LOL! You're right though, small claims might be a way to get the ball rolling. I've also thought about calling the local media for one of those "call for action" type of stories. But, on the other hand, hybrids already get a ton of negative press and I don't want to throw more gas on the fire.

 

I actually did send an email to a local news place...we shall see...

 

Just a comment on AC use: it's supposed to be good to run it at least infrequently, to keep the oil that's in the refrigerant circulated through the system, which in turn keeps thing's lub'd. and can prevent seals from failing. I think Honda says weekly, but I would think once a month at the least, even just for a few minutes.

 

I was in Palm Springs this weekend and it was 105 degrees. My battery was fully charged when I parked the car and 3 hrs later it was at 01 bar. Does the heat affect the batteries ? It seems that in hot weather, the battery goes down really fast.

 

Heat does some funny things to the batteries. 105 degrees of outside temp means probably north of 140 degrees inside your car. Did you notice that your state of charge was higher (say 5 bars) and then fell rapidly to 1 bar (like in 10 seconds), or did it get down that low on it's own with driving?

If it fell rapidly, then you had a battery recalibration. You will find countless posts here about the subject from those of us who experience the problem. Here is a good background post about what exactly is happening: http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24097

 

I first took the vehicle in a few years ago when I was getting one or two crashes a week.. They talked to American Honda and acknowledged the problem, but had no solution. I have now been getting the crashes on an almost daily basis for the past year. Some days, I get two.

I took it in again last week and the service people were extremely ignorant. I went ahead and had them do all of the software updates since I had not ever had any. They said they could not duplicate the problem. When I got back in the car, I realized that they had put a total of 0.3 miles on the car. It turns out that all they did was pull out onto a busy street and punch it. I had previously explained to the service guy that it happened roughly once a day and I averaged about 30 miles a day. I had an interesting discussion with the guy about how they did not even try to duplicate the problem, but I do not think he ever got it. In contrast to the first time I took it in for this issue, they did not take the time to listen to me, research, or understand what was going on.

After the updates, it crashed just as before--once or twice a day. I called back and the service guy asked me to bring it in again. I said I would not waste my time until they can at least understand the issue. I read the part of the manual that describes the battery crashes to them to explain the issue. Supposedly, they are going to research the issue again, call American Honda, and get back to me.

I have about 51K miles on my 2006 HCHII.

BTW--I have done the power reset procedure and I have never had a check engine light or IMA light come on.

 

This must be frustrating for you Mr. Kite? Hopefully you will get action this time. Are you keeping a written record of these recalls? H

 

I used to keep track of them, but that got old fast.

 

I gotcha! H

 

Well, I finally got somebody at the service department to call the Honda Tech line. I have an open case with them. Anyway, as expected, they said the behavior of my car is totally normal. They said if I had any bad cells in my battery, the IMA light would come on.