if your commute is 8 miles, you definitely need to be accelerating slowly in any car- IMA or otherwise. The only thing that drinks gas faster than a hard accelerating engine is a hard accelerating engine that is cold.

Hi GoNavy and Lewis:

___You two nailed it!

___Caymandiver75, you really do not want the AH’s pack at 6 bars. Honda is learning from past mistakes with the Insight and are controlling the AH’s SoC to a 50 - 60% actual pack cap for longevity purposes vs. 70 - 80% actual (19 of 20 bars in an Insight/HCH). Some HCH’s and the 5-speed Insight would always run up to that level with any 20 + minute all-highway drive.

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

That might explain why I'm charging intermittantly with headlights off.

For example on a long stretch of road, after occasional use of Asssit my SOC is....say down to 40-60%.....after traveling miles & miles with no further use of Assist in the 64-84MPG range suddenly 4 green bars of charge come on long for no apparent reason at all, just enough to raise the SOC by 1-2 bars then it's off again. (Leaving it well below it's normal "Full" soc)
I can continue drive for miles and miles and charge comes on again as described.

Of course with headlights on those 4 bars stay on continuously until about 70%, then go off and hidden charging brings it short by 2 bars from the top.

When I first got my HCH the charging system always worked like the headlights were on....day or night made no difference, it always worked to bring it to 2 bars from full.
Then, it became intermittant as I've just described.

For the last ~4 months I've left my headlights off during the day and watch the SOC drift in the described 40-60range.....sometimes it will run it up to its normal "full" and work from there. I figure the IMA knows what it's doing and hasen't seemed to dent my efficiency at all.

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

I have read about people getting up to 60 mpg or even 600 miles to a tank, but my very early average (about 100 miles) is about 42 mpg. Am I doing something wrong. My 2005 HCH has about 13,500 miles on it

Does the HAH react differently with the lights on? I Drive 90 miles to work and 48 of it through the Los Angeles mountains where I must turn the headlights on durring the day.

Hmmm. I'll have to watch the lights. They are mainly off. I didn't realize that would make a difference.

I asked this in a thread a week or so ago.
http://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/s...egen.3829.html

I definitely feel an increased tug on the engine when I flip the lights on, indicating that some regen is occurring to replenish the juice going to the lights. But its not enough apparently to register as a regen bar on the display...a la the HCH stealth regen. So my tentative answer is, yes, there is regen occurring, but it seems to only be enough to replenish what is being used, no more.

My question to the masses was whether anyone ever saw their SoC bars go up after a long run with the lights. The longest highway runs I have at night are only 25min, and I never saw the bars go up.

PS- 600mile tank is easy in the HAH, provided you can do >80% highway. I've just never gotten there- 545 @14.1gal is my max so far, but that could've been well over 600 with a gallon to spare.

Please define "SoC". I have done some highway driving at night on the 405 heading south into Los Angeles and my battery was at max charge by the time I got off the freeway.

SoC = Battery State of Charge

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ilan22:

thanks for the datapoint. Was your night freeway driving steady, or with braking and downhills? Did you see the regen bars light up much? If not, you may have answered the question.

How long is your night drive?