10.0
really awful- Crashes / Fires:
- 1 / 0
- Injuries / Deaths:
- 2 / 0
- Average Mileage:
- 2,702 miles
About These NHTSA Complaints:
The NHTSA is the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints can be spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem. See the Back button — blue bar at the very top of the page — to explore more.
While braking lightly and not sudden to turn into a shopping center, the Leaf applied full brakes and did not release the brakes until the car was going about 10 mph.
- San Diego, CA, USA
I was on the freeway traveling appropriately 65 mph. The vehicle to the right and in front of me suddenly swerved in to my lane and braked hard in front of me. With no place to go on either side of me, I was forced to brake fast and hard. The ABS kicked in as expected but once I had decelerated to a point where I knew a collision was not imminent and took my foot off the brake, the car continued breaking very hard. It took the better part of a second with my foot now completely off the brake before the brakes actually released. In this time, the car behind me was not able to stop and hit me hard, causing injury to two people in the car who were not belted in. This accident would have been avoidable if the Leaf had not failed to decrease the braking effort when I released pressure and then ultimately took my foot completely off the brake pedal. It felt as if something like the brake assist function was malfunctioning...
- Los Angeles, CA, USA
When driving at 60 mph down the freeway, I hit the brakes hard to avoid a collision with the car in front of me. I decelerated to about 30mph while veering to the right to avoid hitting the other car. To inform the rapidly approaching car behind me, I tapped my brakes about 4-5 times a second to flash my taillights. At that point the brakes locked up and my car rapidly decelerated even though I had removed my foot from the brake pedal. After about 1/3-1/2 second, the brakes released and I was able to regain control of the car and continue driving. After checking online forums and my local ev group, it turns out that two other people have experienced similar braking behavior where the car decelerated rapidly even though the brake pedal was not pressed.
- Portland, OR, USA
- Los Angeles, CA, USA