Nissan LEAF won’t start

It’s being reported that a significant number of Nissan LEAF electric cars are failing to start. The issue has been reported in the US and Japan.

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about stepping in to an EV for the first time – or even a hybrid – is that the car gets turned on rather than being started.

Which means there’s no reassuring churn of the starter or roar from a newly started engine. All is quiet, and just a little eerie. But for many owners of the Nissan LEAF in the US and Japan that silence has not been the expected hush of an EV ready to perform, it’s actually been the sound of a dead LEAF.

It seems Nisan are receiving a worrying number of complaints from both sides of the Pacific about dead LEAFs. According to Reuters, Nissan are aware of the problem and are saying they think it’s down to  faulty AirCon (which may explain why we’ve heard of no complaints this side of the Atlantic).

So far Nissan has sold somewhere a bit over 4,000 LEAFs worldwide, so for a problem to be consistently reported across such a small number of cars must be cause for concern. Nissan are unlikely to issue a recall – a dead car is not a safety issue – but have said they’ll sort a resolve once they actually know for sure what’s wrong

All of which is a real shame. The Nissan is pointless as a replacement for an ICE car, but hopefully those who have bought it knew in advance it was just a toy for running around locally. An expensive toy, true, but a toy nonetheless.

They deserve better – for all that money – than a toy that lets them down.