesn't have power seats, I'm sure Nissan is making money on these vehicles.
'11 Leaf started out at $32,780 (https://www.autoblog.com/2011/07/19/2012-nissan-leaf-higher-price-tag-standard-equipment/). Eventually, incentives appeared on Leafs. Batteries were very expensive and still are.

And, if Nissan/NMAC didn't price leases appropriately (like in my case http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=23955&p=494478&hilit=%2414%2C401+nutty#p494478 on my '13 SV w/both packages), cars went back since the residual minus discount was too high and went to auction, selling for a lot less: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=436707#p436707.

Keep in mind Leaf is a very low volume seller vs. the rest of the Nissan lineup (almost 300K worldwide since inception in Dec 2010 per https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-29/the-leaf-is-the-world-s-best-selling-electric-car-now-nissan-needs-to-catch-up-with-tesla) so the R&D and tooling costs are spread out across FAR fewer vehicles than many of Nissan's bread and butter vehicles.

Look at CYTD US sales of Leaf vs. other vehicles at http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/releases/nissan-group-reports-december-and-2016-calendar-year-u-s-sales and http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/channels/U-S-Sales-Reports/releases/nissan-group-reports-october-2017-u-s-sales.
 
cwerdna said:
lucasgary said:
Bear in mind we're talking about a 38k car that doesn't have power seats, I'm sure Nissan is making money on these vehicles.
'11 Leaf started out at $32,780 (https://www.autoblog.com/2011/07/19/2012-nissan-leaf-higher-price-tag-standard-equipment/). Eventually, incentives appeared on Leafs. Batteries were very expensive and still are.

And, if Nissan/NMAC didn't price leases appropriately (like in my case http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=23955&p=494478&hilit=%2414%2C401+nutty#p494478 on my '13 SV w/both packages), cars went back since the residual minus discount was too high and went to auction, selling for a lot less: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=436707#p436707.

Keep in mind Leaf is a very low volume seller vs. the rest of the Nissan lineup (almost 300K worldwide since inception in Dec 2010 per https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-29/the-leaf-is-the-world-s-best-selling-electric-car-now-nissan-needs-to-catch-up-with-tesla) so the R&D and tooling costs are spread out across FAR fewer vehicles than many of Nissan's bread and butter vehicles.

Look at CYTD US sales of Leaf vs. other vehicles at http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/releases/nissan-group-reports-december-and-2016-calendar-year-u-s-sales and http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/channels/U-S-Sales-Reports/releases/nissan-group-reports-october-2017-u-s-sales.


Fair enough, but none of that speaks to the issue at hand: "Is it making life easier for the customer?"

I haven't seen any evidence that there's regulatory or hardware issues with making telematics available in another, already supported, country. We're not talking about doing a deal with an entirely new provider. We're talking about either swapping out a TCU or just a SIM card depending on how coupled they are. You wouldn't even have to make it free. Just charged $x dollars to either swap out or enable telematics. The actual cost of the service is always going to be quite small. Again, if the business deal is already in place then there's no good technical reason prevent this from happening. Assuming, of course, that it's been designed that way from the beginning. Ultimately the fact that people have in the past moved their telematics service from the US to Canada would indicate there's no hard technical fault in doing so.

The evidence I'm seeing still leans towards market control.
 
This is the second time since I replaced it that the TCU doesn’t respond. I get “MyLeaf: Status update failed due to weak cell reception. To change alerts visit the Nissan Owner Portal”. It’s not a weak signal, since it has good signal at my house. Second fuse pull didn’t fix it. Battery is brand new yellow top, with plenty of juice. Now what to do?
 
Supersleeper said:
This is the second time since I replaced it that the TCU doesn’t respond. I get “MyLeaf: Status update failed due to weak cell reception. To change alerts visit the Nissan Owner Portal”. It’s not a weak signal, since it has good signal at my house. Second fuse pull didn’t fix it. Battery is brand new yellow top, with plenty of juice. Now what to do?

Sometimes it takes a couple of "fuse pulls" to get it back...or you can pull the battery terminal and reboot the whole car (which I tend to avoid).
 
Also, you might try clearing the fault without a fuse pull.

With the car on:
Do several network things. Sync charging stations. Download Google locations. Download messages.
Then check check battery status while the car is on.
Repeat once.

This worked once for me. The first check battery status failed, the second one worked, and continued to work for weeks. It also failed to work once.

Nissan should just fix this.
 
WetEV said:
Also, you might try clearing the fault without a fuse pull.

With the car on:
Do several network things. Sync charging stations. Download Google locations. Download messages.
Then check check battery status while the car is on.
Repeat once.

This worked once for me. The first check battery status failed, the second one worked, and continued to work for weeks. It also failed to work once.

Nissan should just fix this.

Yes, Nissan should issue a TCU "fix"...but this is bad advice.
By your own admission: "this worked once for me".
Stick with the "fuse pull" whenever you lose communication with the vehicle.
 
When I ran the diagnostic from leaf spy it looked like it was still complaining about low voltage on battery. So I yanked the amp sensor wire from the battery negative terminal and charged it up good. It's a brand new Yellow Top gel, so it should be able to take it. Odd that I didn't have any issues starting the car but likely it's because it's deep cycle battery that it still had enough amperes to trip the relays at low voltage. I've not seen the issue since, but I'm fairly certain that the TCU pulled the battery down low to begin with, and is likely why the TCU needed another fuse pull. I suppose I should reconnect the amp sensor wire at some point, but haven't yet.
 
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