Just finally catching up after a hectic month or so. Anyway, had another crash begin today. Just left work, hot day (90's), but the car was parked in the shade. Auto A/C set at 77 or so. I try not to overwork it. Drove about a block, maybe two and noticed that I suddenly didn't have regen braking (which had been working just prior). Didn't even have to look at the dash to know it was a crash developing - when the braking goes south, the car coasts a lot more. Anyway, SOC was still mid-range at that point but dropping, and sure enough, only one or two green bars, no change with brakes on or off.

I quickly bumped the A/C setting up to 79, and put the tranny in "S". Drove it like that for a couple more blocks, and the regen braking started working again. Put it back in "D" and all was fine for the rest of my commute. SOC never fully tanked.

I don't know if putting it in "S" averted the full crash, but I will try it again next time and see if it acts the same way.

If any of you think of it, (or maybe you have already) try the "S" shift & see whether it makes any difference...

I have tried that once or twice and the battery has still crashed....

Commuter car, grocery getter, and summer road tripper--average 10k miles per year.


Winter road trips and ski trips, bad weather commuter and my wife's "daily" driver--expected average 4k miles per year.

There is a delay between when the first symptoms of the battery crash appear and the display SoC resets. I believe it is just during this time that you do not have regenerative braking. I think there is just a fixed rate of charging at 2 bars. Anyway, I believe it was during my last battery crash, the symptoms appeared as I was gliding about to start going down a hill. I did shift to S to get more charging (it went from 2 bars to maybe 5 or 6). This gave significant charging all the way down the hill. While doing this charging, the SoC dropped from 5 to 3 bars. I'm sure it would have dropped more if I hadn't been heavily charging. I wouldn't have bothered putting it in S if I had not been on a relatively steep downhill approaching a stoplight. Otherwise, all the other battery crash behavior, before and after, was the same.

Hi, folks!

I just registered, and this is my first post! What helpful site!

Regarding battery crash, it happens to me almost everyday after work. I live in Southern California, and the summer afternoon heat can be pretty intense. On my way home, I usually have the AC on and by the time I get to the main street (about half of a mile), my battery is empty and there's no break recharge. I just thought this was normal and give more gas to get the car going. I sometimes turn off the AC, and it seems to help the battery, but I don't think helps that much. My gas mileage is only about 38mpg, but I do drive a bit fast (I drive 70+ mph often on the freeway). If this is an unusual thing, I will take the car to get it checked out. Do Honda dealers do free tests??

Thanks for the great info everyone!

I would take your car in and have them look at it--you are under warranty. The probably won't be able to find anything, but at least it will get you in the system as having the problem. Good luck!

Commuter car, grocery getter, and summer road tripper--average 10k miles per year.


Winter road trips and ski trips, bad weather commuter and my wife's "daily" driver--expected average 4k miles per year.

If you guys want to see how bad this problem actually is get 3 of your friends in the car on a hot day, when the overtemp fault occurs you will not be able to climb a hill.

this is dangerous, the people experiencing the problem would be a lot more vocal if they had more than one person in the car.

I regularly have 3 passengers in my car and I have been put in a situation where the pack overheated and shut down the IMA and the car couldnt even muster enough power to do anything but pull me out into the road and then not accelerate. mean while people have to swerve around me due to my slowness from the sudden and unexpected loss of power.

when your pulling into traffic and you expect the car to go a certain speed and it goes about 1/10 of that it is a dangerous situation.

I urge anyone with a hybrid civic, with or without symptoms to load up 3 or 4 passengers on a hot day and run the AC and drive around, eventually the IMA will stop working.

someone is going to get hurt eventually, perhaps then honda will wake up and address this.