Unable to Restart after using AC (was AC causes failure)

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leafwing said:
I picked up the car yesterday’s afternoon.
The salesman told me the factory overcharged the A/C. The car went to a fail-safe mode as a result. The technician said there is nothing wrong with the car and assures me that nothing will happen to it again. No one mentions the engineer from Nissan.

Can someone hypothesize how an overcharged A/C would put the car in fail-safe mode? I've never heard of that, but perhaps for an EV, it is necessary to prevent any system from short-circuiting the electrical system?!?
 
We've got about 800 miles on our LEAF with no problems whatsoever. The wife says it's the best car we've ever had. She loves the fact that she doesn't have to rummage in her purse to unlock the car and start it.

Regarding sounds, ours at slow speed has a kind of whistle to it that I assume is the pedestrian warning. At a complete stop or normal driving speeds, it goes away.

Regarding range, I first was getting 3.5 miles per kWh and now by paying attention to what the LEAF is telling me, I'm up to 5+ and have gotten 74 miles on an 80% charge with 18 miles remaining indicated. At 19 miles remaining (two bars) the voice said that the battery was getting low just as I was approaching home. Thanks to other owners posts I will not tempt fate and run any lower than that. Another very interesting point about range is its immediate sensitivity. I have a short driveway, about 35 feet long, but it is up hill from street level. When coming home at the foot of the driveway the range indicate some number of miles left. When I pull into the garage going up that hill for just 35 feet the range will drop by as much as nine miles. Of course the LEAF in the space of 35 feet thinks that you will be going up hill for miles to come. When I back out on to the street the mileage goes back up. I suspect that Nissan is trying to be overly cautious when the LEAF detects a definite change in road conditions.
 
occ said:
leafwing said:
I picked up the car yesterday’s afternoon.
The salesman told me the factory overcharged the A/C. The car went to a fail-safe mode as a result. The technician said there is nothing wrong with the car and assures me that nothing will happen to it again. No one mentions the engineer from Nissan.

Can someone hypothesize how an overcharged A/C would put the car in fail-safe mode? I've never heard of that, but perhaps for an EV, it is necessary to prevent any system from short-circuiting the electrical system?!?

I am astonished to think that Nissan would shut the entire car down due to an A/C malfunction! All they'd have to do is disable the compressor and give a small warning. If this is true, I'm seriously disappointed!

Most modern cars have a 2-stage switch, or pressure transducer, that reads the high-side refrigerant line. When it gets a little high, it enables the electric condenser fans, and if it gets too high, it shuts off the compressor. (Not the whole frickin' car!!!)

-Phil
 
leafwing said:
I picked up the car yesterday’s afternoon.
The salesman told me the factory overcharged the A/C. The car went to a fail-safe mode as a result. The technician said there is nothing wrong with the car and assures me that nothing will happen to it again. No one mentions the engineer from Nissan.
Here are my observations, after driving the car:
1 There is a hissing sound arises when accelerating and decelerating. It is not persistent though. Drivers who are familiar with Prius at low speeds may know what I’m talking about.
2 Growling sound when I made a left turn. I do not know its source. The steering wheel does not have the same original feel.
3 When charging the car at home, humming sound comes from under the hood, like small fan sound. Charging was so quite before sending it to the dealership.
4. The salesman told me how I should not drive more than 60/65 mph on the hwy.
Other than that the car seems responsive and drives just fine.
The question to those who have the car longer than I do: are any of these sounds familiar or am I worrying too much after what has happened to my car?

I'd say #1 is definitely the pedestrian warning sound. It sounds to me like a pink noise hissing that is speed dependent. Try toggling the button on/off when you hear this while driving, and it will confirm if I am right.

#2 is likely the electric power steering. Every once in a while in the Prius I can hear a slight motor-type noise if I hold pressure on the wheel. The Prius uses a brushed DC motor which is located just behind the dash, so it's reasonable to expect some slight noise. If the "growl" was loud and repeatable, I'd get it checked.

#3 is the electric pump to circulate coolant back to the charger, and this is normal. (it is liquid cooled!) It may not start right away depending on ambient temperature, which might explain why you hear it now and didn't hear it at first.

#4: If there is one thing people should know now; it's NEVER believe a car salesman actually knows what he is talking about. There are some exceptions, but the best thing to do is RTFM (read the manual) and disregard stuff the stealer says.

-Phil
 
Well this sounds like a muffler bearing story to me. But with no tail pipe the dealer invented a new one.
Could be after a reboot all was declared good by the Nissan engineer. Or maybe (longshot IMO) the over charged air is the actual truth.
 
Ingineer said:
leafwing said:
The salesman told me the factory overcharged the A/C. The car went to a fail-safe mode as a result.

<snip>

4. The salesman told me how I should not drive more than 60/65 mph on the hwy.
#4: If there is one thing people should know now; it's NEVER believe a car salesman actually knows what he is talking about.
I would think that Phil's sage advice would apply to #0 as well. Just as a random possibility, perhaps someone told the salesman that the factory set the AC voltage limit coming out of the inverter too high, and of course the salesman thought A/C, not AC.

Ray
 
leafwing said:
...
4. The salesman told me how I should not drive more than 60/65 mph on the hwy.
Other than that the car seems responsive and drives just fine.
The question to those who have the car longer than I do: are any of these sounds familiar or am I worrying too much after what has happened to my car?
My guess is that the salesman took advice about maximizing range (keeping it at 65 or under on the freeway) and morphed it into this recommendation.
 
Sitting here in my DEAD LEAF. Same symptoms. I set the car to precool, now it won't let me go anywhere. Yes, brake checked, acc mode checked. :evil:
 
azdre said:
Sitting here in my DEAD LEAF. Same symptoms. I set the car to precool, now it won't let me go anywhere. Yes, brake checked, acc mode checked. :evil:

Was the car plugged in? If it wasn't it looks like we do have the same problem here. As for A/C vs. AC I think Ray might be onto something...
 
Ready2plugin said:
azdre said:
Sitting here in my DEAD LEAF. Same symptoms. I set the car to precool, now it won't let me go anywhere. Yes, brake checked, acc mode checked. :evil:

Was the car plugged in? If it wasn't it looks like we do have the same problem here. As for A/C vs. AC I think Ray might be onto something...

I just talked to her... the car was not plugged in. So it looks like it is the exact same problem all over again.
 
azdre said:
Sitting here in my DEAD LEAF. Same symptoms. I set the car to precool, now it won't let me go anywhere. Yes, brake checked, acc mode checked. :evil:

This exact thing happened to me yesterday at 4 pm as I was trying to show it off to a co-worker. DEAD. Flat-bed tow truck arrives and driver tells me, "Oh, that is one of those electric cars. They are all a piece of junk." I told him not to touch my vehicle. I hopefully set him straight on keeping his opinions to himself and then we preceeded towing it for an hour to the dealer.

Got a call a while ago that the LEAF Tech line told them to evacuate the AC lines and recharge. I'm headed there soon to test the precool feature from my iPhone. They have it charging up now. They needed new lines for the AC that were non-magnetic so it won't interfer with the electronics.

DON'T PRE-COOL YOUR LEAFS UNTIL THEY FIGURE THIS OUT.

Off to the dealer....
 
Azrich said:
This exact thing happened to me yesterday at 4 pm as I was trying to show it off to a co-worker. DEAD. Flat-bed tow truck arrives and driver tells me, "Oh, that is one of those electric cars. They are all a piece of junk." I told him not to touch my vehicle. I hopefully set him straight on keeping his opinions to himself and then we preceeded towing it for an hour to the dealer.

Got a call a while ago that the LEAF Tech line told them to evacuate the AC lines and recharge. I'm headed there soon to test the precool feature from my iPhone. They have it charging up now. They needed new lines for the AC that were non-magnetic so it won't interfere with the electronics.

DON'T PRE-COOL YOUR LEAFS UNTIL THEY FIGURE THIS OUT.

Off to the dealer....


OK, this is good. Problem quickly identified and an apparent solution devised.
 
Strangely enough I have precooled several times in the past 2 weeks and I am in AZ... maybe a later software revision or process change caused this? I have a very early car so maybe I am lucky on this one.
 
I'm sorry, but this simply makes no sense.

I can't imagine a design implementation that would terminally shut down the vehicle because of an Air Conditioning malfunction. Nor does the comment about "non-magnetic lines" and interference sound like other than double-speak nonsense.

If either of these is actually true, the engineer who designed that system should be fired!

This is definitely deflecting my BS meter big-time. FYI, I've precooled many times without incident.

Azrich said:
Got a call a while ago that the LEAF Tech line told them to evacuate the AC lines and recharge. I'm headed there soon to test the precool feature from my iPhone. They have it charging up now. They needed new lines for the AC that were non-magnetic so it won't interfer with the electronics.
 
Skywagon said:
Strangely enough I have precooled several times in the past 2 weeks and I am in AZ... maybe a later software revision or process change caused this? I have a very early car so maybe I am lucky on this one.
Not too surprising...If it happened all the time, they would have caught this long before now.
 
Azrich said:
Got a call a while ago that the LEAF Tech line told them to evacuate the AC lines and recharge. I'm headed there soon to test the precool feature from my iPhone. They have it charging up now. They needed new lines for the AC that were non-magnetic so it won't interfer with the electronics.
I've got it! The A/C is much stronger than we knew and the metal A/C lines are getting supercold and becoming...SUPERCONDUCTORS! Powerful magnetic fields are then generated that scramble the on-board computers. Go ahead, tell me I'm brilliant.
 
I'm sticking with space aliens!

davewill said:
I've got it! The A/C is much stronger than we knew and the metal A/C lines are getting supercold and becoming...SUPERCONDUCTORS! Powerful magnetic fields are then generated that scramble the on-board computers. Go ahead, tell me I'm brilliant.
 
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