Battery replaced (IMA light) am I driving wrong?

1637 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by cmumford, Jan 22, 2005

cmumford

Discussion Starter · Jan 19, 2005

I have been a *very* happy Insight owner for about three years. I have a 2000 Manual with only 24,000 miles. My commute is 18 miles round trip. I have always driven it to optimize fuel efficiency. Nothing too strange, but I accellerate very slowly, and when I decellerate I always let the car pull the transmission to maximize regenerative breaking. 98% of my drive is 35 MPH urban driving. From what I've read in this forum having the IMA battery replaced with only 4 years/24K miles is unusual. My dealer service rep said that it was the first one they've ever replaced. So my question is, "is the way I drive this car causing the battery to fail prematurely?" Is my quest for the greatest MPG causing me problems? I've read that Honda designed this car to be driven like a "normal" car, but I doubt I'm driving this car 100% normally. Thoughts?

BTW the dealer cost to replace this battery along with the electronics was $3,1000!!!!

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Guillermo

· #3 · Jan 19, 2005

The internal combustion engine (ICE) and probably the battery should be "exercised" once in a while if it's used gently most of the time.
If you drive 35 MPH 98% of the time, the ICE probably only reaches the lower end of the normal operating temperature and your V-tech is never used. Give your insight a little work out, drive fast and attack those hills for 30 minutes. It will clean out your engine and exercise the battery pack. A highway driven engine is a happy engine.

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