HCH-II Community,
Battery charge question. Have close to 9K miles on my HCH-II. Seems that my battery will hardly get fully charged. Always charges with exception of last light from the top. Is anyone else seeing this?

Taking in my car for the first oil change on Wednesday and will ask honda service folks, but curious to see what others are seeing.

Thanks,
-rick

 

My car has 2500 miles and I find the same thing...

 

When driving on certain freeways which go down in elevation on my return trip home I will see the SOC hit max capacity. I don't like this situation, because I can tell my car will no longer use regen braking and only use friction brakes. It's a different feeling, and I don't care for the way the car responds in that situation. 7 bars is a great place to be in my opinion.

 

I remember reading somewhere that Honda maximised the lifespan of the battery by controlled charging, maintaining the capacity between 50%-90%.

I cannot find that article now though... can anyone verify?

 

I have 13,000 miles on this car and have only noticed full charge a handfull of times, mostly car sits a 7 bars with the SOC (and only drops when I use AC).

 

Indeed, managed charging is the best method of ensuring the NiMH battery's long life. For all those who care, there's an abundance of technical information corroborating this. Your assertion is technically correct.

Cheers;


MSantos

 

Same situation with mine.... since new and up to the present 8,500 miles. Normal driving ranges between five and seven bars. On our long trip last month, we did some steep, long grades (both up and down). I saw the meter as high at eight (full) with the same issues that chesleyn mentioned (no regen)... and as low as two bars with a forced regen and no autostop.

 

I see between 2 and 7 bars normally. Mostly between 3 and 7 bars. I've only seen 8 bars ONCE (in 1800 miles), and 1 bar twice.

The battery's State of charge meter does not reflect 100% charged and 0% charged, when you are at 8 bars and 0 bars, respectively. The CPU's charging algorithm does not ALLOW for a fully-charged state, nor a fully-discharged state. This is to prolong the NiMH battery life, by carefully controlling the battery's charging and use.
The SOC gauge represents a range around 75% to 35% charged (estimated).

I keep "thinking" I should try to get all 8 bars, but in reality, 6-7 is great.

 

Sorry...but I disagree with everyone.

This is all about where and how you drive.

By where I mean freeway versus stop and go city.

If you do lots of freeway driving the batteries tend to get drained more than they are charged (in general).

With lots of stop and go driving...and providing you anticipate the red lights and break early and long, regen will generally keep up and over the amount of battery power you are using.

I do a mix of freeway and city, and rarely get below 5 bars...usually it sits on 7 to 8 bars!

I went on a long trip once and noticed that I was using more battery than I was charging. Eventually forced regen came on.

I'm not saying it's good or bad. It's just the way and where you drive that determines how the "Drain" versus "Regen" equation works.

I'm always checking the battery level to determine if I need to do some long breaking at the next lights or not.

 

I wanted to see how long the battery will run the AC, so when the car went into Auto Stop, (in a parking spot) I kept my foot on the brakes and waited to see how long and how many bars will be used up on the SoC meter. I started with 6 bars and after only 10 minutes was down to 2. I guess this shows how much energy AC uses.