The charge bar will be out.

I think the charge bar will be up, but it can't change if it's disabled.

I believe autostop was also disabled.

 

The dealer in Lacrosse was where I bought my 2001 used Insight. Although I haven't had any experience dealing with them in terms of maintenance (since I live in St. Louis area), my experience buying from them was very positive. I think they deal almost exclusively with hybrids and seemed very knowledgeable.

 

LaurieJ,

Per my PM - hope you get help soon.

For the rest of you with good batteries in 5-speed Insights, this seems to be the key to long battery life:

 

 

All good advice.

Today's update - I found some good instructions over on Insight Central, and reset the display. (Basically, just disconnect the 12V, then let the IMA recharge at high rpm for a few minutes until it's full.) Drove it around - everything is running just fine - displays are back, IMA light off, Auto-stop is working. 58mpg for a shortish city trip, with ambient temps in the 30s.
So - I guess I'm in denial at the minute. Maybe the IMA is fine. Maybe it was a 1-time glitch. (We had a big snow melt last week, and I drove through some huge puddles.) I haven't had any of the dreaded recals in the year I've owned the car. I guess we'll see.

 

Document your runs with post or DB entries.

That way others can compare to see if your results indicate your Insight (and driving) are doing well. 58mpg on a short, cold day may be excellent.

 

[Never mind previous deleted post]
The previous owner had a lifetime mpg of 48.3

For the year I've had it, the mpg is 59.6, with a lot of variation depending on temp and usage. I don't use the auto climate control, but do use the Econ mode heat, defrost, and rarely the A/C.

Cumulative summer - 62.2 mpg; (High: 82.8, all highway, mild weather; Low: 49.6, city driving, A/C running)
Cumulative winter - 55.3 mpg (High: 63.4 early Oct, Low: 50.5 December cold snap). Yeah, Minnesota is cold, and the car often takes several miles to warm up to "normal" operating temp.


I'll go and enter my tank-by-tanks at some point when I have more time.

 

Hi Delta Flyer, Can you explain what you mean by "not to lug"?

 

Short answer: shifting with your 5-speed too early.

Longer answer: People with manual transmissions at one time or another have shifted to a higher gear before the car is going fast enough - say 5th gear at 30mph. The car obviously does not respond well and it's not good either for performance or the life of the engine. If you try to accelerate after shifting too high - too early (i.e. lugging) your engine must work much harder. On the Honda Insight, it's even worse because it results in long Assists - draining your small battery pack.

The 5-speed Insight is a lot like the CRX HF - not geared to be a pocket rocked, but for maxium fuel economy. So for both it's easy to not go fast enough for the gear you upshift to. On the Insight, it's better to be a try a little harder to avoid lugging to save the battery pack.

Maybe I can say this simpler: each time you shift to a higher gear, you don't want more than five seconds of Assist in general - definitely not ten seconds.

There are variables: upshifting can be done faster downhill, slower going uphill.

Hope that helps.

 

^ 30mpg should be 30mph

lugging causes the assist to be on more than necessary because you are in too high of a gear at slower speads (30mph for example). this causes the battery to drain more often so you have more cycles on your battery compared to the CVT variant (where lugging is not really possible because the computer is picking the optimal gear ratio).