2012 Nissan Rogue - Crank no start, died while driving, electrical?

My sister's car is giving her grief. It shut off while pulling out of a parking lot a couple minutes after starting. For about 30 minutes it was completely dead - no electrical, no starting. Eventually it came around and was able to crank, but no start. It was towed to a local shop but they can't figure it out. They think maybe ECM or something. I have not yet laid eyes on it but thought I would get a head start on diagnosing. Anyone know what this could be? First thought was alternator or battery, but they said it would crank over. 

2012 Rogue QR25 2.5L 4-cylinder with CVT

Bad ground?  They can cause all sorts of weird stuff. 

Bad MAS Air?  

My logic, the mass air controls how much fuel and spark to deliver based off air reading.  Once the mass air can't read air then it just guesses at fuel and spark.  My theory is that it failed to read the air correctly so it stopped delivering fuel and the car stopped while running.  

I had a '97 Nissan with a bad mass air and the car was crazy erratic until it was fixed.  

If it were bad alternator the battery would not be recharged but this also means that once the battery died, the radio or anything else electrical would not work.  Does the radio or brake lights work when trying to start the car?  

At the 35 second mark this video will show how easy it is to replace.  Before part replacement, might try pulling the part and hitting with CRC cleaner

So when it shut down, it was no lights, no chimes, no signs of life at all?

My most optimistic route is to clean the terminals, and as Sonic says, check grounds. Or chafed wires? Rodent damage?

I'm having trouble thinking what would shut everything down completely and then come back. Are there thermal resettable fuses in modern-ish cars?

Worth just going through some of the fuses? Wondering if a short incident temporarily shut everything down, but in the process also blew, say, the fuel pump fuse.

I'm reaching. I wish I had a good candidate for a temporary total shutdown.

Yeah, apparently it was lights out completely, but it came back.

I'll definitely start with OBD codes and dash lights, then cleaning/tightening the battery cables. After that...check for spark, fuel?

So strange. It won't connect to an OBD reader, so I couldn't pull codes. The shop has 4 different scanners and none would connect. Looking like a harness or ECM issue. It will key on, lights, brakes, etc all light up, and it will crank over, but no start. 

Sounds very much like dirty battery terminals combined with modern cars apparently needing more voltage to run the ECU than to crank the engine.

If cleaning them made no difference then it is more likely a harness or ECM issue.

Bump, curious what the cause was...

Being unable to connect via ODB does point at either power to the ECU, or the ECU itself.

They diagnosed it as a bad ECU so they're replacing and re-programming this week. I'll update on what the final fix is.

I was going to say ECU. The failure you described matches exactly to other ECU failures. The most recent being my Saab. 

I have had two 4cyl Rogues rub the fuel injector wires through against the intake manifold.  In my experience computers don't die, they are killed.

Also curious what is found.

The shop replaced and re-programmed the PCM last week. Supposed they also checked some wires, not sure which ones exactly. $2k but the car is back to normal. No check engine lights, running, driving.

Until this morning sis goes to start it and no power. No lights, no power seats, nothing whatsoever just like last time. Keep in mind I'm getting all this second-hand through my family who don't speak car. I'm going to try to diagnose it tomorrow in their driveway. Last time it was already in the shop and they wouldn't let me in the back. What should I look for this time? Surely it's not just loose battery cables after all that...right?

Or if it's those injector harness rubbing on the manifold, is it just killing it over again? Do you know exactly where I should be looking for damaged wires?

I'm assuming someone checked the battery itself and all this deadness and failure to connect is with power.

Is there anything we can glean from the total deadness? Like, if we're not even getting headlights or anything, is all that really going though the PCM?

In reply to Jesse Ransom :

I'm going over after work tonight to find out. Very hard to get usable technical information from these casuals 

bring a good battery. Its amazing what a dead cell in a battery in modern cars will do

Battery had like 2.7 V and was 3 years old. We got it to barely start by charging it with a running car. Decided to just go ahead and replace the battery with a new one. I'm guessing all that cranking on a dead PCM killed off the battery. Hopefully that's the end of this saga.

I'm still wondering if Pete's guess is related in any way. 

In reply to OHSCrifle :

I'm curious about that, too, and even if it isn't, I'm feeling like there's a missing cause in the dead PCM->cranking->battery chain of blame.

I'm kinda crossing my fingers the shop just blew it and internal damage in the battery was the only issue all along. Which is a sucky waste of money, but better than having an undiagnosed PCM killer on the loose. Don't batteries very occasionally fail with plates moving around internally, doing an alternating "I'm fine, everything's good!" and a minute later "I am slain, I am worm food!" and back again?