This happened to my 06 HCH twice last week and I'm lucky traffic conditions were light enough that I didn't get killed:

In cool conditions (approx 50 F) after running the car for a short time but with sustained EV assist going up an incline, the SoC gets low and suddenly the car begins to lose power. Not for the reason you might think: it's not like a recal where the electric motor stops contributing and the ICE has to do all the work: it's exactly the opposite! The ICE motor starts producing less and less power even as the rpm's climb higher and higher (2000 then 3000 then 4000 even as the speed drops and drops and drops) until finally I get to the side of the road, pedal floored, rpms at red line and crawling at maybe 1 mph with about two bars of EV assist propelling the car forward.

Like any sane person, at this point I have to give up and let my foot off the gas pedal and switch it over to the brake pedal to hold the car still and collect myself, and the car just sits there idling happily. No unusual dashboard indicator lights of any kind. If I try again to give it gas, I just get revving sounds but the car moves only as fast as the IMA battery can move it from a dead stop (ie not very fast, considering the car is going uphill), maybe 1 mph.

The obvious solution (if you are still alive after scrambling across 4 lanes of freeway, uphill, with no power) is to turn off the car. As soon as you turn the ignition back on, the computer resets itself and the car drives away normally (and goes into recal / forced regen mode pretty quickly thereafter, as you might imagine).

My current working theory is I have a sketchy 12 V battery. It has been drained at least three times that I know of, including once a couple weeks ago at the dealership after they had finished doing the summer 2010 recall firmware flash (which didn't really hurt my mileage all that much as far as I can tell, but is definitely causing more recals overall). I am scheduled to do the rear control arms (at my cost - American Honda seems to have no "goodwill" left for me) at my local repair shop next week and I will obviously ask them to replace the 12 V battery at the same time.

I just had to register here to post my experience: something this dangerous should NEVER happen on any car.

After a little googling I found at least one other person has described this kind of phenomenon (http://blogs.consumerreports.org/car...348734be9d970c).

Anyone else ever have this happen to them?

 

Maybe a problem with the CVT?

We had a few instances, back maybe 2 years, where the engine started racing while we were sitting at red lights: rpm up around 3000~3500. I tried putting it in neutral and it shot even higher, due to less load I guess. Went back to normal once we got underway again. To date not sure what the heck it was, but hasn't happened since.

 

Sounds like your HCH2 went into neutral? Is that possible. These kinds of things happen in all cars. After all they are mechanical things and sometime things fail. IE drive shaft snap, loose a tire and the list goes on , so don' ever think this is a HCH2 problem only, get a grip!!! H

 

Pretty sure it wasn't in neutral. As I say, I could see two bars of EV assist and the car did try to creep up the hill, no matter how slowly.

No unusual indicators of any kind. Very creepy.

Could be the DC-DC link between the IMA battery and the 12 V battery is doing something very bad?

Also I saw this quote in a different thread (https://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/...-all-us-15839/ ) :

Well, something definitely failed in my case, and if there was a backup system, it sure didn't kick in.

 

Yes this happened to me when I owned my '07 HCH. I was in the bottom of a railway underpass waiting for a red light light, with the AC running, and in auto stop. The main battery was drained down to maybe 2 bars. To drive out the ICE engine reved to 6000 rpm and just crawed up the hill with no electric assist at all. Lucky for me it was on a low speed in town road. There are no backup systems. If there is no electric assist, then the ICE has to do all the work. It has very little power on its own.

Maybe... make sure your shop load tests the battery before replacing as they will change it if you tell them to, defective or not. This will save you throwing good money after bad, and it doesn't fix your problem.

 

Further on Harold's idea: there is a cable between the shift selector and the transmission, and it's length needs to be just right. Could be it's stretched a bit and is on the verge of neutral when you're in drive.

 

Thanks all. I'll update after I get it serviced.

Just to be very clear, the car is not slipping into neutral as far as the drive indicator light going from green D to red N. (There's no way it somehow slipped into "red N" neutral *selection* because in neutral I would not have been getting 2 bars of EV assist.) It seems to me the only scenario that could match everyone's theories about 'going into neutral' is if the car could somehow remain "in drive" as far as the gear shift selector is concerned but slip in to "neutral" as far as actual CVT function is concerned. But even this seems like it would be an all-or-nothing kind of event: if the throttle remained constant at the moment power stopped going to the drive train, this would cause RPM's to immediately start racing and the car to instantly lose all power. As my first post indicated, I experienced a gradual increase in RPM and a gradual decreasse in power output until it appeared the only power being applied to the drive train was a couple bars of IMA assist.

Also, while I realize other makes and models could produce similar anecdotes, the reason I am posting here in a HCH II specific discussion is it happened twice with in a week of a firmware update and has never happened before in my three years of owning the car (and fortunately hasn't happened again as of this update). Note the other guy who posted about this (see link in first post) also mentioned he had recently had a firmware upgrade done.

 

Well lets hope they can find the problem! This is a weird one. H

 

NxNW and Mendel,

I had experienced both of your issues. I remember my car was barely accelerating, using high rpms, and the sound of teh CVT was very loud with no electrical assist. I also ended up pulling onto a side street, turn my car off and on again, and it went back to normal. That happened to me 2 times. I also had multiple occasions during the winter where I would come to a stop, auto-stop didn't engage (defrost not on), and the engine and rpms would rev up and down until I started moving forward again. I mentioned it to a Honda dealer and they indicated that type of issue has occured before in their other cars. At each oil change, my 12v battery always tested very good.

 

I have no solution but for anyone who has experienced this, I recommend filing a safety complaint at http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Owners. In theory, if there are enough of these, it could trigger an investigation that could lead to a recall.