Nissan said on Friday it would repair more than 5,000 of its Nissan Leaf cars for a software glitch that has caused a number of the new electric vehicles to fail to start.

"This is not a safety issue as the vehicle will not stop running while being driven, but may not restart once it is turned off," Nissan said in a statement.

The repair campaign covers a total of about 5,300 Leaf vehicles in Japan, North America and Europe, Nissan said.

Nissan will begin notifying Leaf drivers of the repair campaign next week via a message sent to the vehicle's on-board communications system.

The repair will fix programing in the vehicle control module of the vehicles, Nissan said.

Customers will be instructed to contact dealers for the free repair. In some cases, dealers will arrange to perform the software fix at a work place or a customer's home, Nissan spokesman Brian Brockman told Reuters.