New to me low mile 2017 with poor range?

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Im in CO north of Denver a little bit.
See it seems its in the dealers interest to help determine a battery should be fixed or replaced under warranty so it seems like they would want to help and would be very clear on the rules and guidelines about said replacement. The only extra twist with this dealer is they sold me the car a couple days ago - so they might possibly be struggling with the balance between me feeling ripped off vs getting the battery work done IDK..
It could be they are telling the truth about needing the code to engage Nissan - although this particular tech seemed unaware - it could be whoever she talked to is shooting straight - I just have one data point so far.
I considered starting to contact other dealers, but wanted to hear the experience of the forum too before talking to too many more dealers..
 
I'd try Boulder Nissan. They sell a ton of Leafs and know all about them. They might even be reading this forum ;)

For the warranty replacement, there are 2 concerns: one is a capacity warranty which triggers when the car shows 8 bars of capacity left. Your car isn't near that. This warranty on the 2017 is for 8 years or 100k miles. The second warranty is for battery defects. This warranty should cover your car since it has a defective battery module.

Nissan corporate or the dealer may decide to open the pack and replace the bad module or they may decide to replace the entire pack. There is a chance they will decide to replace the entire pack since it is much less labor and the 30kWh packs have been discontinued and replaced by the 40kWh packs (as found in newer Leafs) so replacement modules may not be available.

Best of luck and keep up updated.
 
ya - IDK why I didn't just share that info but I have been working with Boulder Nissan - they are the dealer in question.

If its true that Nissan corp wont entertain battery issues without 8 bars or code then I guess we may have gotten had by the dealer but I guess it seems a double edged sword if I understand it right - we may suffer pain for a while of lower than expected range and possibly scary SoC drop - but at the end of it we probably would expect to reach a code or bar state granting a warranty action within the 8 years - but Id prefer sooner rather than later as getting stranded on a commute is no fun..
 
They do need to have a trouble code to trigger a CVLI test. You need to find a better dealership ASAP. The ignorance and lying shown so far are pretty typical, but you need a better dealership to get the battery repaired* or replaced. Driving the car with less than 20% SOC is likely to trigger Turtle Mode (greatly reduced power) and that should throw a code. Do it near home, though, so you can get it back to your driveway to charge before it stops dead.

* Nissan is only obligated to replace the bad cell, although with a little luck they will replace the whole battery, likely with a 40kwh pack from the 2018+ cars.
 
Given the low cell voltage on #11 in the pack, as reported by LeafSpy, I would go back to the dealer with a print out of that screenshot and insist that they get an expert LEAF tech involved.

If they don't give you satisfaction, then I would go to Nissan directly. This is clearly a defective cell and must be covered by warranty - either by replacing the defective cell or giving you a replacement pack.
 
derbartman said:
See it seems its in the dealers interest to help determine a battery should be fixed or replaced under warranty so it seems like they would want to help and would be very clear on the rules and guidelines about said replacement.
None of that is your concern, and it is waste of your time and energy.

#1 You have a defective pack
#2 Your car is under warranty

This is Nissan. You have to be focused or they will BS you into insanity.
 
alozzy said:
Given the low cell voltage on #11 in the pack, as reported by LeafSpy, I would go back to the dealer with a print out of that screenshot and insist that they get an expert LEAF tech involved.

If they don't give you satisfaction, then I would go to Nissan directly. This is clearly a defective cell and must be covered by warranty - either by replacing the defective cell or giving you a replacement pack.

The problem is that they don't consider LeafSpy to be acceptable evidence of anything.
 
Right - and it sounds like even if I pay the $85 for their test and the see the same result - they cant/wont do anything either - its true I can push / escalate. I can talk to the manager and then the owner and then call Nissan no gas line and discuss and escalate as per their docs. If I were to choose the escalate path it sure seems like I would be way better off having a Nissan dealer test showing the bad cell than just leafspy. I fear paying $85 only to have the dealer say it all came back fine.. I also fear the whole escalation path - also lots of BS and frustration..

Its very odd though to think that they don't accept the data that their own car is outputting..

Maybe calling the other two local dealers and seeing if I can have a less weird conversation about the situation is one good step and confirm this stance about needing a code. Then I could consider calling the Nissan 800 line and just having a friendly chat with them about the issue. While I stew on those options Ill get the low charge leafspy output tonight and drive it a bit lower charge - yesterday I did get down to 14%

I guess life will be simpler if the code gets thrown while doing normal stuff.
 
Forum, remind me and OP: at what cell voltage does the pack turtle ? 2.6v somewhat rings a bell but I am not sure
 
There is one bit of humor in all this: other than the defective cell, the pack has superb balancing. :lol:
 
You could try Valley Nissan in Longmont or Tynan's in Ft. Collins. I've never dealt with either one of them but they should be close. I got my Leaf at Tynan's in Aurora and their 'Leaf specialist' salesman was completely clueless but I'm not sure about the rest of the dealership and that was several years ago. They do seem to sell quite a few Leafs though. I've heard better things about the Ft. Collins outfit but have never been there.
 
while looking for more info on the CVLI I did find a post on a different board same car within last year in England with nearly identical data - same one cell really low on leafspy histogram. Same story from dealer about no problem - regular issues.. - they apparently called Nissan who got the cvli test approved or such and then the car was sent for module change after the result of the cvli - but they complained about the distinct lack of communication about the whole thing.
It was telling just how similar their drive miles to charge behavior was to mine how its fine for the first 20 miles then droops fast - with low remaining charge after 55 miles. They called out a delta in the SoC between the car and leafspy with leafspy giving more value to all the remaining high cells and the car paying attention to the low one I guess..
 
derbartman said:
Right - and it sounds like even if I pay the $85 for their test and the see the same result - they cant/wont do anything either - its true I can push / escalate. I can talk to the manager and then the owner and then call Nissan no gas line and discuss and escalate as per their docs. If I were to choose the escalate path it sure seems like I would be way better off having a Nissan dealer test showing the bad cell than just leafspy. I fear paying $85 only to have the dealer say it all came back fine.. I also fear the whole escalation path - also lots of BS and frustration..

Its very odd though to think that they don't accept the data that their own car is outputting..
There's no way in hell Nissan corporate would approve a warranty claim based upon Leaf Spy output only. They didn't write the tool and don't know how accurate or inaccurate its rendering to the user of output its. From the minimal amount of gathered from talking to Turbo3 years ago about this, sounds like there's a ton of traffic on the CAN buses. It's not like he knows what all of it means and meaning of the values.

At least he was able to do some reverse engineering and real time confirmation to get the voltages right: https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=17470.

You need to find the 30 kWh version of https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=16070 since the voltages would probably be different than a 24 kWh pack.

You can maybe just buy a subscription (https://www.nissan-techinfo.com/deptsubs.aspx) to print out or download the PDFs of the service manual (https://www.nissan-techinfo.com/find.aspx?dept_id=10) for the '17 for this section. You need to get the dealer to run that procedure. It will fail given how bad the imbalance is. Or, maybe you can get them to bring up those pages since they definitely have the whole manual or subscription to it.

Nissan dealer service depts would use Consult III Plus (https://www.nissan-techinfo.com/dept.aspx?dept_id=25) on all their vehicles.
 
It was telling just how similar their drive miles to charge behavior was to mine how its fine for the first 20 miles then droops fast - with low remaining charge after 55 miles. They called out a delta in the SoC between the car and leafspy with leafspy giving more value to all the remaining high cells and the car paying attention to the low one I guess..

The Battery Management System (BMS) which Nissan calls the Lithium Battery Controller or something like that, tries to protect the battery pack from failure. It does this by limiting power and then shutting the pack down to prevent the weakest cell(s) from damage. This is how pretty much all BMS systems work: keep the weakest cells from dying and ruining the pack.
 
LeftieBiker said:
alozzy said:
Given the low cell voltage on #11 in the pack, as reported by LeafSpy, I would go back to the dealer with a print out of that screenshot and insist that they get an expert LEAF tech involved.

If they don't give you satisfaction, then I would go to Nissan directly. This is clearly a defective cell and must be covered by warranty - either by replacing the defective cell or giving you a replacement pack.

The problem is that they don't consider LeafSpy to be acceptable evidence of anything.

I understand that, but it at least gives the OP a leg to stand on, to push for further testing.

I can't imagine having any chance of success with getting a warranty claim going without LeafSpy evidence, if the dealer thinks there's no problem and is trying to get rid of you. Leafspy is the only evidence based tool we have as owners. I'm by no means suggesting it's definitive, but how else would you argue with a reluctant dealership that the pack is unhealthy?
 
alozzy said:
but how else would you argue with a reluctant dealership that the pack is unhealthy?

1. You push the car to turtle so it sets DTCs
Or
2. You take a Nissan tech for a drive at a low battery SoC and let him/her watch the SoC plummet and the car go into turtle
 
SageBrush said:
alozzy said:
but how else would you argue with a reluctant dealership that the pack is unhealthy?

1. You push the car to turtle so it sets DTCs
Or
2. You take a Nissan tech for a drive at a low battery SoC and let him/her watch the SoC plummet and the car go into turtle

The former for sure, which was already discussed in this thread. Hopefully the OP is able to make that happen.

The latter still requires a Nissan dealership willing to investigate further. I still think LeafSpy helps to start those conversations, to get to a point to where they are willing to hop in the car.

I suspect that the OP is going to have to be patient and wait for a turtle mode event, to trigger a DTC that Nissan will pay attention to. Hopefully driving aggressively, with a low SOC, makes that happen sooner rather than later...
 
If he wants to see Turtle without risking bricking the car, any high battery load at low SOC should cause a DTC event. I suggest driving under full power up a substantial hill - carefully. IIRC, these kinds of events cause a warning message but don't strand the car, once the extra load is removed...
 
well I sure don't want to brick the car.. I guess I hope you mean being stranded as opposed to damaging the car. I don't feel confident about inducing turtle mode - but I also don't really understand why causing it to go into turtle is likely to trigger these error codes.

Im going to be digging into the new leafspy data I got from today, but one thing was very interesting in that leafspy was reporting quite a bit higher SoC than the car. e.g. when I got very low and the car was reporting 7% leafspy was reporting 37%. Right after that the car reported -- and I drove home - with no turtle..

At that point leafspy reported the weak cell as 3.426 and high of 3.657 231 mv
 
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