Last April I had my leaf’s TCU updated to 3G for $199. A bit much for what should be a standard feature in the leaf. Nissan discontinued support for the 2g band. The upgrade restored smart phone connectivity to the car. Great.
Last month the 12 volt battery died and I had AAA give me a jump start. I drove around for a while putting some charge back into the battery. The next day the battery was dead. Another AAA fellow came by and noticed that I had a AAA battery I had installed last September! I had entirely forgotten. So TCU went in in April, battery failed and was replaced in September, and that battery failed in November!
The AAA guy asked if I had paperwork for the battery. It was under warranty and I’d get a new battery free of charge with the paperwork. Normally I file away everything car and house related. I couldn’t find the paperwork. I looked and looked. Finally the AAA guy said he couldn’t in good conscience sell me another battery. He created paperwork to cover the purchase in September, then installed a new battery under warranty. (He clearly didn’t have to do this. I doubt most service people would.) He suggested I have the car’s parasitic current draw checked out. Something was killing the battery.
Yesterday I dropped the car off at the dealer. They would charge $175 to diagnose the problem and take it from there. Later in the day I got a call saying there was a service bulletin out on this problem TSBNTB18-045B. The solution was to reprogram the TCU. Apparently a shutoff timeout had not been set correctly.
The best news: there was no charge.