2013 Nissan Leaf S doesn't charge when end timer is on

[yding123]

Hi, there,

I got a 2013 Nissan Leaf S in September, and got the AeroVironment home charger Level 2(from State) installed in October.

I would like to charge Leaf in mid night for the lower rate.
Everyday when I get home, Leaf dashboard shows it normally needs 4~5 hours to get fully charged. The local PG&E off-peak hours is from 11pm to 7am, so I want to program the Leaf charging timer to start charging between 11pm to 1am. Since 2013 Leaf trim S only has the ending timer, so I programmed the charging timer on Leaf S to be ended at 6am.

At the beginning, it seems working OK. Every evening when I get back from work, I plug in the plug from AeroVironment home charger. the Leaf shows the spinning charging light (flashing 1->2->3->1..). The spinning light will go off after 10~15 minutes. And Leaf S alway starts the charging around 2am, and by the time I go to work around around 8am, it is fully charged.

However, recently I found out that sometime after I put the charging plug in the Leaf, the 3 charging light in front of Leaf still spins as usuall, and went off after 10~15 minutes. But in next morning when I was about to drive it to work, I found that it didn't get charged at all.

For a experiment, I tried to disable the charging timer on Leaf S and plug in the charging cable around mid night, now it can get fully charging every day.
But that means I cannot use the charging timer anymore.

I went to Nissan dealership to check it out. They said that they spent a whole day to check everything, to charge at different ports within the dealership. They drove on highway to drain the battery to test the charging, with or without the charging timer on. In the end, they said that they could not find any problem for the charging. They suspect it may be something wrong with the AeroViroment charger.

I contact AeroVironment before going to Nissan dealership. They said as long as the Leaf can get charged with the charger, nothing is wrong with their charger.

Do anyone run into similar issue? How can I find a way to resolve this issue?

Thanks a lot for the help.
--
yding

 

[planet4ever]

Just a wild thought: Did you change the timer near the beginning of the month when daylight savings time went off? Is there any chance you changed it by going forward 11 hours instead of 23 hours? [It certainly can be irritating trying to give instructions to a computer whose only input device is two buttons.]

Incidentally, did you know that PG&E still runs on the old DST schedule, so the time used for the off-peak rate is different from "real" time for the week starting the last Sunday in October, and for the (usually) three weeks ending the first Sunday in April?

Ray

 

[yding123]

HI, Ray,

Thanks for the reply.

When the daylight time went off on Nov. 3, I didn't adjust the end time setting on the charging time of Leaf S. I only adjusted the main clock on dashboard through those small two buttons.

I didn't know that PG&E still runs on the old DST schedule.

But apart from the DST setting, I did another experiment this morning at 9:30am:
Since Leaf didn't get charged in the midnight, it shows 37 miles left on the dashboard, and it needs 4.5 hours to get fully recharged. So I set up the end timer on Leaf S to be at 10:30 (24 hour format, I think), put the plug in from AeroVironment L2 home charger.
In theory, it should start the charging right away. Instead, the 3 charging light in front of Leaf just keep circle spinning for 10~15 minutes(instead of normal charging mode of showing the first light on solid, and second light flashing).
Later, after I disabled the charging time, it start charging immediately.

It seems to indicate something related to the end time charging time on Leas S. But Nissan dealership says they cannot find anything wrong.

---
yding

 

[stjohnh]

Try the trickle EVSE charge set that came w the car. If u have same problem, then it must be the car, not the charge station.

 

[planet4ever]

When the daylight time went off on Nov. 3, I didn't adjust the end time setting on the charging time of Leaf S. I only adjusted the main clock on dashboard through those small two buttons.

As I said, it was a wild thought. But in rereading my post I realize that my words didn't match my thoughts. It wasn't the timer I was thinking of as possibly causing the problem, but the dash clock, which is what (on the S model only) is used to drive the timer. So if you moved the dash clock ahead 11 hours, the timer would implicitly be retimed to complete by 6 PM rather than 6 AM.

Ray

 

[jstack6]

Did you get this solved yet?

I just set up time of day charging and 80% limits on a friends S and will see how he does. I have the SV and it works perfect but I set it to always charge and used my BLINK timer since my wife and friends would forget to hit the over ride if they were out during the day and needed a charge.

I also leased a 2013 Focus EV so I can compare and it's time charging never works so the BLINK runs either for Off Peak charging. I don't even use TOD billing at my home but like to help the utility and GRID be more efficient . It's not always about the $$$

 

[yding123]

update:

It turned to be problem of the setting of dashboard timer. When daylight saving time went off on 11/3, I adjusted the dashboard timer by 1 hour. Probably due to the fact that I used the 12 hour/AM-PM format for the dashboard timer and there are only two buttons used to adjust this time, I mistakenly set the dashboard timer from AM to PM. :-(

Since the end time charging timer is a 24-hour format (only format) on Nissan Leaf S, this time I changed the format of dashboard from 12-hour format to 24-hour format. Hopefully this should remove the confusion/mistake once for all.

Wonder why Nissan dealership never told me about checking the dashboard timer when they said that everything is working for this car...

Thanks a lot for everyone who replied my post!
--
yding

 

[occ]

+1 to planet4ever. Good call.

Glad you found the problem yding.

 

[oobflyer]

My 2012 Leaf just did something similar. I have my timer set to automatically start charging every day at midnight (to 80%). I plugged it in a couple of days ago and didn't drive the car. (Rode the motorcycle). When I got home from work this evening I unplugged the Leaf, hopped in, turned it on... only to find that it never charged during the 48 hours since I plugged it in.
This happened once before (about a month ago), but at the time I just assumed that I did something wrong. This time I'm sure that something happened with the car. I double checked everything - the charger, the timer settings, the clock settings... everything is as it should be. I wonder if it could have something to do with the weather... it has been below freezing that last couple of nights.

 

[oobflyer]

It turned out to be the charger! A few days later the car wouldn't charge again and I noticed some error indicator lights were flashing on the charger. I checked with a volt-meter and sure enough - there was voltage coming into the charger, but no voltage going out.
I contacted the maker (LeGrand) and they shipped a new one out to me - at no charge - even though mine was out of warranty.

 

[planet4ever]

It turned out to be the charger! A few days later the car wouldn't charge again and I noticed some error indicator lights were flashing on the charger. I checked with a volt-meter and sure enough - there was voltage coming into the charger, but no voltage going out. I contacted the maker (LeGrand) and they shipped a new one out to me - at no charge - even though mine was out of warranty.

You had me going for a minute there.

"Yup, yet another charger failure in a 2013."
"What? He found some place he could check AC and DC voltages under the hood?"
"No, wait. LeGrand doesn't make the LEAF charger. Maybe it wasn't a LEAF."
"No, he definitely said LEAF in the previous post."
"Ah, but he said 2012, So he took the cover off the charger behind the seats and found some place he could check."
"No, wait. Lights flashing on the charger?"
"OHH! Of course. He's not talking about the charger at all. The charger is fine. It's the charging station he had a problem with."

Ray

 

[smkettner]

LeGrand was a bit known for being minimal build quality.

 

[EVDRIVER]

It turned out to be the charger! A few days later the car wouldn't charge again and I noticed some error indicator lights were flashing on the charger. I checked with a volt-meter and sure enough - there was voltage coming into the charger, but no voltage going out. I contacted the maker (LeGrand) and they shipped a new one out to me - at no charge - even though mine was out of warranty.

You had me going for a minute there.

"Yup, yet another charger failure in a 2013."
"What? He found some place he could check AC and DC voltages under the hood?"
"No, wait. LeGrand doesn't make the LEAF charger. Maybe it wasn't a LEAF."
"No, he definitely said LEAF in the previous post."
"Ah, but he said 2012, So he took the cover off the charger behind the seats and found some place he could check."
"No, wait. Lights flashing on the charger?"
"OHH! Of course. He's not talking about the charger at all. The charger is fine. It's the charging station he had a problem with."

Ray

I know- charger/EVSE same thing. You also can't meter an EVSE at the car end without a clamp meter but that is moot if the car is the issue so it is an invalid test.