In the midwest, April 1st marks the opening of the summer drive-in movie season. Our local drive-ins broadcast the movie soundtrack on FM. So, in a typical night in a typical car, you will drive in to the lot, park, pop the hatch, kill the inside lights, turn the key backwards to "Accy" mode and run the radio through 2 movies + intermission or about 4+ hours.

If you fail to turn the key to "Accy" mode, the dash lights stay lit, and you are almost guaranteed to need a jump start by the end of the second feature.

Any thoughts or speculation if the FEH would be able to handle this? Is there a "accy" key position that will run only the 12V battery?

If I have the radio on, then the NAV display will have to stay on, won't it? I wonder how much extra juice that will take.

 

It's the same as other cars, except that now most cars use 1 click forward as Acc, 2 Clicks is On, then turn and hold the 3rd for Start. Since the 12V system is mostly the same as other cars, and the Acc power is from the 12V system, I don't think it would be a problem (unless you tricked out the audio system so there is a heavy load). If it did turn out that the Lead-Acid (standard car battery) was too small, You could get a bigger one.


If you got a 12V portable radio you could power it from the acc jack it stays on all the time even with the car off (the one by the PRNDL, the one next to the radio and the 110V AC do turn off when the car is off)

 

The 110V jack! That is it. I can run a radio without having the NAV display on the whole time. Perfect. Thanks.

 

I can't possibly imagine this killing a battery that's in good shape. I own a sailboat and power consumption is a key consideration when you're spending days on end with very opportunities to recharge the batteries.

The FEH has a standard 12v car battery in addition to the 330v battery array under the cargo floor. The 330v system is really just for running the electric motor -- everything else in the car runs on 12v power just like any other car.

You can calculate the drain if you know the number of amps drawn by the stereo and the amp-hour rating on the 12v battery. I wouldn't imagine that the draw could be much.

Along the topic though... have you read the jump-start procedure in the owners manual? The Hybrid has special jump-start procedures. There's also a switch that lets you couple the 12v battery to the 330v battery so that one can jump-start the other (without the aid of a 2nd car).

If you do fear that you might kill the battery in the darkness of a drive-in theater parking lot, you might want to read the manual to learn the jump-start process (and find the switch that let's it do a self jump-start) while there's plenty of daylight to find things.

 

Excellent advice! Thanks. I do vaguely remember the topic about using one battery to jump start the other. It is great advice to figure that out in daylight and ahead of time!

It is fairly easy to run down a battery over 4-5 hours at a movie. I've done it three times over the years. The difference is always failing to remember to move the key to the "Accy" position. In Accy, only the radio is running and everything is fine. In the other position, the dash lights are on (plus other things that I am sure I don't notice) and you are likely to need a jump at the end of a night. So - the previous post did correctly identify that there is an Accy position for the key.

I guess my concern was that even to run the radio, the NAV panel is going to be on for the whole time. So - it is not just the radio, but a radio and a computer and maybe a GPS antenna.

Actually, what really sparked my interest is that just something like opening a door causes something to start happening in the back of the vehicle. (Maybe the battery vent opening or closing?)

Bottom line - I just give it a try and see how it works.

Thanks for your help!

 

One of the pamphlets that came with the FEH explained that noise you hear when you open the door (it also happens when you unlock the car with the key fob). I *think* it mentioned it had something to do with pressurizing an element of the regenerative braking system.

I didn't know the nav computer comes on when the ignition is in the 'accy' position. My FEH doesn't have the nav computer. I factory ordered mine and opted out of the nav computer option. It'd be really nice for out of town trips, but I don't tend to take out of town trips. In town I figure I know my way around and wouldn't probably rarely use it.

 

*The NAV system will come on with the acc setting.

*On the Nav system there is a way to shut down the display, I think it is "Menu" then "Display settings" then "Turn off display", this will leave the system running with no display.

*Also I think that using the 110v system will draw more power to run a radio then just using the 12v jack next it. the 110v outlet is using a power inverter to convert the voltage from 12v DC to 110v AC then your portable radio will convert the 110v AC back to 12v DC. This will waste a lot of power in conversion. Best bet is to power a portable radio directly from the 12v jack, and you won't need to have the key set to acc because that jack has power with the ignition off. This will save even more power because you won't be powering all the extra stuff like the NAV system at all.

* another thing you could do is get a marine "Deep cycle" battery and just power the radio from that battey, then you won't have to worry about the car battery at all.

(note: a deep cycle battery is made to allow you to run it almost out of power and it will still take a charge. A normal car battery can develop problems if they are repeatadly discharged past 75%)