I have a 2005 Honda Accord Hybrid. When I first got it, the battery meter always was on the top bar. The car was out of service for about 2 months after an accident. When I got it back, the battery meter started to fluctuate wildly from the top bar to only one bar when I'm stuck in traffic. Any similar experiences or comments would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

It seems strange that your car would stay towards the top end of the State-of-Charge (SoC) indicator. Mine usually sits around the halfway point and goes up and down slightly from there.

If you're stuck in traffic, and the autostop is on for a long period of time, and especially if you're running your A/C, then the car uses the energy stored in your battery pack to power the A/C compressor. Is this what you're experiencing? If not, give us a little more details and we'll try to help you out.

 

You're saying the bar being on the top of the meter was not normal? The engine will buck sometimes when the battery meter gets low. When I get stuck in traffic on the highway which is quite often ( I live in the northeast), the meter will go down to 1 bar and occasionaly, I've seen 0 bars. I just think there may be something wrong, could the battery be failing? Thank you for your answer.

 

About the only time my wifes HAH battery gauge shows the top bar is when she coasted down a long hill 2-5 miles. We drive mostly rural and the gauge is usually on the middle bars.On your HAH if it was exposed to high heat (paint booth-halogen lights)during the accident repair it could have damaged the batteries. I'd take it to a dealer and have them check it out.

 

In my 65,000 miles of mostly highway driving of our 05 HAH, I can say that 3-4 bars of batt charge are the normal range. All bars charged I've seen after a couple of long, downhill coasts and after some dealer charging, and the all bars lit goes away quickly in level, moderate driving, IMA kicking in aggressively to scrub the top bar of charge away.
Two bars of charge usually causes HAH to automatically recharge until 3 bars are lit. Don't recall seeing 1 bar, tho I'm seldom stuck in traffic.

I'd say that a quick change from all bars lit to one bar lit under mostly level, mostly moderate driving conditions is something I've never seen, and, if I did see it, I'd think there was a problem.
Lewis

 

Holy crap! And I thought I had a lot of miles.

What's up with OK? I drove through there on Tuesday. That state had a ton of troopers and speed traps.

 

Sorry I'm late to the game here. Recently I changed out my air filter. While doing that I lost a hose clamp down the side of the engine somewhere. So I pulled the battery out to try and find it. After I put it back in and finished working on the car I started it up. There were 0 bars on the SOC (it had 4 bars before i started working on it). So I let it idle for a little while, got it to 1 bar then took it for a drive. I noticed after stopping once I had 6 bars, then it went down to 2 bars and seemed to be jumping all over the place. So I oped up my Accord Hybrid service manual to figure something out. It says when you disconnect the battery the hybrid motor control module, and the computer, lose their memory. When you start the car back up, you need to rev the engine to 3500 - 4000 rpm and hold it there until you get to 3 or 4 bars on the SOC. I did that and it fixed my problem. Now my car is where it typically is, 4 bars all day. Hope that helps.

 

Mine has never been all the way to the top or bottom. Once it gets down to 2 bars, the auto off seems to be disabled (seems to make sense). I'm not sure why it never charges all the way to the top, though.

 

New 2007 about 1-month old or so. It says at 4-Bars and when I get into heavy traffic it goes to 3-Bars. I did not know that there were Bars over the 4-Bars. I thought that 4-Bars was Total-Complete-Charge:

I did drive it 608-miles on a tank last weekend and it was still on 4-bars of charge all the time:

 

Is it possible that the battery is recalibrating. When they recalibrate, hybrids seem to do "weird" things with the battery meter. When I had a Civic Hybrid, it recalibrated and the display would go to zero bars. Then is would charge all of the way up. It did that for several days then stabilized.

Keep us informed.

Rick