Honda Civic Hybrid — Shocking Battery Failure Rates

Bob's hint is the first criticism that I've heard of what GM did with the Volt's battery.

Its cell temperatures are closely monitored and liquid heated and cooled in a far more sophisticated way than the PiP handles its Lithium Ion battery. Time will tell of course but battery complaints are essentially non-existent so far for the Volt fleet.

 

I have always thought this but never posted it so I'm going to now.

It is my belief that the batteries Toyota uses are almost as amazing of an invention as their Ecvt transmission. The engineering on them (even the Gen I batteries) is really amazing. They can take over 100A of charge (this alone limits your ability to replace them with any other battery). The have low internal resistance and really a battery that can last as long as they do (no matter how good the BMS is) is phenomenal. My 01 has 13 y/o battery that's still going. Very few batteries last 13 years (in my experience with batteries anyway).

This is why it makes so much sense for Toyota to stick with the proven Nimh technology (BECAUSE IT WORKS). Honda should maybe think about buying batteries from Toyota/Panasonic (lol).

 

Sanyo became a subsidiary of Panasonic in 2009.

The gen2 Prius was the first to use prismatic cells. The gen1 cylindrical cells, and, I thought, were basically 'off the shelf'.

The issue with the Civic wasn't the battery. It was that the battery management software was too aggressive. Allowing deeper discharges. The Insight2 and CR-Z didn't have the same issues, and neither did the Escape and gen1 Fusion hybrid. That also used Sanyo batteries.

 

Actually, the Gen I was the first to use prismatic cells (2001-2003). The Gen 0 (1997-2000) used the cylindrical cells.

 

Yup. I've got 74,000 miles on my 2011 Volt of which 48,000 are from EV mode after charging the battery. I'm seeing, at most, about 2-3% degradation in range and charging levels after I adjust for my newish MXV4 tires that have higher rolling resistance than the old original Goodyear Fuel MAX tires.

A full battery charge this time of year (temperature) used to take about 11.75 kWh according to the ChargePoint station at work. Now it seems to average about 11.6 kWh.

 

Ah, but for clarification, I believe gen 0 is a hobbyist reference. In terms of the industry and car development cycles, the 2001 to 2003 Prius is a refresh of the gen 1.

 

Ok, if you want to put it like that then, the Gen I is still the first Gen to use prismatic cells

 

No! The the NHW11 was the first to use prismatic cells.

 

If we just look at the G2/G3 Prius, there is a teeny tiny trend to higher failure rates with age so far. Amazing.

I knew the Honda IMA design had high(er) failure rates than the Prius, but I had no idea it was *that* high. Failures within 2-3 years is bad mojo indeed. We like to say it is from deep discharge but I am willing to bet the causes lie elsewhere or are multi-factorial. If anything, it should be easy to protect the IMA traction battery, and I do not buy the argument that it takes deep discharges to gain high MPG. Perhaps bad packaging leading to uneven heat stress.

One thing that is known though, the Honda battery has a lot less reserve when new than the Prius. So I am not surprised that long term longevity is reduced, but that does not explain failures at two and three years.

 

Well maybe this will save Honda a boat load on plug in accord recalls ... since they've chosen to do such a piss poor job at high volume production ... opting instead to put all their *green* eggs in one basket ... with their hydrogen hopes (ie; hydrogen hoax). The only problem is that their hydrogen technology requires lots of batteries too. Maybe they ought to fix their present day technology before they try wasting more money on hydrogen.
.

 

We just got the (IMA) battery replaced on our previous Honda Civic Hybrid ('06, still in the family). Honda payed for the battery, even though it was slightly out-of-warranty. We'll see how that goes, but kinda thinking it's trade-in time, while the getting is good...

It is VERY frustrating that they will not act until warning lights go on, and said lights REALLY take their sweet time: the car can be doing hourly recalibrations and resorting to the 12 volt to start, and still no effing lights...

(deep breath)

Anyway, they are in my bad car manufacturer for a long time. I'd want to see one succesful generation come and go, with decent customer service from Honda when the problems occur, before I'd even consider another Honda hybrid.

 

Yeah well..... Honda is junk

Edit: The reason I first chose Honda way back in 2001 was because the car can still run with a worn-out battery. In fact you can remove it completely & then you have a pure gasoline car*. That would not work with a Prius where you Have to replace the battery in order to keep it moving.

As for customer service, well, Toyota fails in my opinion. When they have almost a million customers with oil-sludging engines, and their response is "Your engine warranty is void," I consider that very, very poor. Numerous state governments & the federal government had to file a class-action lawsuit before Toyota-America finally agreed to reinstate those 'voided' warranties.
* (technically it's already a gasoline car, but it recycles the braking energy)

 

It would be interesting to expand the survey to include Volt and Ford hybrid traction battery life. By now, some of the Volts should be approaching 50-100k miles. Certainly there should be some Ford Escapes in that range.

Bob Wilson

 

VW had a worse sludge problem by percentage of cars involved.
How did they handle the customer service side of the problem, in your opinion ?

Oh, and by the way: while Toyota had MILLIONS of cars on the roads in the US during the oil sludge era, the ratio of oil sludge complaints to cars at risk sold was ~ one per thousand.

Apologies for confusing you with facts.

 

This article makes me so glad to have gone with a Toyota... just wow

 

There are 36 Volts (about 1.8%) over 50,000 total miles and 3 are over 100,000 total miles on Voltstats.net which only includes owners who specifically sign up for that site. One with 139,000 total miles of which 50,000 come from charging up from a plug. Another is 114,000 and 56,000.

Voltstats.net accounts for about 3-4% of the Volts on the road (2,000 out of 50,000+).

 

Thanks!

Interesting, the Volt has reached total sales of the same order of magnitude has the NHW11 Prius, 2001-03.

Bob Wilson

 

No wonder Honda discontinued the Insight that used NiMH. I hope Civic hybrid with
Lithium do better in IMA.

 

I recall reading about Volt adjusting SOC (deeper DOD) to compensate for degradation. Are you seeing the same SOC at full and depletion?

 

I have no way of reading the raw battery SOC at the moment, I'm just observing range and the energy it takes to do a full charge from empty.

The talk about GM adjusting the raw battery SOC over time in order to maintain a consistent owner EV range experience is based on a single statement from someone at GM several years ago. Others have disputed that it works that way in the production car. I don't think the answer has become obviously clear yet but it should become evident during the next year or two. Under good conditions, battery range can be expected to degrade 1-2% per year.

Some Tesla Roadster owners have shown relatively little degradation as well with their liquid-regulated temperature controls on the pack. Of course, BEV's have different usage profiles -- wider SOC windows while PHEVs generally have narrower windows but many more small charge/discharge cycles.

Read about it here:

http://www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/tesla-roadster/PIA-Roadster-Battery-Study.pdf