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Old 09-26-2017, 11:21 AM
BigbirdPhila BigbirdPhila is offline
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2017 Altima Sedan
 
Join Date: Sep 2017
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Default A/C Compressor Running Unnecessarily

I just bought an end-of-model-year 2017 Altima SV. I have noticed the accumulation of water on my garage floor even though I have not engaged the air conditioning. To be more precise, I *thought* I had not engaged the air conditioning.

To control how air is directed into the cabin, the car has a single airflow mode control button which cycles through the various settings. There are 4 settings: "upper", "upper & lower", "lower", and "lower w/defrost" (A/C). I need to keep pressing the "Mode" button until I reach the airflow setting that I want. For example, to get from "upper & lower" to "upper", I must press the "Mode" button three times to cycle through "lower" and "lower w/defrost". As soon as I reach "lower w/defrost", the compressor is turned on. And, when I leave "lower w/defrost" is is NOT turned off. When I reach the mode setting I want, the compressor is still running (hence the water that I noticed). Pressing the "Off" button and then the "On" button (even with a 4 or 5 minute delay) is ineffective. The only way I've found to turn off the compressor is to press the A/C button twice -- once to turn it "On" (which it already is) and once to turn it "Off".

Any time I have to cycle to a mode setting which "precedes" the one I am on, the vehicle engages the compressor. I have to manually disengage it or I will be running the compressor when it's not needed and hurting my gas mileage. I will have to press the A/C button twice for the life of the vehicle. Very distressing.

It seems to me that the software designers should have waited 1 or 1.5 seconds after the "lower w/defrost" mode was reached before turning on the compressor. This would ensure that the driver really wanted "lower w/defrost" and was not just "passing through" to another mode. To add insult to their decision, they are not smart enough to turn the compressor off when exiting "lower w/defrost". Sloppy software design/bug, IMHO. As it currently operates, their sloppiness will be adding tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of unneeded on/off cycles to the compressor over the life of my vehicle.

On other forums I have found owners complaining about this problem since 2013. They have reported it to their dealer (which I have done), their regional Nissan rep, and to 1-800-NISSAN1. So, this means that this problem has existed for *five model years*. As far as I can tell, Nissan has not issued a software fix. If anyone has more information on how to solve this problem, I would appreciate hearing about it.

This is the first Nissan product that I have owned and my first problem discovered with it is most disappointing. How a major automobile manufacturer could let a problem such as this fester for 5 years is troublesome. My previous vehicle was a Camry. It did NOT have this issue.
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