My I2 is now about 3 months old. It has been an overall great car, and my 3 honda product. But I am having a major issue with it right now. Whenever I go to accelerate, the car will assist for 3-5 seconds, and then drops off. When you check the battery, its charged to half full. The service manager at the dealership went with me one day, and he got it to duplicate the issue. But his tech could not find a solution to the problem. Has anyone else had these issues??
But I am having a major issue with it right now. Whenever I go to accelerate, the car will assist for 3-5 seconds, and then drops off.
IMHO that's normal.
The electric motor is meant to assist with its instant torque especially at low rpm, when the engine isn't that efficent. After that, it isn't needed anymore, and it would instead be detrimental for the whole energy / efficency balance.
Are you still accelerating when the assist lacks out?
You can try when the car is warmmed up, in park, parking brake set, bring up the engine rpm up to 3 thousand rpms and hold it while the charge/assist meter dips into the regen area. It should do this for a few minutes to allow you to recharge the battery.
When you drive off you should see a lot of assist when it may not even be needed.
The insight trys to forcast the energy need and if you do not need much it keeps the battery closer to 50%. If you need more it does raise the state of charge to more. When I crank my sub woofers up it goes to 90%, but if I use the ac on lo it has no effectat all.
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i hate how everytime i go up a hill the car is always in reg
even wen i have a full battery before the hill the whole battery drains literarly 4 secs after i start going up the hill
i thout one of the main porpuses of the asst was to help the car when going uphill
That's definitely not normal, IMHO.
Just the other day I was going up a Dolomiti's mountain pass (in Italy), from 1000 meters to 2250, with about 25 hairpin bends.
The car was in regen often when I was at a constant speed, not flooring, in the (brief) straights. That way, the battery was at about 50% for the whole time, and the electric boost was available everytime I was exiting a bend and accelerating, as one would expect.
The Electric torque + CVT make every mountain roads driving a pleasure for me.
That's definitely not normal, IMHO.
Just the other day I was going up a Dolomiti's mountain pass (in Italy), from 1000 meters to 2250, with about 25 hairpin bends.
The car was in regen often when I was at a constant speed, not flooring, in the (brief) straights. That way, the battery was at about 50% for the whole time, and the electric boost was available everytime I was exiting a bend and accelerating, as one would expect.
The Electric torque + CVT make every mountain roads driving a pleasure for me.
I have to agree that it doesn't sound normal. I literally don't have any mountains or even large hills to speak of here in prairie territory, but when my battery is at 50-75%, I do seem to get more than 3-5 seconds of assist. As long as I don't taper off on the accelerator, it can give me at least 8-10 seconds of assist. I know this because I tested out the 0-60 the other day, which took a hair over 10 seconds, and had assist the whole time.
I'll see if I can repeat those observations or get the limited assist like the OP is seeing...
Well as most of you know my car was in an accident over 4 weeks ago now. I haven't been able to get back with the dealership about this issue due to this. But, I did test drive another insight, since it's still up in the air if they are going to total my car or not. This one was manufactured much later than mine, and is haveing the same issue. I was doing about 45, and wen't to accelerate onto the freeway. Slight incline, not bad at all, and I had 2 passangers in the car. The vehicle started to assist, and as soon as you really laid into the peddle, the car dropped off, and would not assist any longer. By this time I was doing roughtly 60 mph, and the car salesman was speachless to this issue. He said he would have one of their tech's look at it, but I doubt that.
Mine does that more in extreme heat with lots of a/c use.
From what I read, the Prius does it too, but not as much because it has a much larger battery.
Whenever it happens it makes me hate driving the car. Now I think that if someone hit my Insight and totaled it, I would just purchase a top of the line Civic EX or Si and call it good. I would still get fairly good mileage, but would have good performance all the time.
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Classic Silver Metallic 2010 Prius II
[formerly:
Alabaster Silver Metallic 2010 Honda Insight EX w/ NAVI]
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I2 Assist not functioning properly??
