Earlier this month, we reported that some early-production Nissan Leaf electric cars were experiencing re-starting issues that company spokesmen believed might be traced back to the cars’ cold-weather HVAC systems. Last Friday, Nissan released an official explanation of the issue zeroing in on the Vehicle Control Module (VCM) and announced that all 5,300 “active” Leafs would receive updates to eliminate the problem.
I’ve included Nissan’s official press release, below.
Nissan has found that a very small proportion of the Nissan LEAFs in the market today have reported incidents which require reprogramming of the Vehicle Control Module to address incorrect diagnosis programming. Yet, as the LEAF is very important to us, Nissan has decided to perform a service campaign on 5,300 Nissan LEAF vehicles in the Japanese, North American, European and other markets to ensure all of our customers are satisfied.
This is not a safety issue as the vehicle will not stop running while being driven, but may not restart once it is turned off.
Approximately 500 Nissan LEAF customer vehicles in the U.S. are affected by this campaign. In an effort to minimize the inconvenience to these customers a message will be sent through the on-board telematics system early next week prompting the owners to contact their Nissan dealer to arrange reprogramming of the software to address this issue. Nissan will also contact potentially affected owners through traditional channels to inform them about this issue.
We are fully aware that this issue may have inconvenienced some of our customers. Nissan is committed to a high level of customer service and satisfaction, and is working with dealers to promptly address the issue.
Source: Nissan, via Autoblog Green.