Owners of some Nissan Leaf electric vehicles are angry after the automaker announced it was shutting down an app that allows them to remotely control battery charging and other functions.
Drivers of Leaf cars manufactured before May 2019 and the e-NV200 van (produced until 2022) have been informed that the NissanConnect EV app linked to their vehicles will “stop working” from March 30. This means they will lose remote services, including turning on the heat and some map functions.
Experts said they expected other drivers to experience similar problems in the future as “connected cars” (vehicles that can connect to the Internet) age.
A driver and Guardian Money reader, Alan Clucas, said he was upset by the outage, adding that some of the vehicles affected were less than four years old. “I think Nissan should do better,” he said.
Speaking of his seven-year-old Leaf, Clucas said “the most annoying thing will be not being able to charge the car intelligently or heat it remotely on frosty mornings.” And he adds: “Before we could check the charge levels from a mobile phone.”
Other affected drivers have been discussing the matter online. “It looks like only paid remote connectivity will be supported in the future,” one said, adding that it was “surprising” that Nissan “only supported a major feature of EVs for seven years. Considering that (an) average car can last over 12 years, that’s shockingly bad.”
Another driver added: “My car is almost 10 years old now, but those with an early 2020 model won’t be too happy to have their car that’s not even seven years old have remote access removed with a month’s notice.”
Nissan faced criticism in 2024 when it abandoned the first generation of Leaf cars after the UK’s 2G network blackout. The automaker said the latest move was because the app could not be “updated to support future improvements.”
In-car services such as climate control and charge timers would still be available through the infotainment system, Nissan said, but remote services and some map-related features would not.
Steve Walker of motoring magazine Auto Express said the situation was a preview of what would happen as “today’s cars” age.
“As modern cars rely even more on connected services and updates than the Leaf era, manufacturers’ support for their systems will likely disappear as well,” he said.
This could mean that other features, including navigation systems, touchscreen controls and even subscriptions to features like heated seats, autonomous driving aids or extra engine power, could stop working or be disabled later, he said.
“No one wants to see obsolete cars before their time,” Walker said. “The best way to minimize the environmental impact of cars is to build them to last. Software and digital systems must be as durable and reliable as mechanical components.”
Benjamin Gorman, senior lecturer at Bournemouth University, said the technology world was shifting towards software-as-a-service (Saas) models.
“A good example is software like Adobe Photoshop: Historically, you could buy it once and use it as long as you wanted, whereas now it typically requires an ongoing subscription,” Gorman said.
This worked well for things like games and entertainment platforms, where people are used to subscriptions and shorter update cycles, he said. However, it is more problematic when applied to expensive physical products, such as cars, that people expect to continue functioning for a decade or more.
“I suspect we’ll see this issue more frequently in the coming years as vehicles become more and more controlled by software,” Gorman said. “We’re seeing more manufacturers experiment with subscription fees for connected features… but this raises important questions about what consumers feel they should own permanently versus what they effectively rent through software services.”
