I am not sure if I can call it recal but this happened few days back. I had parked my car at work in the morning with 4 bars on battery gauge. When I started the car in the afternoon, battery gauge showed 6 bars. It dropped to 5 bars after half mile. When I parked about 3 miles later, gague was at 4 bars. I restarted the car 10 minutes after parking and started driving. Battery gauge dropped to 2 bars in quarter mile or so. Another 2 miles later, it was back up to 4 bars by the time I got home. I had not seen this much fluctuation in battery gauge before, especially the gauge jumping to 6 bars after having parked with 4 bars.

 

gonehiking, that is very interesting. That's similar to what happened to me the day after I had my second recal. I started the day with four bars and was soon up to 6 bars. I couldn't seem to get it off of six bars. I accelerated quickly several times and it stayed at six bars. I then decided to accelerate very slowly using maximum battery assist several times and finally got it to five bars and eventually four bars. Then I coasted to a stop and was back up to five bars. The whole day it acted like my old HCH, keeping the battery charge at or near full.

 

Interesting! This exact same thing happened with my '06 on Monday. When I parked the car after driving to work it was at 4 bars and when I started it several hours later the battery guage showed 6 bars. It was unusual because I had never seen six bars on the gauge up to that point.

One thing I did notice was that the outside temperature was 25-30F colder when I left work in the evening than it was when I got to work in the morning. Battery voltage and capacity is affected by temperature and the change may have induced the battery management software to calculate the higher SOC. But, that's just a guess.

After I started driving, the SOC quickly dropped to 4 bars even though I wasn't getting a lot of assist.

 

My understanding is that our battery level is not measuring actual stored energy in the battery, but rather voltage flow from the battery. This certainly could be influenced by temperature. Am I right in my thinking about this? I have had similar issues to the rest of you.

 

I had another recal today. It appears to be happening about once a week now. Do all of you think this is normal or abnormal? Should I bring it in?
Thanks for your thoughts.

 

I'm thinking that if you bring it in they're just going to say "well, uhh, there aren't any codes so it must be fine." And in some sense they're basically right. Do you go to the dealer for regular service? If so I would advise you to have them make a record in your car's service history that this is going on next time you are there. It can only help you if it amounts to something later in the car's life.

Frequent recals are a known precursor to IMA failure in the early Insight, but I would not panic just yet. You might be 100% right that it's just adjusting to the battery's different performance in cold weather. Makes sense to me, anyway.

 

I've had mine drop down to one bar and then start charging on several occasions over the past few weeks. I attribute it to the wide temp fluctuations here in Phoenix. Up to 70's in the day and down to 30's at night.

 

I'm still getting recals even after resetting the computer. Although the crazy battery SOC with five and six bars all the time is gone. I've also come to the conclusion that it's the cold weather. Especially when I don't drive the car for a day or two. I don't remember seeing any last winter, but I probably just didn't notice them. Once you see them, you're always looking.