Nissan North America has identified a problem affecting a small number of Ariya electric vehicles produced for the 2023 model year between May 30, 2022 and February 27, 2023. During the front motor's assembly process, the O-rings inside might have been damaged, which is pretty bad news.
Not only does that result in an oil leak (indeed, EV traction motors also require lubrication), but resulting debris will cause abnormal wear. The resulting mixture of debris and oil may accumulate between the motor housing and brush terminal, increasing the risk of abnormal current flow in said motor. This development could trigger the fail-safe driving mode, thus resulting in a loss of motive power without any prior warning to the driver.
The loss of motive power will be joined by a "restart is prohibited" warning message on the digital instrument cluster's display. Nissan started looking into this matter back in February 2023, prompted by a report from the Land of the Rising Sun over the aforementioned warning message.
The dealer identified a diagnostic trouble code for a battery issue. After clearing the DTC, the dealer service technician couldn't duplicate said condition. Because of that, Nissan decided to collect the front-mounted traction motor. Come March 2023, the Yokohama-based automaker identified an internal insulation failure within the traction motor, plus an oil leak as a result of a damaged internal O-ring.
This prompted Nissan to conduct an inspection of the front traction motor assembly process, identifying a risk of interference between the subject O-ring seal and the press-fit jig. One additional report was received in Japan in May 2023, with the subject vehicle's front motor showing a similar oil leak path from the O-ring.
Photo: Nissan
A review of internal tooling production records also revealed instances of excessively high bearing press-fit loads. Following the replication test, Nissan determined that 84 vehicles produced for the US might feature damaged O-rings. Beginning July 12, owners of recalled vehicles will be notified about recall number 24V-391 via first-class mail.
Dealers have already been instructed to replace the front motor at no charge for the motor assembly and labor. The remedy could take up to 10.5 hours to complete. Owners who aren't willing to wait so long to find out if their Ariya crossovers are recalled or not can simply run the 17-character vehicle identification number on Nissan's recall portal.
Subject vehicles were produced at Nissan's Tochigi plant in Japan, meaning that J is the first character of the VIN. The part number of the front traction motor assembly is 290A0-5MP0F, with said motor currently listed at nearly $4,700 by Nissan USA. Speaking of which, the Leaf's fancier cousin is currently listed for model year 2024 at $39,590.
The highlight numbers are up to 304 miles (489 kilometers) of combined range, 389 ponies in dual-motor specification, and zero to 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour) in 4.8 seconds. The closest electric vehicle to the Ariya is the Renault Megane E-Tech Electric for the EU and UK, which shares the CMF-EV platform with the Nissan Ariya. Over in France, it's advertised with a WLTP driving range of no more than 480 kilometers (298 miles).
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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