Honda Civic Hybrid — Shocking Battery Failure Rates

i hope the new accord has this sorted out.

 

We won't know for a couple of years BUT Honda has a new architecture and hopefully . . . someone has finally figured out how to avoid abusing their traction batteries. If not, the Volt will also be in the same boat soon enough.

Bob Wilson

 

i hope so, this sort of news is a black eye for the whole hybrid industry, and can scare off people who may be potential buyers, but are not well educated in the technology.

 

I thanked the above post strictly for the Prius column of this image. This is the most concrete and useful listing of Prius battery failure rate vs. car age that I have ever seen.

Sure hope Honda gets their battery issue resolved. The more successful choices, the better for the market as a whole.

 

huh? the volt has a completely different battery and management system. Ford had the same batteries but quite different management system in older generation hybrids and does not have the same problems (Ford BMS pre new fusion and c-max was similar to toyota's bms software.)

Honda has a new hybrid system with different batties and bms, I would not trust them for at least a few years though. The replacements on the 2009 and 2010 cars is a good thing though, they are honoring their waranties, it sounded like they were not going to do that.

 

I have a friend who traded their Hybrid Civic when the MPG went way down after a warranty battery replacement. Then last year bought an Insight. Opps!

 

How do you figure the Volt could be in the same boat?

I don't think the Insight2 and CR-Z had this issue. Perhaps there is simply too few of them on the road for any failures to be noticed? I don't think that's likely though with the coverage the Civic hybrid battery got.

 

The above Prius battery rate failure data is GREAT...I don't recall ever seeing any good data like this before!

...there is a trend that 2006 year was a bit more problematic (which was part of the reason I did the user survey here a few months ago). In my Gen2 batt survey here, I should have asked, of those who replaced, how many were replaced under warranty...but it semed like the majority were replaced under warranty.

Read more: http://priuschat.com/threads/hybrid-battery-survey-gen2-prius-2004-2009.132362/#ixzz2uXRA0BqE
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Wow, worse than I thought. Sort of glad I stuck with the Prius..

 

There is a reason I bought a Toyota Hybrid and not a Honda Hybrid even though I owned mostly Honda's.

87 Pontiac Grand Prix 305 Auto
89 Honda Accord LXi Manual
91 Honda Crx DX Manual
96 Honda Civic CX Manual
96 Honda Civic EX Coupe Manual
04 Honda Accord LX Sedan Manual
12 Honda Civic LX Sedan Auto (Originally my wife's now I drive, she had an 04 Honda Element LX Auto before)
13 Toyota Prius Two (Wife drives)

Honda doesn't have the reliability on Hybrids that Toyota does and that's what I went with the Toyota Hybrid.

 

My Volt's battery lives in a wonderful, water-heated and cooled environment.

Arguably better than what a Prius sees in an extreme climate.

 

As a multiple Honda Owner in the past I find this news shocking. Recently owned an Accord, and most recently a Honda Fit. I felt the quality of both vehicles was excellent.

That Honda would manufacture a Hybrid vehicle with batteries that were demonstrating over multiple years such a high almost immediate failure rate is really not what I would of expected from Honda. Toyota's numbers prove that batteries can be manufactured that are reliable.

I knew of complaints about relatively rapid deterioration of MPG efficiency and battery failure, which is one of the primary reasons when it ultimately came to a choice within the Hybrid arena Prius came out the winner. But I never knew of failure rates so directly tied and immediate to the batteries.

And yes, I hate to see headlines like these if only because I know the unmotivated and uninitiated only see the headlines. They only see the words HYBRID and BATTERY FAILURE. Then all Hybrids get lumped into the same boat.

And really those failure rates are SO BAD that I have to say shame on Honda. Black Eye for them, and thus indirectly a black eye for all "hybrid owners".

 

One reason is because these two cars are post software "fix" that the HCH got to protect the battery. Honda is really good at making engines and make them efficient. If only Toyota can get Honda engine to marry with the Prius. I will never happen. Just too bad.

 

For non-Hybrids Honda is my first choice. There 4 cylinder engines and manual transmissions are heavenly but I was aware that they were not on par with Toyota on Hybrid reliability. I have owned many a Honda with 200k+ and even one with 400k. Hopefully Honda will come out with something to really compete with the Prius.

 

Shhhh.... keep this under your hats. so far, they haven't picked up on this at a certain diesel site.

 

So we can play with these Prius numbers.
Courtesy AustinGreen who supplied annual US Prius sales in a prior post.
I get 0.7 % of USA Prius batteries replaced (I think Toyota says <1% worldwide).
I estimated recent years (in red). The only question is what date this represents (how old is the data?)

 

That is not a useful number to me, as it is a very strong function of sales growth and age distribution out in the wild.

The graph of failure rate vs age or model year is much more useful.

 

You'd hope there are at least a few in charge of GM engineering that'd learn from others. Then again, it may be that the bean counters have final say.
.

 

I don't think the civic's problems were so much in the build quality of the pack or the car. But rather the engineering and programming. It's a poor design that must deep cycle the battery too far to achieve the target mpg to compete with toyota vehicles. This results in tons more battery failures.