I'm here to report that it is still possible to be an idiot, even though you drive a hybrid. For the second time in my life, I have managed to kill my battery by leaving the lights on in the parking lot. I have no idea how this happened, but it was raining and perhaps I was in a hurry to avoid the rain.

It has turned out to be quite comical -- for my co-workers at least -- that somebody who lugs around a couple hundred pounds of batteries in his car, should end up with a dead battery, needing a jump. How embarrassing.

The good news, in case anybody is interested, is that you jumpstart the car just like any other -- there is even a post sticking up through the engine to which you attach the negative cable.

The car started immediately upon being jumped. The hybrid battery gauge showed zero bars -- no charge whatsoever. I proceeded to drive around the parking lot here at work a few times, and the battery charged quickly. From 'zero bars' to about a third of the way, the car forced itself to charge the battery (as it typically does when your battery gets that low).

I drove around for 30 minutes (like you used to do in a non-hybrid after charging a dead battery), just to be safe. It seems to be working fine now.

One thing: beware that when your battery is disconnected or goes dead, your radio will be 'locked' and unusable until you press in your special 'code'. You might want to check to make sure you still have it with the other stuff you got from the dealer when you bought the car.

 

That stinks but glad that it worked out. I wonder when Honda will do the auto lights like so many other car manufacturers are doing. I thought maybe the '06 would but I got mine yesterday and not there...

 

coyote,

This is exactly the situation I faced two years ago twice. The good news is my hybrid battery pack lasted another two years, but allowing your 12-volt battery to go dead is the last thing you want to happen. Like you, the hybrid battery pack also went dead on my Insight.

Hybrid battery packs are mysterious things, but this much is known: allowing them to go dead shortens their life. I'd be pro-active and check out the local dealerships in case the battery pack goes.

My experience was good - Honda paid $6,000 of about $6,500. I also paid $250 to get a complete diagnostic testing, and nine days for the rental.

Not trying to scare you, but it's a good idea to be have a plan of action ready. Hope you will be lucky and not have any sustained damage.

 

It's odd that they don't because my '02 Accord (EX) does have lights that turn off automatically. If I leave them on when I get out of the car it dings at me to turn them off, but if I leave the car they will turn themselves off after ~30 seconds. It makes twice as much sense on a hybrid car because the last thing you want is for that hybrid battery to go flat trying to save the 12V battery. (Does that still happen? Could have sworn it was a problem I read about on the Insight.)

Glad you got back on the road without too much difficulty. Don't panic about my comment on the hybrid battery because I would have a hard time believing Honda didn't think of this situation. Odds are the control systems didn't let it get dead enough to be damaged.

**EDIT**
Delta Flyer, you beat me to it. It must have been your situation that I read about.

 

I had a similar thing happen to me last week -- left the dome light on last weekend and killed the battery. What I don't understand is why that should have affected the State of Charge of the main battery pack at all -- from what I understood the connection to the main pack was severed when the ignition was out. Also, if it really were discharging the HV battery using the voltage converter, there's no way a dome light could have gone through that much power in a day or so. I don't think this actually happens though (actually, the last time I needed to get jumped about a year ago, the HV battery still indicated a full SoC)

Anyway, it force-charged for a minute while I drove up the backside of the hill I live on, then I had a huge downhill stretch to charge the battery. What happened is that while I was charging on the way down it jumped rapidly from about 1/2 charge to just short of full charge. That distance of that "jump" is about the amount of charge I usually have left in the pack at home, so I think the computer just didn't "catch on" to how much power was really in the pack when it indicated no bars.

However, the good news is that the car is driving much better now than it has been the last few weeks. I kept having the feeling like the system was doing heavy charging all the time before, as shifting into neutral would relieve a substantial amount of load even at very slow speed coasting (like having A/C compressor on all the time). That's not the case anymore. It seems I'm getting more assist from less charging out of the battery, so the little unintended recalibration of the pack seemed to have helped out a lot.

What I experienced though seems to imply that the Hybrid Pack didn't actually get discharged, as after a couple minutes of charging, the indicator on the dash basically said "oh crap, this is full not half empty" and cut out charging, I didn't actually lose the 1/2 SoC I had when I left my light on, the computer just lost track of it for a while.

Also, my experience the weeks before seems to imply that the system was never letting the battery pack charge all the way up when it had the opportunity, or perhas that the display was out of sync with the real SoC, so it was simply leaving a lot of my battery actual capacity unused. That would explain why there was more parasitic charging, and less sustained stretches of assist.

However, this experience is making me think it might be a good idea to drop in a larger capacity 12v battery, or even wire another smaller one in in parallel to the system so the 12v system won't go dead so easily.

 

Must be honest, I did not try that, will do so and report back.

 

Note: the SoC dash indicator does not go from 0% to 100%, but 15% to 85% (or something like that). It's possible that the hybrid battery pack was low but not dead with it's "zero" display.

 

BTW, this is why it's a good idea to carry an emergency kit in your car. I have a small duffle bag in the trunk that contains 4-gauge jumper cables, a small screwdriver kit, leatherman tool, pressure gauge, powerport operated air compressor, spare ice scraper, mechanic's gloves, first aid kit, and a few other things I've forgotten. Be prepared

 

Tried it and even when the car is off and locked and waiting more than one minute, the lights do not go off.

 

I seriously doubt this is true for the HCH. When the SOC shows 100% (eight bars) it stops doing any more charging.