I bought a 2004 HCHI with 59000mi about a month ago. Most of the time the IMA battery seems ok, but today it dropped from 7.5 bars to 3 bars as I was backing out of the driveway. I have done a couple of forced recharges since I bought the car and today I did another. I ran the IMA battery down to one green line and then removed the EPS fuse and ran the car in neutral at 3500 rpm. It took about 4 min. to charge the battery to 8 bars. The 8th bar just took a few seconds to finish.

My question is how long should it take to do a forced recharge with a good battery which is fully discharged. I'd like to get an idea of the battery condition since it still has a few months until the warranty expires. If it is on the verge of going bad, is there some way to hasten the process so I can get it replaced under the 8 year warranty?

 

I have a HCHII 2008 with only 19k miles on it and I get forced recals on cold mornings often. I think the charging system gets confused by the fact the batteries put out less current when they are cold. I find it does no harm and I often let the car sit and warm up a bit if I get one, otherwise it will continue while I am driving and it won't assist until the recal is done.

We are the early adopters of this tech so we get to be the beta testers in a way, and it's not a,always a good thing. All in all I love the car I just got back from a 200 mile mixed city/highway/mountain trip and managed 40.9 mpg without even trying to hypermile. In my book that makes up for the idiosyncrasy hybrids all share at this time.

The best(laymans) way to test your battery capacity is to force a recal then bring it up to full. After that find a nice long hill and try to keep the assist going the whole way up. I can go about 3-4 miles with full assist(3 with AC on.. 4 without) before I drop to 2-3 bars and begin to lose some power. I find this suits my needs and now that I have a baseline I can test it once in a while to see if it is still holding up.

 

I bought a used 2003 HCH with 99000 miles recently. Car is not showing any charge on IMA battery nor does it charge/assist. Car had not been run in a while. Getting a P1600 and P1575 code. See my other post on 100 amp junction box fuze for possible fix. Would like to try a forced recharge. Is the EPS fuze the power steering (electric)? Any more info you can provide on forcing a recharge. Hoping to revive my IMA battery. Also charge light on regular 12 volt battery comes on when RPM is 1200 or less, but goes out when above 1200. Comes on at 4000 which I think is normal. Any help would be appreciated.