Just got an interesting letter in the mail today, wondering if anybody else has and if they'll join in. Letter from American Honda says they would like to stick some soft of data recorder on my IPU and battery so they can suck data for about two weeks, and giving me $500 for doing it. Anybody else?

 

I've not received any such offer. $500 sounds great!
I drive a lot, so they'd get a good sampling. C'mon, Honda, pick me, pick me.

 

Man, I would let them do that to mine for FREE if they were able to figure out what was causing my battery to recalibrate as frequently as it does...

 

Odd that you should mention that... about two weeks ago, mine seemed to be doing at least one recal a day, and continued this for about four or five days. I was about to take it in, but it's since settled back into its usual "I love being at six pips SoC" lifestyle. It'd be interesting to find out whether or not I'd get to see any of the data this thing will be collecting.

 

I got alot of recals the past two weeks as well. I'm thinking it's because of the wide temperature swings as we head into winter. The battery capacity changes with temperature and it's confusing the computer. Usually a force regen brings it up to 7 bars but lately I've seen it go all the way up to 8 as it overshoots!

 

Anyone wonder if the L-Ion batteries would be more reliable than ours? Are they Ni-Cad? I'm sure I read what type it was, and was wondering if maybe it's the type of battery being that it's still a relatively newer technology, in the grand scheme of things, for them hybrids.

 

Wick1ert, ours are NiMH, rather than NiCd. Better handling and more forgiving. I'm also not too keen on putting li-ion in a car... discharge is fine, but the charging is a bit too dicey for my taste still (see "exploding laptop" and "exploding telephone switch"). Perhaps if you dump the regen energy into NiMH or a supercap first, and then slow-charge the lithium?

 

Aren't the battery companies banking on Li-Ion as the next big thing? I'm not so sure that the battery material itself was the problem with those problems, but more so the poor manufacturing conditions by some shady companies. Given the scale of the hybrid production that would be required, I'd imagine that the car companies would get a well established supplier. I'm not too worried about the li-ion in a vehicle at this point. I'm pretty sure, atleast with Honda and Toyota, that they'd use the higher quality batteries and wiring to prevent any issues.

Now, if only that 7th grader that developed a PV solar panel that could harness UV light and visible light, could find some way to add that to a vehicle, I'd imagine that they could do pretty well in producing enough energy to help keep those battery packs charged/charging. As a quick comparison, a 200 watt PV panel is about the size of the roof of the HCHII. I wouldn't be surprised if it's in the future, maybe not the next 5 or 10 years, but some point.

 

Yes, we received that too and are planning on participating. Seems to be no downside other than a slight inconvenience. Ours will be an interesting data collection as the car rarely goes anywhere over a mile or two in the city.

 

Thats pretty interesting..I hope i get that letter too