First Warranty Issue; Carwings Is Broken

Hmm -- Lea -- I might be having a similar problem, perhaps for different reasons though.

My carwings worked fine when I picked up on Saturday, but while they were fixing the air con issue, the service mgr insisted that he had to replace the TCU because he was getting a "hard fault code" (how hard can they be??). SInce the replacement, I've been unable to control the car via the web. It appears to update stations fine, and even after I tried clearing out my carwings username/password -- i was able to enter them again and it said "account enabled" -- so it is talking somewhat -- just not back to the web interface. No status updates, and no remote control.

I have a call into Nissan CC, and they're supposed to call me back tomorrow. Let's hope...

Michael

Another update - Nick at Mossy Nissan, San Diego, ROCKS!

Got my Leaf back yesterday, after much diligent (and frustrating, I'm sure) work and many conversations between Nick and Nissan. Update Stations works and CarWings works. Nick explained the problem to me, but I don't really recall exactly what he said - I was too happy and too busy thinking about all the fun stuff that was finally available to me. Thankfully, Nick considered all the time and work a worthwhile learning experience and didn't blame me for being such a baby about not having access to these things.

@miku - might be worth your time to either reach out to Nick, or have your local EV Tech call Nick.

THANK YOU, Nick! And thank you Mossy Nissan for letting him spend so much time with me!

Lea

Lea,

Glad to hear your issue was resolved. SOunds like these might actually be different after all.

I am now fully operational too -- worked with Nissan support yesterday and today. They tell me this is the first TCU replacement they've had to deal with. It appears that Nissan shares some data with Carwings prior to delivery, and something in that information block needed to be updated. All working great now. There's also information passed up when you log in the first time with your carwings username/password -- but i tried re-setting those and it never helped. Had to get escalated through Nissan CC. They also truly rocked -- such a pleasure dealing with them -- carefully working through the options and finding the resolution nice and quck.

Michael

My Carwings stopped working on May 10th-- I cannot get any update or control anything from the website, from the iphone app, and the car, when trying to connect says "no service"..what do people suggest?

If I may make a suggestion, I think we should separate out discussion of two different websites:

• https://www.nissanusa.com/owners/ the Nissan Owner's Portal
• https://zeroemission.nissan-carwings.com/ CARWINGS

The first one is, I believe, free for so long as we own the vehicle, and has charging status (bars, %, hours to charge, range estimates) as well as climate and charging requests. The second we will have to pay for after three years, and has the history, route planner, info. feeds and rankings.

SteveInSeattle clearly is saying the owner's portal is not working for him. That works fine for me (with the possible exception of notifications), but I have nothing at all on the CARWINGS site. Actually, that is also as it should be, since I have never agreed to the nag screen in the car.

Ray

BOTH Carwings Statistics and the Owners Portal need to get data from the LEAF.

The data-mode "cell phone" subscription is needed for communication with the LEAF, and is provided for 3 free years.

The data requests go THROUGH Carwings, the AT&T data-cell mobile "phone" service, and the telecommunications control module (TCM) in the car.

After the 3 free years, it is most likely that neither car status (on the Owners Portal) nor Carwings will work.

No subscription, no status refresh, no Start Charging, no Pre-Heat or Cool control ... Remotely. Of course, you can still do those things when physically in the car.

garygid said:

BOTH Carwings Statistics and the Owners Portal need to get data from the LEAF.

The data-mode "cell phone" subscription is needed for communication with the LEAF, and is provided for 3 free years.

The data requests go THROUGH Carwings, the AT&T data-cell mobile "phone" service, and the telecommunications control module (TCM) in the car.

Click to expand...

Totally agree with this; I wondered WHOSE cell phone (data) service they used.

garygid said:

After the 3 free years, it is most likely that neither car status (on the Owners Portal) nor Carwings will work.

No subscription, no status refresh, no Start Charging, no Pre-Heat or Cool control ... Remotely. Of course, you can still do those things when physically in the car.

Click to expand...

Now I'm a bit confused: are you implying we WON'T be offered some (ridiculous?) price to extend the data service on a subscription basis? I think these will be the big questions in 3 years:
1) Subscription price
2) Alternatives (doesn't look pretty)
3) What happens if/when the data service changes/evolves. For example, it is a 2G/3G service now (either GPRS/UMTS). If/when these network give way to 4G (LTE), some sort of upgrade will be required. 3G should last awhile, but if they're using GPRS, we could be in trouble.

garygid said:

After the 3 free years, it is most likely that neither car status (on the Owners Portal) nor Carwings will work.

No subscription, no status refresh, no Start Charging, no Pre-Heat or Cool control ... Remotely. Of course, you can still do those things when physically in the car.

Click to expand...

You make a good point, Gary. I hope you are wrong, but I fear you could be right.

Ray

Stanton said:

garygid said:

After the 3 free years, it is most likely that neither car status (on the Owners Portal) nor Carwings will work.

No subscription, no status refresh, no Start Charging, no Pre-Heat or Cool control ... Remotely. Of course, you can still do those things when physically in the car.

Click to expand...

Now I'm a bit confused: are you implying we WON'T be offered some (ridiculous?) price to extend the data service on a subscription basis?...

Click to expand...

His statement is of the form "No shirt, no service". There's an implied "If..then" in it. He's saying that if we don't subscribe, then we won't get any of those things he listed...and I think his logic is pretty persuasive.

ok, I get that. So if we knew WHAT kind of wireless technology they've used (GPRS/UMTS/other?) then it might give us a clue as to whether they will even be able to sustain the service from a technology standpoint beyond 3 years.

I called Nissan yesterday and they told me my telecommunications needs to be reset at the dealer-- that the cell connection in the car is down and has to be reset. What is more interesting is that they said that there is a chance it will happen again and this is a "temporary fix" and that Nissan was working on a permanent fix.

Quick review: my car cannot connect with carwings data and the web and phone app cannot connect with the car at all.

I have had this "No Service" problem a couple of times, which also includes not being able to remotely connect to my Leaf via online.

What I've gathered is that on occassion the service fails after I am in parking garages that block the signal. It never seems to come back on its own.

Twice now I have been able to reset the connection by disconnecting the standard car battery for a few minutes and then reconnecting it, afterwards I am again able to connect via Carwings.

divaqs said:

Twice now I have been able to reset the connection by disconnecting the standard car battery for a few minutes and then reconnecting it, afterwards I am again able to connect via Carwings.

Click to expand...

When you disconnect your aux battery, what are all the things affected? Would you have to redo bluetooth or homelink?

Stanton said:

ok, I get that. So if we knew WHAT kind of wireless technology they've used (GPRS/UMTS/other?) then it might give us a clue as to whether they will even be able to sustain the service from a technology standpoint beyond 3 years.

Click to expand...

That's no mystery.
The telematics unit in the Leaf is designed by Temic Automotive and made by Continental. It's on AT&Ts GSM network, with services through Jasper.

You can look up the unit on FCC's web site and learn all about the RF bands used and performance.

I just online chatted with a Nissan customer rep. They told me that there is a fix for this that was released just today.

"What I need you to do Mr. Moreno is take your vehicle to your local Leaf certified dealership to have the newest update installed on your vehicle. This has been an issue but it has been addressed."

"When was the update relased?"

"It was released today"

So far I love the car but the post sales service stinks.

Bought from a nissan dealer in Oxford.

They took a while to deliver it then did so with less charge than the distance to my nearest charging point. When I complained they said it shouldnt have happened. Duh. I kinda guessed that.

Second thing they registered it to the wrong first name. And the wrong second name. Even though they had emails and a contract from me so no reason at all to not know my name. I thought they might apologise but no. Too boring for them.

Now the carwings thing that I've been thinking was me being stupid and
Irked through the manual, tried in vain to raiser on their dysfunctionial website and now see from this blog that they probably didn't do the reset thing properly (would be entirely in keeping with their cavalier approach so far)

Nissan HQ take note. The high tech story about the car is damaged every time one of your dealers behaves badly. We know they are not your employees but they are our only human contact with your company and their bad behaviour = Nissan brand bad behaviour. Are you people ok with that? I wouldn't be of it were my company

My Carwings died 3 weeks after I took delivery on 8/31. I've been through endless resets and tests from the tech service people, and been twice to a dealership where they had no clue, and called the tech line for advice. Still no luck. The TCU can originate commands, such as updating the charging stations, but it cannot receive commands from the server, and it has never sent any status updates since the initial failure.

Finally, about a month ago, after yet another round of tests, they agreed to replace my TCU, and the contacted a local dealer and asked him to order the part and to notify me when it came in.

Today, I heard from the parts guy at the dealership ... after digging around for quite awhile, he was able to get a part number for the TCU, and to place the order. Apparently, the national parts HQ told him "It's a brand new part; we'll have to order it from Japan."

So, I guess I'm back to watching the boats, hoping that one of them has a TCU on board ... and, once we've got it in hand, hoping that it solves the problem.

DaveinOlyWA said:

Nissan tech was guessing that Carwings entered the VIN wrong.

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In this day and age, I'd think Nissan's proceedure would be to scan the VIN barcode while the car was in their possession. There's really no excuse for hand entereing the VIN these days.

tps said:

DaveinOlyWA said:

Nissan tech was guessing that Carwings entered the VIN wrong.

Click to expand...

In this day and age, I'd think Nissan's proceedure would be to scan the VIN barcode while the car was in their possession. There's really no excuse for hand entereing the VIN these days.

Click to expand...

just to clarify; it was Carwings that made the error. apparently units are installed and remotely programmed by Carwings based on info provided by Nissan.

i am familiar with this type of process since i do it several times a day in my job. not Carwings, but still cellular related. it is all part of the authentication process to allow secured access to the network. get a single digit wrong and nothing works.

it was simply a typo on Carwings part or a mis-communication on Nissan's part when providing the initial information to Carwings from the factory. either way, only Carwings could fix it and they were able to do so quickly (after 3 tier tech escalation to them from Nissan!)