I’m having problems with my car, its 12V battery is not holding a charge well at all. I’ve had to boost it 4 times in the last 72 hours.
Ordinarily I would say that our robot batteries are not well suited to automotive use, however my car is no ordinary car.
I drive a 2001 Honda Insight. Its a 3 cyl- 995cc Gas-Electric Hybrid. 99% of the time, it uses its 144V IMA battery pack to start the engine. The 12V battery is simply there to energize the computers. Once the engine is running, the car uses its on-board DC-DC converter to keep the 12V system operational (there is no alternator).
If the 12V battery is dead when you go to start the car, the computers won’t power up to initiate the IMA start.
Climate-wise, where I live, we frequently see overnight lows in the -15 to -25C range. If it is extremely cold out (-30C or lower I believe) the car will try to start using a 12V starter and the 12V battery.
Would a robot battery be sufficient under such conditions? They’re quite a bit cheaper than typical low-end car batteries, which IMO are overkill for the application.
You can “jump-start” the hybrid vehicle with a robot battery (or even with a couple of 6v lantern batteries). But I would not want to leave one connected full time in a system designed for a larger lead-acid battery. The charging circuitry is likely to be unsuitable for a robot battery.
Low end car batteries cost at least $50 around here, which is similar in price to the robot batteries.
If I were in your situation, I’d look to see if I could find a riding mower battery. They are flooded lead acid, and are usually closer to $25. But at this time of year, you may not find any
Even for small motors at this temperature the current required will be like putting a short on the battery. Even though the robot battery can produce 600 amps fully charged, it can only do that for a short period of time.
Yes it should work fine. The DC-DC converter should monitor the charge current and voltage and no overcharge the battery. It is not like the FRC battery is that much smaller than the tiny battery that the Insight is equipped with.
The bigger issue I see it connecting it to the car which is equipped to connect to a battery with automotive post connections. For the ground you could probably get away with leaving the factory cable dangling and make a new one but for the positive depending on where it goes it may be difficult to substitute something else. You really don’t want to cut the end off of a $50 battery cable to save $30~$40 on a replacement battery. Then add in the cost of the new ground cable and you are likely creating a false economy and it would be cheaper in the long run to replace it with the proper Group 51 battery.
Al, the Insight’s 12 volt battery doesn’t run a starter motor. It runs the powertrain control computer (and a few other incidental 12 volt loads). It doesn’t need to supply much current at all in order to start the system. Once everything is up and running, the hybrid powertrain’s batteries keep the 12 volt battery charged.
Being totally correct, the Insight’s 12v battery does OCCASIONALLY run a starter motor, but only in extremely cold temperatures, or when the 144v battery is flat (generally doesn’t happen), in fact, its only happened to me once the entire time I’ve owned the car (almost 2 years)
The OEM battery for an Insight has about 270CCA, and Al seems to be approximately correct in its rated AmpHour capacity. Its definitely a small engine that doesn’t require much oomph to start (995cc, 3cyl, takes a whopping 2.6qts of 0W20 oil to fill it). Honda doesn’t even sell the original battery anymore, instead offering up a typical Civic battery, rated for around 500CCA as the replacement part.
I’ve seen our robot batteries used in an automotive application before on a dune-buggy, running a 4cyl GM Engine IIRC, but I don’t think it runs in the winter.
Having looked at the datasheet for the Enersys battery, it seems to show that its operating temperature range ends at -20C. I will definitely see winter temps below that in a given year, so while it might work, its probably not the optimal choice.
Kind of makes me wonder though, what ordinary car batteries are typically rated for in terms of operating temperature range… surely car manufacturers aren’t putting MIL spec batteries in our cars…
You really should start the vehicle with the 12v starter at least once per year. If you take it to a reputable Honda dealer, that pays their technician the proper rate for an oil change service for an Insight, and the technician doesn’t “forget” to do it so they can bill more hours, they will “exercise” the 12v starter at least every other oil change if not every oil change. In other words the 12v starter is never properly exercised unless the owner does it on their own or the vehicle is operated in conditions where it won’t use the IMA to start the engine.
This can be done one of two ways. You can either turn off the IMA battery pack with the switch under a cover under the mat in the cargo area (Honda recommended method) or you can remove the #2 fuse.
@Mr V: You seem to know a lot about my car. Are you an insight owner too, or are you just looking this stuff up? Most people barely know these cars exist.
I know my 12V starter works fairly well. I had an issue with my HV battery last year where it blew the 100A semiconductor fuse, resulting in the car starting on the 12V for a period of a few weeks while the parts came in. I was just saying I’ve only ever had the car start on the 12V once due to weather conditions and such. Perhaps you’re correct though, maybe I should intentionally force it to start on the 12v once in a while, just to keep the 12v starter running nicely, albeit unrelated to my current battery problems.
My father actually runs a repair shop, so he does the routine maintenance and most repairs. I live about 1hr from my workplace, so I do about 1000km (~600mi)/week. I change the oil 8-9 times a year (about every 6000km, sometimes as much as 10000km). Honda specs 12,000km cycles in most of the continental US, and 6,000km cycles in “heavy-duty” climates, meaning lots of dust (like the deserts of the western states) or extreme hot, or “Canada”). Naturally, I find it reasonable to believe that if a 12,000km cycle is ok in Buffalo, NY (according to Honda’s guidelines), that stretching it past 6000km in Southern Ontario won’t hurt anything.
Nope not an Insight owner, a former mechanic that has taken training on hybrid vehicle service. At the time I took the classes the only Hybrid cars on the road were the Prius and Insight, though we did briefly cover the just being introduced Escape.
@ 1075guy - I live in Whitby (which I believe is where your school is located) but my brother’s business - JT’s Snowmobile Repair in New Lowell is the CyberGnomes’ title sponsor and work space. He has an account with Vast Automotive. If you need a battery or parts etc, fire me a PM. I am headed back up there Wednesday (driving past the Vast Warehouse in Brampton) and could bring a battery back to Whitby with me next week after bag&tag. Or if you’d like you could pick it up yourself in Brampton at your convenience. Their order system is down for maintenance now so I can’t get a price but it should be substantially cheaper than retail.
1075guy,
I actually have a 2001 Insight as well. Seeing less and less survivors out there since the car got discontinued in 2006. I’m curious what your odometer is at considering how much you drive every day. I think I’m about to break 220k miles.
I just went through an interesting experience with my Insight that might affect you in the future. My IMA battery pack went completely dead about 2 years ago. The IMA light came on and eventually it stopped maintaining the 12V system in the car. I accidentally figured out that if I disconnected and reconnected the 12V battery (cycling power on the IMA computer), the computer “forgot” the IMA batteries were bad and brought everything back online. Predictably, that only lasted a few months before the battery pack got so bad, the computer would realize it almost instantly. Since the 12V system kept failing, and I was unwilling to spend the money to repair a 10+ year old car with 200,000+ miles on it, I thought the Insight was done.
But, then I learned I could remove the battery pack altogether. It takes a little bit of surgery, but I found a step-by-step guide online and had it done in about 2 hours. Interestingly, when the battery pack is completely removed, the car has no problem maintaining the 12V system. And honestly, the vehicle is so light and aerodynamic, I hardly notice a difference in mileage. I’ve gone from mid-60 MPGs to upper 50s. I’ve been driving like this for almost a year now. Of course, no autostop and the 12V starter is used every time. But a very viable option if you don’t like the price tag of fixing or replacing your battery.
So…being a hybrid has little to do with how much mileage it gets, eh? But I expect that depends on your driving habits, if you don’t do a lot of stop-and-go then you aren’t really taking advantage of the hybrid system.
I think it’s kind of humorous that most folks don’t seem to “get” the fact that we can make cars get really good mileage using old technology…the hard part is getting people to want to buy tiny cars with tiny engines.
My car has ~230,000km on it at the time of writing, it had ~156,000km on it when I bought it in May 2011.
You can certainly run without the IMA battery, and the DC-DC will just run off the IMA Motor to keep the 12V charged, provided you have some parts of the IMA system intact.
I would not hesitate to spend the ~$2100 for a new MaxIMA battery from Eli at http://www.bumblebeebatteries.com/ if my car needed one. Its 8Ah (vs the 6.5Ah factory battery), brand new cells (vs the “new” old stock or refurbished that Honda will sell you), and they perform better under load, and heat up less. They’re better in every measurable way, and cheaper to boot.
Eli actually owns 3 or 4 insights, and one of his is approaching 500,000mi. ~200,000mi is nothing for these cars.
100% correct. The 2000-2006 Insight’s fuel economy comes from its low frontal Cv (2nd lowest of any production car ever. Only GM’s ill-fated EV1 was better), its low rolling resistance tires (Bridgestone Potenza RE92 in a P165/65R14 size [any other tire, even “LRR” tires, commands a 5-10% mileage hit]), its stratified-charge lean-burn engine (it runs at AFR’s of up to 26:1, where most cars won’t run leaner than 14.7:1 stoichiometric. Other cars with similar engines include 92-95 Civic VX’s), and its lightweight all-aluminum chassis (almost everything in the car is either aluminum or magnesium. Curb weight is 1865lb). Ultimately, the hybrid components are mostly just there to supplement the 3cyl, 995cc, 65hp gas engine’s anemic performance and make it at least a little fun to drive.
Being a race car driver on the track in my spare time, I would describe my driving style as ‘spirited’. I will take corners fast, accelerate hard, and brake late. My driving style is not particularly fuel-efficient, but in the insight, in the dead of winter, trudging through 5"+ of snow, the worst I’ve ever made the car do was 6.0L/100km (39.2 US MPG). In the summer, I can squeeze as low as 3.2L/100km (73.5 US MPG) out of a tank, and my worst summer tank was around 4.2L/100km (56 US MPG). My record tank (40L, 10.6 US Gal) carried me 1235km (767mi).
I bought my insight to replace an Acura 1.6EL (Acura’s Canada-only version of a Civic Si), which I was consistently averaging ~8.0L/100km with, since I drive about 1000km/week. I calculate that the Insight saves me approximately $5000/yr in fuel costs, and I paid $6500 for the car.