I have now been a proud FEH owner for 7 weeks now, and something has just started happening that is confusing me. While in EV mode, the ICE suddenly kicks in for no apparent reason. When running in EV the only accessory I have on is the radio to cut the draw on the battery. Today, while in line at the local DQ my ICE cut on 3 times in about 6 minutes. I was not moving forward, so I don't really know what caused it. The temperature was 90 degrees but there's about a 10 mph breeze that's very refreshing. I don't think it was trying to spill off charge becaue I'd been in EV quite a lot today, so there probably wasn't a whole lot of extra battery power. Also, the message center said "Electric Power OK" so it also wasn't too low. Any ideas? Could this in some way be related to the intermittent mis-starts likely cause by a bad PCM?

 

Do you have the nav radio? If not it might be a little harder to see whats going on. I have the nav radio on mine so I am watching the energy flow alot of the time. Sometimes I might be sitting at a light or maybe a drive thru and the ICE comes on and when I look at the flow screen I see the Battery is kinda low. Although it has come on when its warm and the batteries have good charge. This might also be because the battery pack is too hot and is calling for some cooling. The is freon running to the battery pack for cooling and if the batteries get to warm then the computer will start the ICE to provide cooling for the batt pack even if you have the A/C off. hope that helps!

 

I couldn't afford the nav package.
That makes sense that the battery's coolant is going off. I thought it did that sans ICE. Oh well--still a newbie constantly learning. I did get up to 32.8 MPG at 2000 miles! I'm pretty excited about that.

 

I'm not sure if the 08's have it, but if so you can check the CHARGE/ASSIST gauge when that happens. It may be that the battery was too low and needed a charge. Or if you had been in EV for a long time prior the engine might have had to come on to warm up the catalytic converter.

 

If you are standing still waiting for something, put the car in Neutral. That will prevent the engine from starting for temperature related issues. If you are going to move in a couple minutes, it can just wait, and cool / warm itself then!
-John