Featured Parking my hybrid in the sun heat

So far so good, albeit scant comfort for 3rd gen owners.

 

By this time, I would think all cars are using 'smart' alternators that vary their load on the engine. IIRC, Honda started using them in the 1990's.

 

Dumped where?

Or simply not generate excess in the first place? That is what voltage regulators are for.

 

Vibrating-reed voltage regulators varied the engine load for decades before that.

 

This is incorrect. In all charging systems in all cars, whether they be high voltage hybrid, 48V, 24V, 12V or 6V charging systems all regulate the charging current and voltage. When the battery gets full, reaching a certain voltage, the current slows down, and the higher the voltage the less the current, until current completely stops entering the battery.

There is no place where the extra electricity is dumped. Even a 12V system. Those produce hundreds of amps at around 14V. That's thousands of watts, or several kilowatts. Think, you'd need a few heaters, like the kind of space heaters used to heat rooms in houses, that would all be on at full blast in order to "dump" the extra electricity of an alternator if alternators really didn't have a way of regulating the charge current.

As for hybrid systems, it's been my experience that when engine braking the car also keeps regenerative braking until the battery is "full." Then current is cut off and the car increases engine RPMs to make up for the lack of regenerative braking when you have a full battery.

 

For item 2, the reason for this is probably the A/C. The traction battery powers the A/C directly, and when the A/C is running at max the load from it alone can exceed 10 amps, which is like a third of what the car is going to pull from it to move most of the time. So yeah, I would say that’s probably normal.
I haven’t seen issue 1 happen to mine though. But that gauge is strange too. I have a scan gauge with a percentage number for that, the in car battery gauge is not linear. The top two bars encompass like 15% while the middle ones are like 5%. It’s possible you were right at the edge of the highest one when you parked.

 

I wouldn't think that (1) should happen - but as another reply says, the gauge isn't really accurate. It's often that temperature here, and I've never noticed that. The A/C can use a bit of power if the inside is steaming hot to pull the temp down.

 

I don't know of any hybrid that doesn't physically disconnect the battery. Any charge loss would be to self discharging then.

My understanding is that heating the battery would increase the effective charge as the chemistry can happen at a quicker pace.