Hi,

I noticed my hybrid was doing a lot of forced regens...but I thought it was because the temperature here in Houston was topping 100 every day. Turns out my IMA battery was about to fail (which it just did). I'm not trying to alarm you; there are many possible explanations for what your car is doing. Using air conditioning, I find, encourages forced regens. But you might want to have your dealer run a diagnostic on the IMA battery.

 

Just to clarify: are we talking battery recalibrations (crashes) or forced regen? A battery recal is when you go from 5+ bars to one almost instantly. Forced regen is when your SOC is used up normally down to a point when your car tries to regen even when accellerating, and stops you from entering glide.

If you are experiencing battery crashes, searching will help you find more information about them. I have an '06 and experience frequent crashes. It used to happen daily last summer, but I'm back to once a week this summer (new commute=bigger hills). I've had this looked at by the dealership on two occasions last summer and they weren't able to help. I've been logging the date, temp and location of every recalibration since last July, and I plan on trying the dealership again when I hit 15% on the MM, even though my problem isn't as bad as it was last summer.

I am hoping for a software upgrade to help with this problem, although the upgrades they gave me last summer actually seemed to make things a little worse since they increased the assist affinity. I'm hoping that they have finally figured out something that will specifically address the recalibration issue that some '06s seem to have.



Here are some things that others have reported help minimize the problem:

1. Run your AC in auto mode, not "AC on".
2. Use a sun shade when parking for both the front and rear window to keep temps down.
3. Help cool the car by driving with all windows down at first before using AC
4. Check your 12 volt battery and make sure it is working correctly

 

I'm not sure about everyone else, but I was talking about forced regens, I have never had a battery recal. I have a 08 with about 5000 miles, when do you normally start seeing recals?

 

We own a 09 with almost 8k miles on it and have not seen a recal. It does force regen but never over two bars. And only when the pack gets down to 3 or 4 bars.

We do all we can carpooling on our daily grind to stay out of the A/C and we will see our first winter in the car soon. The miles will stack up on the car fast for us. If it shows signs of being a issue it will get traded very fast.

 

Our 06 with 55K miles started doing this in May, right before the extreme temperatures here in Austin.

We are seeing regen once or twice a day ... typically after a short drive to a store, restaurant, etc. and then within a mile or so after leaving there, falls to one bar of charge.

Dealer has done all the software updates but still seeing mileage in the mid-30s. In past summers we got low 40s with constant A/C use. The svc. manager says the diagnostics do not show them any further things to try.

We had replaced the 12V battery in April (Honda-sourced) shortly before this started, but since it's new assume is not a factor.

Our salesperson at the dealer is being very solicitous and also asked us to log our regens as a troubleshooting step.

Where there's smoke, there's fire. These posts are pointing to a fatal flaw in the product, perhaps one that even Honda doesn't know the solution to. I would bet these symptoms would go away immediately with a new IMA battery, and I'll bet Honda is trying to "manage" a significant warranty exposure through these software tweaks.

My wife doesn't understand this, but since the car runs and takes us from place A to place B, it is not 'broken' ... it just doesn't provide all the benefit/FE we bought it for. Is that a failure that the mfg should correct at great expense under warranty?

 

Just to keep terminology straight, that is what we refer to as a battery crash or a recalibration (recal). This thread has started calling it a forced regen which is a different thing in the HCH II.

My dealership installed Tsb 09-058 on my car yesterday to try and help the problem. At first blush (about 50 miles of driving), things seem positive. I haven't had a crash, I actually dropped down to 3 bars of SoC at one point (previously, the only time I ever saw less than 4 bars was after a crash or in serious mountain driving).

I'm hoping that this is a sign of better battery management, and I will post up on the Tsb thread in a few weeks with my experience. Positives so far are that it goes into regen more often in normal driving, but the assist affinity has also increased (a negative in my book).

 

I bought a 2009 HCH in May. The first month or so, things were great. I got 48.3 my first tank, then the next 3 were all 52-55. Then we got into July in Phoenix (daytime highs over 110 for a couple of weeks in a row) and things went to crap. I am having forced regens at least once a day. These are almost always right after I leave from work, so I have a couple of miles of surface street stop and go driving before getting to the freeway, and because of the insane heat, I am running the a/c at full blast. It also doesn't help that I am hitting the temperature cutoff where IMA doesn't run at all. My mileage for the last 3 fillups have all been around 43.

So I'm pretty sure that's just expected, and although I would have appreciated if the dealer had warned me, I'm not concerned about it.

I am a little concerned about the battery crashes though. 2-3 times a week, in addition to the forced regens, I am getting what you are describing as a battery crash. I'll start the car with the battery well above halfway. When I get to the first stoplight 1/4 mile away, in the space of about 30 seconds, the battery will drain itself and then start a forced regen. During the really hot part of the summer, it was happening near daily on my way home. The last week or so it's only happened 2 or 3 times. Is this just heat or A/C related? Can I count on it going back to normal once the temps are back under 100? Should I take it to the dealer to make sure?

 

The batteries for the IMA do not like heat - they will self discharge if the temperature inside the car gets to 120 F.

Crack the windows and put a shade in the front and rear windows, If you can get tinted windows with UV refect- that will help with the sun on the side windows. Walmart and Target ( and most Auto parts places ) sell sun powered windows fans to change the air in the car.

You can slow the discharge rate - you will not have to regen as often. The 100+ F we have out east is doing the same thing here.

 

There's nice article over at cleanmpg.com about the hows and whys of IMA battery re-calibrations, specific to the HCHII. It may give you some perspective on what to do about your re-cals.

 

I agree fully with Tommy's comments - I believe there is a serious design flaw with this vehicle and it will cost Honda a small fortune to fix it if they can fix it at all. I spoke to an attorney and he suggested I sell the car as suing would cost too much.

My local Honda dealer just upgraded all of the car's software including the one listed in the latest service bulletin. 2 1/2 miles after leaving the dealership, I had my first recal. 10 miles later my second. 12 miles later my third.

I never thought I would say this as my car has been a pleasure for the first 2 1/2 years of ownership but the only the that is worse than the vehicles current performance is American's Honda's handling of the problem. Unless Honda corrects the problem, they will have lost me as a future customer and I will never recommend their products again.