Can somebody educate me on “recal”?
I have a 2007 HCH II and have done 55k miles. I have noticed that frequently I get what looks like a “recal” up to once per day. However the IMA battery never loses any charge when it is parked. What I think is a “recal” is when the charge indicator bars suddenly drop to one and the car will not give any motor assist on acceleration (and the car feels “sluggish”). However, the battery recharges and gets back to normal very quickly. So far (touch wood) I have not seen the dreaded “IMA warning light”.
My conclusion from the posts I have read, is that this “recal” is a “recalibration” of the system that monitors the battery charge level. I think I read somewhere that the Nickel-Metal Hydride battery has quite a flat charge vs. voltage curve. I am thinking that since presumably the only way the system knows the level of charge is from the battery voltage, if anything (temperature for instance) changes the voltage, the system detects a discontinuity and decides to recalibrate itself. Does anyone know of a link to a technical article which explains exactly what a “recal” is and what it means?
Obviously my concern is purely how long my battery will last and the cost of replacing it should it fail out of warranty (which is 80k/8 years in my case). I have seen some posts which imply that frequent recals mean that the battery is about to die. Replacing it would of course completely destroy the economics of owning a fuel-efficient car! (I didn’t get the Honda 125K extended warranty, as it is only available up to 5k miles, and a friend told me how to get it online at a discount after I had done 7K! At the dealer price I felt I had paid a premium for a Honda because of its reliability reputation, so why would I then buy the warranty? However my friend pointed out that the battery is new technology, so its life was uncertain, and living in Houston, lead-acid batteries generally last 3 years if you are lucky!)
So my question is really, do these frequent recals indicate that the battery will soon fail, or are they just part of the normal monitoring system and therefore nothing to worry about?
I believe I did see on another post that some people had got their Honda dealer to update the software when they complained about these recals, and that appeared to reduce their frequency. Is that something I should ask for? Is there a Honda Technical Service Bulletin on it that anyone knows about? (if I search for “Battery recal” all I get is hundreds of “recall” references!)
I should note that I have just bought a Kia Soul (traitor!) which has 100k/10 year warranty and I have been driving that to work to spin out the HCH II warranty so that if the battery fails, it might still be under warranty. But I’d rather drive the Honda!
Anyone out there have “real” info on this, not just an “opinion”?

 

I've never experienced one, but here is some info that may help explain recals:

http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24097

 

Thanks so much, Gairwyn. THat is just the kind of info I was looking for. I am guessing that my frequent recals are due to the high summer temperature in Houston. I have never noticed more than one recal during the course of a trip, and they always seem to occur soon after I have started my journey. I think I will ask my dealer whether there are any software upgrades though.

 

The software upgrades will probably not fix the problem. I have TSB-0958 applied to my car which did help a lot over the winter. I suspect that this software lowers the "panic threshold" where a recal occurs and there is now a "soft recal" where the car will drop to 3 bars but still allow some electric assist. I was pretty happy with this software until the weather got warm again, and lately I've had recalibrations daily.

I'm not sure what version of software I'm currently running, but it should be the very latest (as of 5/27/10) for an '06. They replaced my transmission 2 weeks ago and supposedly made sure that I'm on the latest PCM and BCM software. I didn't have a crash yesterday, but it's the first day without one since picking the car up from the dealership...

 

Ouch! Transmission rplacement on an '06! How many miles had you done?

 

The transmission died at ~35,300 miles... It's the first time I've ever had a car leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere. The new transmission seems to be working well though, and I have the extended warranty (I'm currently at 3.5 years of ownership) so I didn't have any out of pocket expenses so I can't complain too much, but I'm not overly happy about it either.

 

That's terrible, Christian! Really wouldn't expect that from a Honda! My previous vehicle was a Chevy venture and I had a 100k wraparound extended warranty and I never collected a cent from it (Though I have had other vehicles where I did claim on the warranty). I think it just goes to show that lady luck rules whatever you do! Here's me worrying about my battery failing and your transmission went out! I've just read the article on management of NiMH batteries and it looks as though I could actually harm the battery by not using the car much! My conclusion is that I might just as well use my beloved HCH II and let destiny decide. That was the conclusion I was hoping I could come to by posting this question. Thanks, Greenhybrid members for being such a great source of info!

 

Yeah, I'm of the school of thought that you don't buy insurance (warranties) against losses you can afford to absorb, but my wife likes the piece of mind from an extended warranty so she won out when we bought the car. In this case, she was right to get the extended warranty.

I knew being a (relatively) early adopter of hybrid technology might have some growing pains though so I'm still really enjoying the Civic despite the tranny problem and the battery recalibration. I just wish that Honda would acknowledge the battery problem instead of just putting bandaids on it like TSB-0958. Instead of owning the car for 10 years like I planned originally, I'm going to sell it as soon as the 8 year extended warranty is up. Hopefully by then there will be a viable full electric car on the market by then.

 

We got the extended warranty, figuring with the uncertainty of battery problems it would be wise. As it turned out, so far it seems my battery is well-behaved, but the CVT is the more likely thing to give me some trouble.

As I read all the posts concerning recals with the second-generation HCH it makes me appreciate the way the battery seems to be programmed on my first-generation model. The farthest "down" it goes is to about a "third" on the battery gauge, never lower, and at that point it will begin to apply some regen, but it's nothing drastic. A bit of regen here and there where appropriate, like while coasting, braking, or traveling on a down-grade, and it slowly accumulates more bars until it reads at about 3/4 full, or near full if I've gone down a very steep hill or had a really good ride with a lot of coasting at a moderate speed like 45-50 mph or so.
Maybe Honda should take a look back at some of their previous programming and see what has worked and what has not.

 

That's pretty much how my HCHII works under normal conditions. However, I'm convinced that the battery packs of certain HCHIIs weren't balanced properly (supplier problems, lack of quailty controls, who knows). We also have more cells in our packs if I recall correctly, so there are more to get out of balance. When one or two cells start acting up, it looks like the whole pack is screwed up to the BCM so it goes into panic mode.

If Honda had spent a little extra $$ per pack, they could have built a smarter system that charges/discharges each cell appropriately. In that case, it could be possible to just change out the few cells with problems. However, (I'm guessing because of a bean counter somewhere) the whole pack rises and falls based on the lowest common denomonater cells, and the whole thing will need to be replaced when those cells finally go bad enough to throw an IMA light.