Most Challenging EV Journey Yet — Breakdown 200km from home
On Sunday, I drove my new 2018 40kw Nissan Leaf to Maruia Hot Springs. Monday morning, I went to drive home, and could not start the car. Instead, I was greeted by this message. My car wouldn’t start.
I just bought this car, a cool $32,000 which is both a lot for a car and entry-level for an EV. It’s one of the cheapest mid-range EVs you can get, with a range of about 200km per charge, a Nissan leaf which is one of the more reliable EVs. I’ve been driving Nissan Leafs for 5 years now without any major issues. Until now.
This trip was intended as a run-in test for further travels in the future, so I can get a good idea of the true range of this car. I’ve been to Maruia Hot Springs before, in fact, 5 years ago I wrote an article about my first successful journey there in an EV, but this trip, something went wrong, and this is the story of how I navigated this challenge.
To set the scene, it’s 9 am on Monday morning in Maruia Hot Springs, a tranquil off-grid resort 200km from Christchurch. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining, and I can’t leave.
The first step was to understand the problem. When pressing the power button, the error came up, the car would not enter drive mode, and could not charge. I put the car on to charge at 22%, so that means that the car stopped charging about 2hrs after starting.
Common with Nissan leafs are 12v battery issues. Whether the symptoms are a horn stuck on, dashboard lights flashing, beeping noises, charging not initiating, or the car not starting (I’ve seen all of these), the best solution to most of these problems is to disconnect the 12v battery for several minutes, and then try again. I did that, it won’t start.
The next logical step is to jump-start the car. Because a low voltage in the 12v battery can also cause all of the above issues, a jumpstart like any other vehicle will bring the voltage up, enough to start acting normal. From here, you can usually turn the car on, or start charging the car, and either of those will cause the car to start charging the 12v battery, thus solving your low voltage problem. With the help of the Maruia Springs staff, I tried that, it won’t start.
At this point, it was time to call in the specialists. Maruia Hot Springs has no cell service, but they were willing to let us use their satellite phone system to call EVs Enhanced, who specializes in EVs. Unfortunately, after checking I had tried the previous steps, the experts didn’t have much more to advise, without more specifics about the nature of the fault.
One thing about Nissan leafs is that they have an Onboard Diagnostics port, and you can connect an OBD bluetooth dongle to this port to interface with the car. In the case of a Nissan Leaf, you can use an app called Leafspy Pro to connect to the dongle and read and clear error codes. EVs Enhanced said that if I could read the error codes, they could give me some advice, and also I may be able to just clear the error codes in order to get my car working again (this heavily depends on the error code).
I started making plans to have someone drive out from Christchurch with a tow vehicle and a vehicle trailer, and a OBD Dongle that I had at home. My thinking was that if the diagnostics didn’t lead to anything useful, that way we could at least could recover the car. Rather than rely on the Resorts only phone, I purchased 1gb of satellite wifi to assist in trying to solve these problems.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find a suitable tow vehicle, remotely, in the timeframe I had available, however after posting in the local EV group, one of the amazing members, of that group offered to drive out and rescue me. After quickly checking out the options, I arranged for him to go past my house in Christchurch and grab my OBD dongle, my caravan EVSE and a replacement 3 pin 10amp EVSE and start the long 2.5hr drive to Maruia.
I had the problem that even if I managed to get the car working by clearing the error codes, I still only had 35% state of charge, which is not enough to make the 97km trip to the nearest fast charger on the way home to Christchurch. I also didn’t know whether the original cause of the problem was my vehicle, my charger, or Maruia Hot Spring’s power supply, and finally, even IF I was able to get my car to charge, and IF the replacement EVSE worked, and IF Maruia’s power didn’t cause my car to fault again, it would still take me around 6 hours to get the car enough charge to make it to Culverden… but that’s where the caravan socket comes in.
It’s now 5:30pm on Monday, the 20th of Febuary. We were supposed to leave Maruia at 9am that morning, and arrive home by 12pm, but here we still are. Florian, our wonderful EV hero and rescue driver pulled up in a shiny BMW i3. I thanked him profusely for driving all the way out, and we drove around to go see my stranded leaf.
I plugged the OBD dongle in, connected it to Leafspy, and started reading the status messages.
I have no idea what these meant, but I sent a screenshot to EVs Enhanced and started searching. I found a few results that suggested that it would either work, or not work,ie that the problem was either unfixable or that I could dismiss the errors and have the car working again. Heart beating, I clicked the button to clear all errors, and the confirmation screen that gave warnings about clearing errors you don’t understand…
I turned the car on, and it started. It Started. I turned it off, and tried again, it might fault again, but no, the second time it started as well. 35%. Not enough to get out of Lewis Pass, time to solve the next problem.
Maruia Hot Springs has their own hydroelectric system, with no mains supply. However, 11km up the road is Springs Junction. And while Springs Junction doesn’t have enough supply for a Fast charger to be installed there yet, they do have the lovely and charming, Lewis Pass Motel, who have a caravan socket, and will, if you ask nicely and pay for the hassle, usually allow electric cars to charge there. Charging there means that I can charge in twice the time that Maruia would take, and avoid another possible cause of the original fault.
So off we drove, me first in the Nissan leaf, and the BMW i3 following close behind, Florian at the ready in case my car broke down again and I did need to be rescued after all.
At Lewis Pass Motel, we plugged in the Nissan leaf and watched anxiously… And the car charged. Just like normal. We took a victory photo, and Florian and his fair steed road off into the sunset, and I settled into wait for the leaf to finish charging.
By 9pm at night, I reached 62% and decided that was good enough to make the next leg. I then started the 100km trip to Culverden, late at night on a low traffic road, with no cellphone signal. I was very concerned about running short of Culverden, so I used all of the hypermiling tricks I know, drove an average speed of about 70km, and at 11pm, pulled into the fast charger with just 18% remaining.
This is when things go more stressful.
I started fast charging, and checked my email, as I was finally back in service. Oh great, I had an email from EVs Enhanced about the fault codes on the car. Oh, they reccomend against fast charging due to fire risk….Great.
I can’t get home tonight without fast charging. I already started fast charging before I saw this email… What to do? I decided to charge to just 50% — there was a slim chance I could make it home on just that, and in any case it would put me in range of a Christchurch-based rescue, and I didn’t feel like staying the night in the car in Culverden was much better than accidentally setting my car on fire. I’m not sure I would have made this same decision if I had gotten this email before I started charging, but given the situation already in progress, it seemed like I’d already rolled the dice and just needed to wait for the outcome.
The car got to 50% charge without issue, and I disconnected it, and together we started the drive home. Heater off. Windows to clear the windscreen. 80km max speed. On 0%, I pulled into the Raewood Fresh Airport Orion slow charger, and charged for 15min to get the last 6% I needed to make it home.
To close out, I made it home with 2% remaining at 1:30am. The next day, I took the car to EVs Enhanced for a checkup, but they were unable to find any fault.
I have since charged the car without issue. I still don’t know whether the problem is the car, the EVSE, or the power supply. Over the next couple of days, I will be working on narrowing down those possibilities.
My takeaway from this experience is to carry my OBD dongle. I never knew how handy it could be.
