Does the battery indicator ever reach the top with ALL the bars showing full?
Since I recently purchased a used 2004 HCH I have yet to see all the bars full in the battery charge level. Highest its gone is with 1 bar left. 79k miles now but the battery was replaced at 65k miles.

 

I have a 2003 and my guage rarely makes it to the top. With alot of highway driving it may go all the way up. You may want to try having it run at 4000 rpm for a few minutes in the driveway and see what happens. My dealer recommended that any time I disconnect the battery.

 

ok thank you for the reply. But are you referring to the IMA battery or the normal 12v battery?

 

I was referring to the IMA. I still don't understand why the IMA charge level goes down to zero when you disconnect the 12 volt. However my dealer said that running it at high rpm in the driveway for a few minutes will top up the IMA.

 

Great! Thanks for the info.

 

My battery indicator shows full charge most of the time. I try to keep it that way. What's really fun is driving up to a mountain resort and the battery usually drains all the way down. Then the fun begins. Coming back down it will charge all the way back up about half way down. Then, NO MORE ENGINE BRAKING!!! You have to be careful cuz' she'll pick up speed.

I've heard that keeping the IMA battery charged up prolongs the life.

Howard

 

I was reading a good book in the library the other day which had a great chapter on Honda hybrids. There was some information in it that I'd never read before. They said the indicator gauge for the IMA is not linear, sort of like some gas gauges are (you know how those seem to show that you're getting better mileage at the top half of the gauge, and not such good mileage for the lower half). Anyway, the book said that when the IMA indicator is at zero, the IMA battery really still has about 40% charge in it. They also said that the battery tries to keep itself within the parameters of 40 to 80% charged.
I used to see my IMA indicator go up to a full charge at times. Recently I had a computer update done to the car, per order of a Honda bulletin I received in the mail. The update was supposed to do with the Check Engine Light indicator, but I noticed that after the update my IMA charge/assist seems to be operating a bit differently in day-to-day driving from how it used to. Where I would see a full charge at times before, now I see the charge staying between this 40-80% level, most often hovering at about halfway on the indicator gauge. Glad I read that book, because this was driving me crazy.
I took the car on a longer drive yesterday on the highway (usually I only get in-town driving), and after driving on the highway for a while, the IMA battery indicator did go up to within one bar of the top.

If anyone's interested in reading that book, it's called "Hybrid and Alternate Fuel Vehicles" by James D. Halderman and Tony Martin. I think it was published in 2008, and it has chapters on Honda, Toyota, and other makes of vehicles. I only had time to check out the Honda chapter, which dealt with the original Insight, and the HCH I and II, but it seems to be a very informative book.

 

Disconnecting the 12 volt battery is akin to rebooting the car's computer and wiping it's memory. Even though the big battery has not lost it's charge, the computer assumes zero charge and then assesses actual charge.