The battery is at 20% state of charge (I believe) when there are 0 bars indicated, and 80% state of charge when full bars are indicated. The battery never leaves that effective range, even when the pedal is floored for an extended period of time. Furthermore, only rarely does it even fully cycle through the (limited) effective range to further prevent wear and tear.

 

What is the basis for your belief? I'm not disputing it, just wondering if there is any reliable information about this.

 

hello,

i have a quick question. i've had the new 2006 civic hybrid for a 1 month now. i noticed that the batter never gets full anymore. in the first couple of weeks, the gauge would be full. now, it's one bar short from being full. is it suppose to be like this?

i'm a first time hybrid owner, so please be gentle. thank you.

 

erio,
It should be dependent upon your driving routes, and on how you drive. I'm surprised to hear that it was often at 8 bars when new. Was this once or twice? If so, it could have just been coincidence. 8 bars doesn't happen to me very often - usually only when I coast down a very long hill, assuming the SOC was already up there around 7 to begin with. Of course, coming down a mountain pass in Tennessee one time I didn't have any trouble getting it to 8 bars, but that's pretty unusual for me...

I wouldn't be concerned at all, unless you see it doing something strange.

 

Granted I have not read any official literature specifically on the battery charge meter. However, I have read that the battery never leaves that range. I have however drained the indicated nominal charge almost all the way before (climbing the grapevine in Central California, several miles of ~6-7% grades at highway speeds, occasionally needing to pass broken down trucks) Also, the battery meter, unlike a voltage meter on a normal car battery, is based on a computer estimate of the state of charge, so they could program it to display whatever range that want, and it would make sense to only display the available portion of the battery capacity. However, this could be different on the Gen-2 models as well.

 

in the first couple of weeks, the gauge would be full by the end of the day and never went halfway down. lately, it's short by one bar from becoming full and during driving, the gauge goes halfway down.

 

This has generally been my experience, too, with the exception that I've never gotten to eight bars, only seven (and that quite often), and I've never gotten below four bars (half-way).

Aneil

 

Well, don't know what to say about that one. Hopefully there's someone here who knows. It SOUNDS like the battery pack has lost the ability to hold some of its charge, but that is not likely. The surprising thing is not how it is behaving now, but how it behaved when new. If you're driving hasn't changed since it was new, I'm at a loss - but more for why it acted that way when it was new. I've never seen that.