After nearly 5K miles, I've seen 4 bars 75% of the time, with 3 or 2 after some longer IMA assist during hill climbing. With my "normal" driving pattern I've never seen 6, and if 5 don't recall it, very rare. I have not, as Tink advises, worked on a braking pattern to enhance batt recharge. I do ease throttle downhill and coast to stops, both of which produce some batt recharge benefits. The one 3/4 mile hill climb with IMA leaves me with 2 or 3 bars at the top. If it’s 2, I see batt recharge from the ICE.

Yesterday, I had the HAH in the shop for a “Check Engine” light (more on that later). Tech mentioned that my batt was “low,” but my recall is that it was 4, no lower than 3. He said it was “full” now. Don’t know what he did, but when I got back in the car, I saw a 6-bar charge for the first time. BTW, this was the tech’s first HAH service experience, and he did not know how many “bars” there were on the batt charge indicator.

As Tink noted in his post, the IMA was very active with a 6 bar charge for about two miles. However, within a mile, I was down to 5 bars, and within two miles back down to 4 bars with IMA activity “volunteering” less and less as batt charge came down to 4 bars. My claim is that under these relatively flat roads and mostly light traffic with occasional stops, I would have had to use extreme braking to maintain a 5 bar charge and that such braking that would cause lower FE than driving with ECO on and coasting to stops.

In other threads here, discussion of the HCH and the HAH indicate that the best FE comes from keeping the ECO light on as much as possible, and that 4 bar batt charge seems to be the most common pattern. If a 5 or 6 bar charge is “intended” or “better” by Honda design plan, my car does not seem to be set up to produce such charges, and the batt recharge functions now–after service–the same as it did before.

Lewis