As a happy '08 owner, reading this thread still leaves me on the fence. I never experience any re-cals ever, so I'm tempted to go ahead with the reflash.

However, I sympathize with everyone's complaints. We've all been there before with a problem that a dealer/OEM refuses to acknowledge. It's not fair and I personally would love to see a class action against Honda for such behavior. (maybe it'd help push the other OEM's back in line too!)

It may be unethical to suggest this, but has anyone considered really frakking up their battery pack such that the IMA light finally comes on and Honda is forced to act? When faced with the same situation, I might be tempted to force a series of damaging 100% discharges (leave IGN key on overnight every night for a couple weeks?). Technically, I'm sure you'd kill the 12V battery as well, but so what?

Maybe the HV pack protects itself from this sort of abuse.. I have no idea.

Disclaimer: I neither endorse nor encourage this behavior. And certainly, above all, do not do anything that threatens your own personal safety!

 

Well, I just did my 2nd tank since my update, it is getting a little cooler here, mid 70's to mid 80's, the car is dark so I still use a/c quite a bit, I keep it @72.
I am finding far, far fewer re cals, could be slightly cooler weather or could be the update. I have had 2 since the software was installed (about 6 weeks ago) both droped the pack to 2, forced 4-2 bars of regen even when sitting and prevented autostop until the pack came up to 4 bars. Neither time did the car feel to be totaly without power.
I have also found starting off on a hill to be less scary, does not feel like the car wont make it.
That said, I am pretty happy with the update. My thought to those who are saying it is a plot from Honda to prevent replacements, maybe just, maybe it is an adjustment to allow fuller use of the battery...at least, I have found if I don't worry about the battery every minute I am happier, I have not found a total lack of power since the update....if you feel that the car does not accelerate well enough for you when you pull out in front of people, don't do that, don't make unsafe left turns, drive with a little more caution it is not a 300 hp driving machine, all the sofware updates in the world will not make it a fast car.
I am concerned, as I have been for a while now we are seing several unhappy people that are having problems with a few responses under their belt, yet I am seeing a lot of people with a lot of responses that are happy with the car. Something isn't right here, I don't think it is the car.

 

I, for one, am so happy with my 06 that, for now, I'm opting not to have the update.

I have recals too, but I know, most of the time, what will trigger them and take action to avoid them, so I rarely get them now.

Mine has had 2 software updates and since the last one, I've have been quite happy with how it behaves.

Jess

 

How dare you!!!
You think I want to spend my time wanting to pester Honda and wanting to post my battery issues? Do you???? I spent 2 months going back and forth with Honda and my dealership. I had the service manager replicate the issue when he drove my car. It was repeatable and predictable.
You think I should drive my car more carefully?? That all of a sudden my driving habits changed after 3 years of me totally being happy and supportive of Honda??? You need to acknowledge that yes other people are having issues and you are not. And that Honda doesn't want to accept responsibility. They are not perfect. Up until February of this year, I thought they were. Now I realize they are not. I still can't figure out why this isn't happening to other owners. All I know is that is real. I video taped it twice... It is very dangerous to expect to have acceleration when you have driven it that way for 3 years and then all of a sudden its not there. The crappy part is that Honda is using the same tactics to all of us "problem" owners. They say it's the way we drive or the tires are not oem, blah blah blah.

 

Hi Bob, I am glad the update and the car, in general, are working out well for you.

I sense a bit of irony in your post though - you appear to be hinting that people on this forum are using too broad a brush to paint Honda's actions while you ACTUALLY DID THE EXACT SAME THING! I would be inclined to agree that some, and I emphasize *some* (perhaps 10% of the criticism?) comments are exaggerated and perhaps ill-informed but to say everyone who complains here on this forum is at fault is pretty silly, don't you think?

I am going to go out on a limb, and suspect [and yes, this is a fairly broad categorization] there are three categories of HCH-II users:

1) Long-term owners who hardly know their car, are happy with 35 or 40 mpg ("great gas mileage!"), and would do anything Honda asks them too - perhaps because their car is not an important part of their life, or they don't have time, etc. For example, I know someone who did not even get their rear control arm replaced under warranty "My dealer is awesome, and I trust Honda")
OR, long-term owners who are in the category of "Yeah I need to spend money to fix this car but it's better than my Pontiac!". Fair enough but someone like me expects better out of a Honda than that.

2) Long-term owners who keenly know their car, and are happy with the excellent gas mileage (45-50 mpg for nominal gentle drivers; even more for hyper-milers); and they are lucky enough to have a good car with no problems due to manufacturing defects or otherwise. I suspect you are in this category ... I might be too [knock on dashboard!], though I did have issues dealing with Honda in the past re: rear control arm, etc.

3) Long-term owners, who keenly know their car, but have had one or more issues caused by manufacturing defects, attrition that was not factored in by Honda, etc. My guess is that (a) this is a fairly small subset of owners BUT STILL a significant subset; AND (b) while a small subset of that subset might have had a pleasant experience, thanks to a good dealer, a friendly customer rep or what have you, quite a few in this category have had to fight months and sometimes year-long battles with Honda's faceless customer service system in order to have a normal functioning car.
I am with you that we should not expect the car to drive like 400-HP race car BUT if my car performed a certain way, and gave me a certain MPG return ... and if it suddenly stops being that car and hardly has power with much lower MPG, it's incumbent upon an ETHICAL automaker to dig into the problem and fix it (for free if under warranty or due to manufacturing defects). However, US-American corporations, and perhaps ones elsewhere too, are not in general known for their ethics. Instead they, and Honda in this case, try to make it as hard as possible before they perform fixes in a hope this will serve as a deterrent to people who don't have the time, etc.

And to paint the customers in the above category as just ones who don't know how to drive is silly at best. Sorry I am being harsh but your comment was fairly condescending.

Large corporations don't need high-praises to stay in business, especially when they are not being straight with fixing known problems, minority groups of consumers do.

 

The update seems to make the car more sensitive to wet conditions in that even just damp roads would trigger a recal where before the road would have to be fairly wet. Unscientifically speaking the recal's do seem to be shallower as normally one of these on my commute would dip me below 50mpg unless I was very lucky but was able to get 51.5mpg yesterday and yet still hit the usual amount of lights.

That being said my recal's are averaging twice a week vs once a week after the update. Granted the extra recal's were all triggered by known conditions and I probably need a bigger sample size but so far it's looking like more but shallower recal's for me. This week will probably be bad as it's been somewhat wet and will continue to be so that means more recal's.

 

How dare I, how dare you to come here and do nothing but complain with nothing constructive to say.
What I am saying, is there are a lot of people here with 200+ posts that have been here a long time, there are others that have popped up simply to complain with 23-30 posts which feels more like trying to build fodder for a lawsuit.
Honda did not pull the mpg numbers out of thin air, the federal goverment assigned them the same as they did with any Ford or Chevy on the street, I get about 40-50 mpg most of the time (99% city driving), it goes down in the winter, and in the summer with 100% a/c use, thus the mpg # in my sig.
I have no doubt in my mind that your car is a lemon, I do have issues with your failure to participate in this fourm (where no one can do anything for you) except to complain....please, do us all a favor, use Hondas high resale value and trade your car in.

 

If you are an owner of a Honda Civic Hybrid 2006-2010 and have experienced design flaws in 1) the rear tire arms, causing the cars tire tread to be worn down to baldness and or 2) have had your hybrid battery become faulty and no longer hold a charge causing the car to loose power during acceleration and have had Honda "fix" the problem with a "computer update" which changes the way the car runs so that it now mainly runs off of gas instead of battery assist, which also causes the car to get increasingly poorer gas mileage......please contact Attorney Nicholas Chimicles of Haverford, Pa. His law firm is handling a class action law suit against Honda regarding the advertised exaggerated MPG Honda claimed of the cars performance and it's time to file additional suit regarding the faulty design of this car model. Please read this article from the Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...507,full.story


Toll Free: 866-399-2487
Voice: 610-642-8500
Fax: 610-649-3633

 

This commercial has been brought to you (in multiple posts) by the law offices of Attorney Nicholas Chimicles.

Thanks to Lydiahk for her first three posts.

 

Just got my update. First impression is the car seems to feel a bit more refined than with the 9-58 software, I'd say a bit less buggy in software speak. Which is what you'd expect from a few years worth of bug fixes
Drive home was easily at 54mpg, with no apparent struggle up the hills. Will see how a much larger hill on my way to work tomorrow feels like. Granted I have not seen too many issues up to this point, just an occasional recall once a month or so, and an overall MPG drop once every gas station switched to E10 around here. Once I found E0 stations, the mileage has mostly returned. I also almost don't use air conditioning and am very conservative with the battery SOC- I don't let it get too low even if the car allowed that. We shall see how this holds.