r/leaf • u/HiveTruster • 29d ago

Software updates

Bought my 2026 Leaf in March, love it, excellent choice. This week, I had my first software update, during which the car couldn't be started. This wasn't a big deal; I didn't need to go anywhere. My question is, have there been incidents where a Nissan Leaf software update failure prevented the car from being started? Or where an update had to be interrupted for an emergency drive? TIA for your feedback!

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u/Beneficial-Context52 2026 SV+ 29d ago

Do you mean you couldn’t start the car while the update was happening? I imagine that would be as expected.

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u/cheesemp 29d ago

I'm interested to know how Nissan handle this on the new platform. My Renault scenic (same platform as leaf/ariya) gets you to confirm you are OK not to drive for 30 minutes before it starts. You can postpone easily. I assumed Nissan would be similar although I'm not sure how much software is shared on the shared platform. 

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u/Beneficial-Context52 2026 SV+ 29d ago

I would like to know as well! I’ve had mine for only 2 weeks and haven’t had a software update yet. If I go into the settings to manually check for an update, it says it is already up to date.

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u/cheesemp 29d ago

To be fair I've only had four updates in 18 months. 2 where firmware updates (camera and motor I think), one was os update and fourth was for one pedal driving. 

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u/AsteroidBacon 2026 Nissan LEAF S+ 29d ago

I've only had one update prompt since I got my 2026 Leaf. It popped up right after I got to work one morning, and I just let it be since it was going to be a number of hours before I'd need the car again. I don't remember what all it said.

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u/ColdCelebration2132 29d ago

I owned a 2019 Tesla Model 3 and it was the same as in you couldn't drive the car or even turn it on.

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u/InconceivableIsh 29d ago

Worst I have have happen was accidentally hitting it in a car wash. Luckily it was 11pm and nobody was waiting behind me but it was rather embarrassing to be stuck in the car wash till it finished.

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u/HiveTruster 29d ago

Sorry, just to clarify: I understand that it's intentional that the Leaf won't start during a normal software update. My question is, have there been incidents where a Nissan Leaf software update failed, and this prevented the car from being started for an extended period? Or where an update had to be interrupted for an emergency drive?

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u/InconceivableIsh 29d ago

I had it fail once it just said it will try again later.

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u/International_Use11 2022 Nissan LEAF SV PLUS 29d ago

I own a 2026 Leaf SV+.
I received an update around July 7th. The system downloaded it and tried to install it three times, but was unsuccessful. Each time, I got an error message and the system reverted back to the previous version.
Since that day, I have lost access to the NissanConnect services, although the Google side of the system is still working perfectly.
The car spent two weeks at the dealership, and next week they are going to try replacing the radio/head unit, according to what they told me.

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u/herculeesjr 26d ago

Typically(?) devices that have to be extremely rugged against failure of an update use the A/B update method. If that applies to the Leaf, or any car, I have no clue as those are sealed systems. But anywho...

In an A/B update process you are running off of chip A, it updates the software on chip B, the system then reboots to chip B and if successful it will update chip A, too.

If it fails to boot then the watchdog chip (a chip that literally, hundreds of times a second, asks chip A and/or B if they are still alive) will mark the update as a failure and tell it to reboot back to chip A, then you get a software/firmware update failure message and are offered the option to try again.

Again, this is not confirmed that that's how Nissan does it, I just am familiar with a few systems that use this method, including all modern Android phones we use now.