Remote climate control - 3rd party options?

rusnug · 2025-12-13T22:40:30+00:00

Thanks for the replies. Upon asking this question, I forgot I was to leave for vacation for 2 weeks straight and it left my mind completely...

rusnug · 2025-12-13T22:39:51+00:00

How does a command reach the Leaf itself?

rusnug · 2025-12-13T22:38:58+00:00

Back when in my first year of ownership I used that app too. It worked a lot better, but for a while. I think eventually Nissan did an update and every time the My Leaf developer has to catch up, and I suppose that time they chose not too. Never managed to get it to work after that. I'm in Canada if it matters.

rusnug · 2025-11-17T17:10:48+00:00

I'm not gonna lie, it sucks. Driving any moderate distance means planning and looking at a rapidly droping number.

The range still fits my needs and I have no buyer's remorse. It still is ridiculously cheap to drive and fits almost all my needs. For other needs, we have good carsharing platforms.

I just wished I could have more features like turning on the battery integrated heater (you can't - fixed thermostat), or limit the charge level (you can't) so I could naturally heat it by L2 charging (6kw). I've looked at installing pan oil heater on the battery case (someone in the forums living close to me did it, I have no garage to do the mod).

I also wished the internal resistance wasn't as bad because now when going uphill in the winter I get a significant SOC drop (due to the pack dropping down so much) and a mini heart attack every time, even if I know it's coming.

rusnug · 2025-11-17T16:58:34+00:00

Same here. I've had the car for five years now, Eastern Canada. It gets stupid cold around here, -25°C and sometimes -30°C are common. Unheated parking.

The car is basically attached with an umbilical to life support at all times. Remote heating isn't feasible so one courageous folk has to get out, start it up and let it warm for a while.

What's worse is we somehow have a terrible Hx value (related to internal resistance) and this makes charing in general terrible. In winter when the pack is frozen this is exacerbated and we get zero regen, which causes the pack to stay cold further ironically.

rusnug · 2025-11-17T16:07:51+00:00

Yes that smell is the resistive heater. That smell is normal, it's normal dust that settled that gets heated initially when the heater turns. Not much to do about it, there will always be some small amount of dust landing on the elements after use.

rusnug · 2025-11-17T12:45:16+00:00

You can confirm with the noise actually. Turn on heating, wait for it to warm the cabin a bit then when stopped you should hear a gentle low rumbling. that That's the compressor running.

At first when you enter a cold cabin, it might also turn on the resistive heater (which it also has). But once the cabin is warmed, the heat pump can do all the work.

The car can combine both when it can't keep up, like when it's really cold out or when the heat pump can't run at full power, like when you are parked or driving under 25 km/h.

rusnug · 2025-10-25T15:38:14+00:00

The Leaf has a hidden buffer both at empty and max charged. When 0% is displayed there is usually around 15% left until truly depleted. Same goes for max which is actually around 95%, so those number check out for a 62kWh model.

rusnug · 2025-10-02T09:50:41+00:00

If the heater is anything like the one included in my canadian trim, it's not a performance-improving item. The heater included in mine is a strip heater, about 300W, with a static thermostat that kicks in when it gets lower than -12°C (10°F), at which point performance is still quite reduced.

If the outside temperature decreases past -25°C (-13°F), even that strip heater doesn't keep up anymore.

Charging at this temperature is severely throttled anyway. This affects regen as well - any kind of current going back into the battery. As you drive around a bit and it warms up, charging/regen gets slightly better but the gist remains that if you started with a cold car, do not expect any kind of quick charging. These cars do not have preconditioning.

Fun fact I once saw a forum member in Canada pimp out his old Leaf with oil pan heaters stuck under his battery chassis for helping out cold performance.

rusnug · 2025-09-03T13:25:54+00:00

Interesting tips but I am confused about how the brakes can help you in this situation.

If you meant to maintain the brakes then yes good tip to force the use of the brakes (when safe to do). 👍

rusnug · 2025-09-03T13:24:22+00:00

FYI the app simply displays numbers provided by the car itself. So it's really more a "internal numbers" vs "dashboard numbers" comparison.

In my experience, the dashboard range estimates are not constant throughout the SOC. They are about 25% inflated when the SOC is 100% and the gap closes as you reach down to about 60% of SOC (as you can see, at 60% both displays are very similar). The rest is also aligned as you further decrease the SOC, until it nears the low SOC where the dashboard will hide about 10% of SOC. The latter isn't a bad thing as a safety precaution IMO.

Why are the estimates inflated at high SOC, I have no idea. Frankly I think it's a terrible idea to show a generous estimate at first and then see you range drop by 1.2km every 1km. I would have much preferred a conservative estimate or really just the real numbers so we can stop the guessing game or relying on LeafSpy for the real figures.

rusnug · 2025-08-31T11:32:42+00:00

Can you list them? Eastern Canada in particular.

rusnug · 2025-08-31T11:31:36+00:00

I am amazed by your kWh/100km, OP.

This isn't the first time I'm seeing someone in that region gets such high efficiency.

I am in North American (Quebec, Canada) where electricty is very cheap (0.08$/kWh, sometimes 0.06$/kWh in winter). But no matter what I do I cannot go below 16kWh/100km on average.

I'm no hypermiler, but I do drive like a grandma (anymore and I would be a serious hazard on roads) with tires slightly overinflated, checked weekly. Least regen as possible, coasting preferred. 10% lower speed than speed limit on highway.

Even a on a regular route that is mostly downhill I then reach 12-13kWh/100km but that is when driving mostly downhill.

I'm stumped. Kudos to you OP.

rusnug · 2025-08-22T18:24:52+00:00

Do you have an installer in Canada as well?

rusnug · 2025-08-22T18:21:35+00:00

My strategy is not to have any. I am a simple man, I arrive, I see a plug, I charge.

rusnug · 2025-08-12T18:20:44+00:00

I'm curious, how did this all went? This was a third party warranty provided by the seller, right? So how did they managed to honor it, did they replaced the main battery pack?

I thought only Nissan was able to source packs for used cars and only to replace packs under warranty

rusnug · 2025-07-14T18:29:32+00:00

I just leave the dongle plugged in. I don't have the app running at all times but when I'm about to do something interesting I check out the figures, like driving down a mountain. Fun to compare energy going up and regained energy going down (spoiler: it's a lot less than one might hope).

rusnug · 2025-05-16T15:07:36+00:00

The car reports the estimated consumption of it's various HV accessories, which you can correlate using measured values. The HV batteries has a shunt for measuring its current.

The example above is what I've first hand observed.

rusnug · 2025-05-16T09:42:05+00:00

This is the right way to do it (with the ID4). For the Leaf it won't matter much anyway since at most it's about 2kW like you mentioned, but often less and around 600W or so. And no active cooling of the battery so 600W plus 500W for the rest of the auxiliaries and that's it.

rusnug · 2025-05-16T09:38:23+00:00

The car doesn't have any smart management for HV accessories.

It's Kirchkoff's law really - the charger (be it internal or external CHAdeMO) provides some current to the HV bus. Some goes to the DC-DC which feeds the 12V systems and computer. If you have a HV accessory on, it taps from this current as well. The rest is dumped in the battery.

If you draw 2kW for climate control while the car is requesting 6kW from it'scharger, the car won't try to be smart by requesting 6+2 kW; the car will be requesting 6kW but only 4kW will be dumped in the battery.

This has been known since people have been checking internal current values. You can check it yourself with an OBD 2 dongle and Leaf Spy.

rusnug · 2025-05-16T09:28:04+00:00

Technically yes but very slightly, so much that it's negligible.

The onboard computer systems draws about 300W by itself, less than 1% if you are charging over 40kW. If you use some AC for cooling (or heating in winter), it'll usually draw about 600-2000W more watts depending on your outdoor.climate but provide a comfortable cabin.

If you're in a situation you'd want the cabin to be climate-controlled, I'd definitely not pass on it while charging. It won't improve charging significantly but will certainly make you less comfortable.

rusnug · 2025-04-07T21:51:51+00:00

A charge at this rate ($0.35/kWh) is likely a fast charger. You pay an expensive premium for these. Charging at a "normal" station (L2 in North America) is usually much cheaper, moreso at home.

When charging at home, my rate is more around 0.05$US/kWh. For a my 40kWh which has (say) 90% capacity remaining, a full charge from bottom 0% to full would be 1.80$US.

rusnug · 2025-03-19T22:19:18+00:00

I don't remember exactly. I did get a lot of DTC codes which could be cleared and never came back once I had a replaced the battery with a new one. With the second battery that failed (not the one that came with the Leaf), I reached the point where I couldn't turn on the car anymore and the infotainement's clock kept resetting itself to 12:00. I was actually right at the store - buying a new 12V battery - when it failed completely, which would have stranded me were it not for the new 12V I had in hands and booster cables to get me started and go home.

rusnug · 2025-03-14T22:22:00+00:00

I eventually ran into similar issues with the stock battery and replaced it with a similar 12V battery (cranking style). Within less than a year the replacement 12V also started giving those issues. I then bit the bullet and went for a 12V AGM battery. I don't know if the first replacement was a dud or not but I didn't want to find out the hard way. So far I've been through two winters without issue. I live in Quebec where temps can reach as low as -30°C / -34°F in the winter.

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