I have a 2007 Nissan Versa SL (CVT). A few weeks ago, the car started having trouble accelerating. I have a steep driveway that comes down from the road to the garage. The first time I noticed this, I was in reverse trying to back out of my driveway, and could not get the car to get to the top of this hill. I rolled back down and tried again and did succeed, put it in Drive, and when I stopped at the next couple of stop signs, the car was very unresponsive when trying to accelerate.
I could floor the accelerator pedal and get almost nothing out of the car. At first I thought it had to do with it being quite cold here and not letting the car warm up before trying to move, but the other day it happened when it was over 60 degrees out.
I took it to the Nissan dealer for diagnostics, but they couldn’t come up with anything and said Nissan thought it was “normal” for the car to do that on an incline. (normal? huh?)
It doesn’t happen all the time, and when it does, it seems to improve as I continue to drive.
Does anyone have an idea what could be going wrong? Thanks
My first thought would be a faulty pedal since it is supposed to be a drive by wire system. So the pedal may have a malfunction and the computer isn’t getting a signal from the computer. Just a guess but i’ve seen it happen on those types of pedals before.
Could be a problem with the accelerator. Or it could be a problem with the engine. If, for example, one of the cylinders isn’t firing sometimes, the car just won’t have as much power as usual. But it may sound normal to you (and me). The easiest way to tell is to brake to a halt while the problem is taking place, put the car into neutral and step down on the gas. If the car revs up “normally”, but won’t rev up when in gear, it doesn’t seem likely that the problem is the accelerator or cables.
You’d think that a non-firing cylinder would turn on the check engine light. And sometimes it does. But sometimes it doesn’t.
It sounds like something is wrong with the drive by wire throttle system. This is new technology which is still somewhat mysterious to a lot of people, and is also likely to be expensive. Your car should still be under warranty, so it should be corrected for you. Make sure you keep records of having brought the car in for service for that complaint so they can’t wait you out of warranty. Many dealerships will do this just so you will have to pay for very expensive work on your own, and most components on that system are likely to be expensive. Like I said, it’s new technology.
Do you have traction control? If so try disengaging it and see if that changes anything.
The issue ended up being whatever part tells the car that you’re pressing the brake so it doesn’t allow both pedals to work at the same time. My car was getting a signal that the brake was being pressed even when it wasn’t, so it wouldn’t let the gas pedal work like it was supposed to. Once they replaced that part, it started working as expected. Thanks everyone for the suggestions!