John V,
With any actuated 'thing' (The actuators are the black tubes that drive the tailgate up and down) they will typically have 2 switches. One end stop switch is for the max height of the tailgate, this maybe internal to the actuator and the other is the closed position end stop switch which could be actuated by a momentary switch that is typically used to tell the BCM if the door/gate/whatever is in the closed position.
It would make sense if your closed position state was released due to misalignment or some other fault that the body control module or whatever on these re-badged Nissans tells the car the tailgate is open. This would also make sense why the button for the tailgate would not work because if it thinks the tailgate is NOT in a full open or full closed state tripped by the end stop switches it would not let you power the actuators.
My money is on a loose wire/misalignment/failure of the closed position sensor for the tailgate. Most likely nothing to do with manually closing, or the third row.
I went outside and looked over the tailgate of my 22 Outlander, there is no obvious momentary switches in the body. So the switch must be activated by the actuators internally or by the latch mechanism itself. You could further narrow this down by tripping the latch with the shank of a screwdriver to simulate a full closed position. That will tell you where the end stop switch is. But honestly if your not into tearing apart a new car to determine root causes of faults just take it to the dealer and have them check/replace 'the thing that tells the car the gate is closed'.
gmanni0124
It could throw it out of wack but most actuated systems have permanent end stop switch positions set so it cant over extend or over close something like a tailgate. Its entirely possible to that these actuators are built to an exact spec but I highly doubt it for cost reasons.
