Leaf - won't go into Drive mode

Soarer

Definitely takes pictures and record what's done.

Scottie99

This ex Nissan EV mechanic could be very useful for all of us Leaf owners.

macnab

oinkely wrote: »

thanks all,

Think I have an inverter sourced. And i have an ex-nissan mechanic who is fully trained on leafs to do the swap.

I'll update when done.

@oinkely, Hang onto the old inverter, I would love to get my hands on it to diagnose the fault. Feel free to PM me if you are happy to loan it to me.

macnab

macnab wrote: »

@oinkely, Hang onto the old inverter, I would love to get my hands on it to diagnose the fault. Feel free to PM me if you are happy to loan it to me.

I fully agree. These inversters don't appear to have any design fault that would make all of them fail and I can't remember reading somebody ever needing one before. Bad soldering joint or something similar would be a great result. And then you can keep the old inverter as a spare and/or aside just in case somebody at Boards needs one too.

KCross

I'd bet that Indra.co.uk would buy it off him. It definitely has value so should be used to reduce his cost to repair.

ltd440

Op so sorry to read about your car issues and best of luck with the repair, I would be crushed if that happened to me. I don't think I can recommend an out of warranty ev to someone any more just incase ( however unlikely) something this expensive could happen to them.
Did your mechanic give any idea how long it will take to fit the inverter?

ltd440

ltd440 wrote: »

Op so sorry to read about your car issues and best of luck with the repair, I would be crushed if that happened to me. I don't think I can recommend an out of warranty ev to someone any more just incase ( however unlikely) something this expensive could happen to them.
Did your mechanic give any idea how long it will take to fit the inverter?

Repair for the new parts is not realistic but swapping a second hand part is not too bad if you can get the part handy. I suspect he labour will be somewhere between replacing a thermostat and timing belt+water pump combo on a regular car and your hands don't get dirty by oily bits as there are none. And it's all accessible from under the bonnet on top of the electric motor so access is easy too.

beauf

KCross wrote: »

If the previous recommendations above dont work out for you I'd recommend you talk to this guy...

https://www.indra.co.uk/about-us

The owner, Mike Schooling, is a regular poster on the UK forum ...

Which UK forum?

KCross

beauf wrote: »

Which UK forum?

speakev

beauf

oinkely wrote: »

Nissan called me back today. Inverter failed, can't say why. Repair bill will be 9500. Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh

Guy in deansgrange said nissan Ireland will do nothing.

Anyone know of anybody independent who might be able to look at it?

I was trying to think of something to equate this with in a ice car and all I could was a catastrophic crash. Rebuild etc.

Is there any ev that has a warranty or you can extend to cover these kinds of costs? At this age?

beauf

beauf wrote: »

I was trying to think of something to equate this with in a ice car and all I could was a catastrophic crash. Rebuild etc.

Is there any ev that has a warranty or you can extend to cover these kinds of costs? At this age?

Our neigbours 151 Qashqai CVT box failed when out of factory warranty and the repair bill was 7k. Luckily for them it was bought second hand from a dealer and was under their warranty. A totally failed engine replaced at a dealer could be up to 10k.

But I think 9.5k in case of failed inverter is a totally scandalous price for a relatively simple component and labour.

beauf

I was forgetting that we are talking dealer prices EV and ICE.

ltd440

samih wrote: »

Repair for the new parts is not realistic but swapping a second hand part is not too bad if you can get the part handy. I suspect he labour will be somewhere between replacing a thermostat and timing belt+water pump combo on a regular car and your hands don't get dirty by oily bits as there are none. And it's all accessible from under the bonnet on top of the electric motor so access is easy too.

As you say, if you can get the part handy and if you understand the work that needs doing and if you can get a mechanic that can actually do the work. And saying that the work is easy to do doesn't mean it will be cheap.
Homechargers were a few hundred euros to install a few years ago because they were relatively easy work and only a few guys installing them, now there is a lot more guys doing the installs yet prices are skyrocketing

oinkely

Rumor has it that the replacement inverter is due to arrive with the mechanic today form the wilds of Tralee. I'll update again if and when it does and when the job is done.

Hopefully we will be back on the road next week, luckily not stuck for transport as we have another leaf and a diesel for towing duties. I'm sick putting diesel into it though for the commute to work! Can't wait to have my wife's leaf repaired so I can have mine back! Using a clutch in traffic is an unusual and cruel form of torture.

Toyotafanboi

Mike9832 wrote: »

Electric cars can't go wrong

Only 20 moving parts

We keep hearing

No one talks about Tesla drive trains costing €20,000+ if they go wrong

Hope it works out OP

Have you tried any auto electrics?

Sorry, I don't have much to add, it's interesting the whole "moving parts" quote you hear so much about though when EV's are being shilled, that you've fallen victim to, to an extent.

A part doesn't have to move to fail, as you now know. That and the reality is that the majority of failures in modern ICE cars are not from moving parts anyway, they are more often than not electronic component, software or wiring issues. Non consumable "moving part" technology is pretty much at it's peak and rarely gives issues, unless it's a BMW timing chain .

Have seen a few inverter failures at this point in work, obviously very disappointing from your point of view, but as stated in this thread, should now perhaps be a consideration in used EV or Hybrid ownership.

The Leaf inverter seems particularly expensive though, what was the itemised quote from Nissan and how much is the second hand part? Are you getting a warranty with the second hand item? I think you do right going with the used item but curious about the facts and figures of it!

The part pricing from Nissan suggests that these inverters never fail. You can be unlucky at any given time but it's unusual for a properly designed fully solid state device to fail in the middle of the bathtub curve. In this case it most likely is something like a marginal solder joint that just eventually gave up.

in the ICE world the most common electrical issues would be hightly stressed components like ignition coils, air flow meters, oxygen sensors or mechatronics like ABS pumps and old school mechanical air flow meters. ECUs or other electrical components without moving parts hardly ever fail unless they are designed wrong. The same seems to be the case with EVs.

A properly spec'd and designed inverter should last forever and this seem to also be the case with the LEAF unit: There have been cases of cars with hundreds of thousands of kilometers on the clock with the original inverter. It's exactly the same as with computer hardware: Harddrives fail but the motherboards and CPUs hardware ever unless there is a design fault on the motherboard or the likes of too cheap components used as cooling fans or capacitors. The only exception to the rule of fully solid state failing devices in computers are flash memory devices like SSDs. We scrapped some Sun Microsystems computers at work recently and the oldest ones were from year 2001, were powered on 24/7, and the failure rate has been exceptionally low including the disks and fans. The spare parts would not have been even available for them since like 2006. These were properly designed electronics and would have probably lasted for another 18 years of use but they just had become beyond obsolete. I would expect the most of the electronics of a LEAF be the same.

The failing Tesla Model S drive units get mentioned a lot and there was a good reason why the bearings of them failed: They had a design fault where the motor earthed through a bearing and the resulting sparking killed said bearing in a short while. Sometimes these things happen when you design something brand new that nobody else ever designed but Tesla have learned their lesson, the bearing no longer carries any current, and now the drive units on for example Model 3 are spec'd to last million miles plus and the same units will also used in a HGV application. Try to do the same with say VW Passat transmission.

OP, please take on the offer of troubleshooting the failed inverter so that we all find out what causes the failure.

Orebro

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

Sorry, I don't have much to add, it's interesting the whole "moving parts" quote you hear so much about though when EV's are being shilled, that you've fallen victim to, to an extent.

A part doesn't have to move to fail, as you now know. That and the reality is that the majority of failures in modern ICE cars are not from moving parts anyway, they are more often than not electronic component, software or wiring issues. Non consumable "moving part" technology is pretty much at it's peak and rarely gives issues, unless it's a BMW timing chain .

Have seen a few inverter failures at this point in work, obviously very disappointing from your point of view, but as stated in this thread, should now perhaps be a consideration in used EV or Hybrid ownership.

The Leaf inverter seems particularly expensive though, what was the itemised quote from Nissan and how much is the second hand part? Are you getting a warranty with the second hand item? I think you do right going with the used item but curious about the facts and figures of it!

Ah here, this is the first major failure of an EV component in my time reading this forum. Head over to the main motors forum and things are a little different!

And anyway, there is a reasonable way out of this with the likes of Indra in the UK doing it for handy money. Bit of a dose getting it to them yes but worth the hassle for the savings. It's not like this is common on the Leaf, first I've seen one.

Toyotafanboi

Orebro wrote: »

Ah here, this is the first major failure of an EV component in my time reading this forum. Head over to the main motors forum and things are a little different!

...

It's not like this is common on the Leaf, first I've seen one.

Sure, it's the first one you've seen, but the gene pool is much smaller. Just a glance at beepbeep.ie, in 2013 there was 630 EV and Hybrid vehicles (or just 49 full fat EV's) reg'd in Ireland vs 73,000 ICE. I know this doesn't indicate grey imports in the mean time etc but it gives an idea, vs failures noted on the main forum.

If there was more of them, you'd see more fail I'm sure.

I agree, it's likely a weak solder joint or something simple along those lines, but the fact remains, it's still a failure and not an item you can pick up in a motor factors for €100. I'd be interested in how much the used unit is costing to see how much potential "EV saving" it could be wiping out, similar to say a dual mass flywheel or injector failure in a diesel car vs a petrol.

Toyotafanboi

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

Sure, it's the first one you've seen, but the gene pool is much smaller. Just a glance at beepbeep.ie, in 2013 there was 630 EV and Hybrid vehicles (or just 49 full fat EV's) reg'd in Ireland vs 73,000 ICE. I know this doesn't indicate grey imports in the mean time etc but it gives an idea, vs failures noted on the main forum.

If there was more of them, you'd see more fail I'm sure.

I agree, it's likely a weak solder joint or something simple along those lines, but the fact remains, it's still a failure and not an item you can pick up in a motor factors for €100. I'd be interested in how much the used unit is costing to see how much potential "EV saving" it could be wiping out, similar to say a dual mass flywheel or injector failure in a diesel car vs a petrol.

There are hundreds of thousands of LEAFs on the road. If this was a widespread issue you'd know all about it. Also comparing an inverter to a consumable like a DMF is not right as is has no moving parts and it doesn't wear out. Fitting a working used part is absolutely right thing to do. There will never be a motorfactor 100 yoyo part equivalent for something that is very specific to a model of vehicle that normally doesn't fail.

oinkely

This is generating a lively debate, I'm glad to see my troubles have an upside! Costs so far for this event are €210 for towing (to Nissan and then from Nissan to indy garage). €500 for used inverter plus €70 to deliver it from the bowels of Kerry (note it hasn't arrived yet so we will have to reserve judgement as to final cost for the moment). No idea of the mechanic cost yet, but if it's less than €9000 i'm on a winner ;-)

To be fair, the headline price from Nissan was shocking. The part including VAT was €6400 so I guess they were charging around €3k for fitting. The service manager in deansgrange was very sound about it in the end and didn't charge me for the diagnostic work they did, and was quite apologetic that the part cost so much. I also moaned to Nissan Ireland and they rang me back with an offer of a €2k reduction on the part as a goodwill gesture. The person with whom I was speaking said they had replaced 1 inverter ever under warranty so it is rare for them to fail. I took this as a good sign for going for a second hand one from a breaker!

I think we just hit bad luck with this one, but there is light at the end of the tunnel and will hopefully get out of it for less than the slipped timing belt in my old VW transporter cost me or the the broken timing belt in my previous fiat multisplat cost. I have a long history of bad luck with cars so not too surprised really!

I will arrange with the previous poster to pass on the damaged inverter when it is available to see if a fault can be identified. Again, I'll update as progress is made.

Just to add - it won't put me off leafs or EVs in general - I'm still an EVangelist, just slightly tempered my zealousness now!

Orebro

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

Sure, it's the first one you've seen, but the gene pool is much smaller. Just a glance at beepbeep.ie, in 2013 there was 630 EV and Hybrid vehicles (or just 49 full fat EV's) reg'd in Ireland vs 73,000 ICE. I know this doesn't indicate grey imports in the mean time etc but it gives an idea, vs failures noted on the main forum.

If there was more of them, you'd see more fail I'm sure.

Like the above poster said, there is something like 300k of the Leaf produced, and there are no common failures of the drivetrain components. And taking figures from Irish registrations isn't a good sample as we are the laggards on EV adoption in Europe.

zilog_jones

samih wrote: »

A properly spec'd and designed inverter should last forever and this seem to also be the case with the LEAF unit: There have been cases of cars with hundreds of thousands of kilometers on the clock with the original inverter. It's exactly the same as with computer hardware: Harddrives fail but the motherboards and CPUs hardware ever unless there is a design fault on the motherboard or the likes of too cheap components used as cooling fans or capacitors. The only exception to the rule of fully solid state failing devices in computers are flash memory devices like SSDs. We scrapped some Sun Microsystems computers at work recently and the oldest ones were from year 2001, were powered on 24/7, and the failure rate has been exceptionally low including the disks and fans. The spare parts would not have been even available for them since like 2006. These were properly designed electronics and would have probably lasted for another 18 years of use but they just had become beyond obsolete. I would expect the most of the electronics of a LEAF be the same.

If you're talking about Sun servers from that era, they could have easily cost more than a Leaf

Many electronic components have a limited life, especially things like electrolytic capacitors. An inverter in an EV has to deal with massive varying loads, high voltages and a lot of power cycles - they're working a hell of a lot harder than a typical computer. And it's a moving vehicle, so various vibrations and movements going on all the time in use.

I would be interested to see what has failed though. I guess car mechanics are going to have to improve their soldering skills in the next few years.

zilog_jones

zilog_jones wrote: »

If you're talking about Sun servers from that era, they could have easily cost more than a Leaf

Many electronic components have a limited life, especially things like electrolytic capacitors. An inverter in an EV has to deal with massive varying loads, high voltages and a lot of power cycles - they're working a hell of a lot harder than a typical computer. And it's a moving vehicle, so various vibrations and movements going on all the time in use.

I would be interested to see what has failed though. I guess car mechanics are going to have to improve their soldering skills in the next few years.

I expect car mechanics will become proficient in replacing the inverters & motors in the same way that they are in replacing any other car part, but the repairs of inverters and controllers will be a separate specialist industry for electronics engineers. No mechanic is going to have the stock of parts or the time & skill required to troubleshoot down to component level and replace the power Mosfets, surface mounted chips or whatever has failed.

kaahooters

So, any update?

oinkely

kaahooters wrote: »

So, any update?

Other than the replacement inverter not fixing it, no update!

There are now only two fault codes rather than the previous 6 or 7 so perhaps making progress in the right direction!

Have to get ID a part number from Nissan, just haven't had time yet today. This second part may be the root of all evil!

We shall see.

MRJ

Apologies for bringing up an old thread, I was doing a bit of research on EVs as I'm after trading in my old diesel burner for an EV and came upon this thread and was interested to see if the op sorted out the problem.

tom_tarbucket

MRJ wrote: »

Apologies for bringing up an old thread, I was doing a bit of research on EVs as I'm after trading in my old diesel burner for an EV and came upon this thread and was interested to see if the op sorted out the problem.

Bump on this too, interested or it got sorted and the final cost involved.

oinkely

Update is no update.

Still looking for another inverter. Mechanic is convinced the one we got was also damaged.

Can't confirm till i get another one. With being busy in work, holidays and general lack of motivation i haven't been chasing too hard. That all changes in two weeks when I'm back to work.

So - anyone know what breakers might have a gen 1.5 leaf in?

OP Nissan in North America did a recall of 196 Leafs


https://www.autoevolution.com/news/2014-nissan-leaf-recalled-for-faulty-traction-motor-inverter-83310.html


The vehicles were built over a nine-day span from April 15, 2014 through April 24, 2014, and the cause of the recall is a supplier defect that had motor inverters that weren’t up to spec installed in customer vehicles.

oinkely

Nissan Ireland were having none of that!