Hey Guys,

I read somewhere that the HCH battery will eventually become unuseable after around 7 years worth of driving. Currently, I think it said that the battery price alone is worth $3,500. Can anyone confirm that and has anyone seen your battery wearing down yet? I didn't get a warranty because of this fact since the 7 year/70,000miles seems somewhat short of what I think it would take for my battery to die out. Anyways, I'm blabbing too much nowadays, so I'll stop.

The salesman that I bought my Civic from last week told me that a battery replacement was running around $2500 for parts and labor. I don't know if that's factual or if it was just salesman talk but that's what he told me. The warranty on the Civic battery is 8 years or 80,000. If it dies by that time, hopefully it will still be under warranty or the price of repair will have dropped significantly.

For sale on eBay right now (7 days left) is an HCH battery with 7k miles on it, starting at $200 with no reserve. I'd snatch this up as insurance if it wern't for the fact that I tend to only keep cars an average of 2 years.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...tem=7966845185

Scott,
I try to keep my cars for 10 years and I'll have more than 300K miles on my HCH at that time, so battery life was definetly a concern of mine as well.

When I bought my car I also paid an extra ~$900 for the extended warranty which covers the drivetrain, all hybrid parts except battery for 7yr/70K miles and the battery is warranted for 10yr/150K miles.

If the battery works itself flat before then I can still drive the car.
So far I've had the car 17 months and 37K miles and it indicates the condition has not changed from the first month.

If the battery is useless at say......

175K miles I'd likely begin a search for a guaranteed used pack such as from a junk yard, unless the OEM price had come down- in which case I'd buy new.
If the battery wasn't already replaced then at 250K miles I'd do the search above and if all else fails just drive the car as is.
If it needed replacement at 300K as I suspect it would, I'd just drive it as is.

Efficient drivers do it better.
1003 miles a tank personal record. 74MPG calculated. HCH1 CVT