I am sure the following is a stupid question, but I have just bought my Insight and do not yet "have all the answers" But I am an electronics engineer and and excellent auto mechanic so I can learn.
In all my reading I find no reference to anyone repairing a battery with a dead cell. But my understanding is that there are 120 "D" cells in series to make up the battery and if ONE goes bad the battery is trashed. Why cant that one be replaced??? Also a question, why cant 120 "D" cells be purchased and made into a good replacement pack?
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Jim Isbell
2000, 5 speed, 250,000 miles
"If you are not living on the edge, well then,
you are just taking up too much space."
I'm sure it can be, it's just a matter of cost/effort to do so. In a few years, with more hybrid-type vehicles on the road an industry will probably develop to "rebuild" these packs just as there are industries to rebuild motors, transmissions, etc. It just has not become that popular or even required as of yet. My Insight has 156000 miles on it and the batteries still seem OK, so there's no question that they will last a long time. I'm sure when demand requires it, an opportunity for this service will present itself to the market.
Also, welcome to the forum! I'm a new Insight owner myself and also an engineer. I'm afraid you'll find severe lack of 2nd or 3rd tier technical knowledge/expertise on this forum, but you do get some benefit from other's experiences and the testing that they have done for you. Most of these owners have more experience with these vehicles than I do at the moment, but I'm learning!
They can be rebuilt / rebalanced. The only reason I can see that a single cell couldn't (without much effort) is that they are spot welded in strings of 6. Some of us have rebuilt Insight battery packs. See:
Others including myself have also done rebalancing on the sub pack level, and there is a gentleman from Australia who claims to have done entire pack rebalances.
It can be repaired. Doing one cell would be a big job, since as mention they're welded into sticks of 6. However, replacing the one (or a few) bad sticks would be pretty simple. In fact, I had intended to do this myself a couple of weeks ago, but when I tested the used pack I bought for replacements, all the sticks took 7000 mAh charge, so I just bunged it in as a unit. Seems to be working fine so far...
(If anyone has a pack with one or two bad sticks and wants to try replacing them, they can PM me.)
As said above... 6 cell subpack level has been done... myself and others.
As said above individual cells in a subpack would require spot welding 6 cells back together again... solder connections will not handle 100 amps.
Also normal "D" Cells can not take 100 Amps of discharge and 50 Amps of charging... they would be destroyed in short order... The specific cells used in Insights and civics are not normal NiMH "D" cells... panasonic makes them especially designed to handle very high current rates.... and unless they have recently changed their policy panasonic's minimum order for the high discharge "D" cells that Honda uses is 10,000 cells... so unless you plan on making lots and lots of battery packs... it is much cheaper to buy a $250 to $300 used Civic HV battery pack and just replace whole 6 cell sub-packs.
as for searching ....
do more searching there is tons on IC already.
I typed in "battery rebuild" and I got among other related things:
You could also try calling Calhac Inc. in Anaheim, CA. They are a subsidiary of Honda, formed in 1978 to make airconditioner kits for Preludes. In '97 they added EV batteries to their various Honda support functions and in 2000 began rebuilding battery packs for Honda Hybrids. (714) 808-5800
They probably don't deal with the public, but maybe if Insight owners began to show an interest, they might see the profit potential in servicing end user packs. There were approximately 12,000 Insights sold in the US, I'd bet there's no more than 9,000 left. As they go out of warranty there will be a demand. Both of ours have already had a factory replacement and our 190,000mi car is throwing IMA lights every few weeks so we've got a bad cell. Honda said no free replacement this time. I'd sure appreciate the option of having my packs rebuilt by the factory.
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Why cant the Battery be repaired?
