2019 leaf no going into gear

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johnny26

New member
Joined
Nov 17, 2020
Messages
1
My sister has a 2019 leaf and she has had problems getting it into drive or b mode twice now.1 time she reversed and went to go forward and the other time she had pulled up on the side of a busy street.she had cars around her both times and could not get it to go,so she turned it of and sat for maybe 15min and turned on again and it worked and she was able to move.The dealer thinks she is the only person in Europe with this problem and nobody else has this issue according to him,My sister thinks its her but my brother and mam where with her on one of the occasions and they think it was the car and not her????.Can anyone relate to this problem??
Thanks ;)
 
If the 12 volt battery is low the car will refuse to shift, but I know of no other situations in which it will go into D but not into R. The Leaf's shifter is a bit odd, especially if you haven't been driving a Prius, so I'm inclined to agree that it's operator error.
 
When going from Park or Neutral to Drive, B-Mode, or Reverse, the brake pedal must be depressed. If she does not press the brake pedal far enough, the car will not engage a mode to move either forward or reverse. It is possible (though not likely) that the brake pedal sensor is failing to sense the brake pedal being depressed.
 
I had similar problems when I first bought my Leaf last year. The wretched thing wouldn't change from reverse to drive or vice versa, even with my foot firmly planted on the brake pedal. Subsequent experience of the car revealed that it can be at times painfully slow to respond to input from the gear selector and that I simply had to be patient. These days you don't expect anything electronic to be slow, but there it is, the exception that proves the rule. Especially slow moving out of "Park", but that's probably an issue with the mechanical pawl disengaging from the geartrain - sometimes these stick if a load has been applied.
 
We have a 2012 Nissan Juke with push-button starting, it starts the ICE, puts the car in gear, and is driving within a second of pushing. The Leaf simply has to have its little moment of "hurry up and wait", watch the speedo zoom up to 100 and back and then watch the little car icon turn and drive toward you, hold firmly on brake pedal, MAYBE it will actually drive? We all know how fast electrical current flows, somewhere around 186K miles per second, must be some long wires in there! I use these moments to breath deeply- and, I have gotten used to it.
 
dmacarthur said:
We have a 2012 Nissan Juke with push-button starting, it starts the ICE, puts the car in gear, and is driving within a second of pushing. The Leaf simply has to have its little moment of "hurry up and wait", watch the speedo zoom up to 100 and back and then watch the little car icon turn and drive toward you, hold firmly on brake pedal, MAYBE it will actually drive? We all know how fast electrical current flows, somewhere around 186K miles per second, must be some long wires in there! I use these moments to breath deeply- and, I have gotten used to it.

There is a brief period of time during which large capacitors must be charged at a calibrated rate. If they were allowed to charge "instantly" the current could damage the main contactor.
 
I always depress the brake pedal and hit the start button as soon as I get in. I then buckle my seat belt while the LEAF is "booting up". It is ready to accept shift commands by the time I am buckled in. I use a similar approach with internal combustion vehicles by starting the engine first then buckle seat belt, adjust mirrors, etc. That gives the engine a chance to build oil pressure.
 
Ditto. I have quite a little 'dance' I do every time which includes the seatbelt and parking brake. There are still times I get out of sync and try to shift before the car is read but that's the exception, usually it all works out just right.

And to Leftie's point.....computers really do come on almost instantly these days, but it takes time load RAM and do various self-calibrations before they are ready to accept any user commands. On a desktop, if there is a hard disk drive, it has to spin up the disks to operating speed which will take several seconds and then there are also more calibrations done but if the drive has flash instead of a HDD the start-up is almost instantaneous even if it takes a while before the system is loaded and ready.
 
And to Leftie's point.....computers really do come on almost instantly these days, but it takes time load RAM and do various self-calibrations before they are ready to accept any user commands. On a desktop, if there is a hard disk drive, it has to spin up the disks to operating speed which will take several seconds and then there are also more calibrations done but if the drive has flash instead of a HDD the start-up is almost instantaneous even if it takes a while before the system is loaded and ready.

Thus my use of the term "boot up." I wasn't trying to say that the processor had to have a cup of virtual coffee before it would process, but that the system as a whole took a few seconds to be ready to run the car.
 
GerryAZ said:
I always depress the brake pedal and hit the start button as soon as I get in. I then buckle my seat belt while the LEAF is "booting up". It is ready to accept shift commands by the time I am buckled in. I use a similar approach with internal combustion vehicles by starting the engine first then buckle seat belt, adjust mirrors, etc. That gives the engine a chance to build oil pressure.

What? change my life-long (bad) habit of driving off and THEN putting the seatbelt on? I am waiting for self-installing seat belts... and I suppose I will get used to the Leaf delay, but seriously if an older ICE can engage a starter motor, crank an ICE, get gas thru the injection system and get the ICE runnig, and be put into Drive in 1/3 the time I think Nissan could do some catch-up. For example, how long does it take to get a Tesla going?
 
I am waiting for self-installing seat belts.

You missed them, in the Nineties. Power shoulder belts that enveloped you.

but seriously if an older ICE can engage a starter motor, crank an ICE, get gas thru the injection system and get the ICE runnig, and be put into Drive in 1/3 the time I think Nissan could do some catch-up.

Modern fuel injection systems are always pressurized.
 
dmacarthur said:
We have a 2012 Nissan Juke with push-button starting, it starts the ICE, puts the car in gear, and is driving within a second of pushing. The Leaf simply has to have its little moment of "hurry up and wait", watch the speedo zoom up to 100 and back and then watch the little car icon turn and drive toward you, hold firmly on brake pedal, MAYBE it will actually drive? We all know how fast electrical current flows, somewhere around 186K miles per second, must be some long wires in there! I use these moments to breath deeply- and, I have gotten used to it.

Don't know how it is on the new Leaf models, but the older ones (like I have) can still go into drive the second the I power it on (well I would say it takes at least 1 second after power on) even while it is still doing the screen checks and such before the start sound even finishes. :mrgreen:
 
dmacarthur said:
For example, how long does it take to get a Tesla going?
I think the car is ready by the time I sit down but I don't know for sure because like Jerry, I strap in first. I also have set the car to require a second factor PIN I input on the screen before driving is allowed so between these two (PIN and seatbelt), the car is pretty bored by the time I am ready to go.

It's a good 10 seconds from the time my rump hits the seat until the car is rolling. I've watched ICE cars and they are *much* slower for whatever reasons.
 
Again?

Interested in hearing the resolution for a change...


This not only the first time I have heard of this issue but its so unlikely to be real I have to think that the OP is a troll.
 
"The dealer thinks she is the only person in Europe with this problem and nobody else has this issue according to him,"

This happened to me after we picked up our second hand 2016 Tekna. I was in the inside lane of a dual carriageway pulled up at a traffic light 10 minutes from the dealer [Cleevely EV]. Eventually I switched everything off and started again from scratch and the problem cleared. It has now happened several times to me but I am getting quicker at clearing the hitch.

My wife has not had the experience. This may be because she flicks the selector quicker, whereas I move it more slowly and deliberately across and down as in a manual gear box. I am learning to flick the selector down and sideways more quickly.

Yesterday I was parked up off road and on the phone with the car switched on and in P and when I went to move off the car would not go into drive from Park - it went into neutral and same story.

Because of the difference between my wife's experience and mine I assume it is my own operator error.
 
The gear selector in my Prius developed the same symptoms of flipping into the wrong gear. It is a plastic part that warps in the heat and then the sensors do not work as intended. I was able to buy a used replacement for $70, and the installation was easy once I figured out how to remove some trim.

I'm not really suggesting that a 2019 LEAF has exactly the same cause, but the malfunction does sound consistent with a faulty gear selector mechanism.
 
knightmb said:
dmacarthur said:
We have a 2012 Nissan Juke with push-button starting, it starts the ICE, puts the car in gear, and is driving within a second of pushing. The Leaf simply has to have its little moment of "hurry up and wait", watch the speedo zoom up to 100 and back and then watch the little car icon turn and drive toward you, hold firmly on brake pedal, MAYBE it will actually drive? We all know how fast electrical current flows, somewhere around 186K miles per second, must be some long wires in there! I use these moments to breath deeply- and, I have gotten used to it.

Don't know how it is on the new Leaf models, but the older ones (like I have) can still go into drive the second the I power it on (well I would say it takes at least 1 second after power on) even while it is still doing the screen checks and such before the start sound even finishes. :mrgreen:

Wait. Are you saying it goes into drive all by itself? That would be disconcerting. Definitely not acceptable.
 
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