So here's some background:
Honda extended the warranty on the hybrid battery in the 1st generation Insight to 10 years or 150,000 miles. The only caveat is the warranty doesn't apply to salvage titled vehicles.
When I bought my car with 86,000 miles 11/07, the hybrid battery had about 2/3rds of it's capacity left. Over the last 60,000 miles the battery has slowly degraded to the point where it only gives full boost for 2-3 seconds, and I'll be lucky to get 2-3 bars(out of 20) of overall capacity before it re-calibrates to redetermine the batteries' State of Charge.
Usually when I drive, the goal is to keep the battery as charged as possible. However, since I was getting so close to the warranty period expiring, I decided to take the car out and drive it hard - the goal being to try and make it throw one of the hybrid system errors that provide battery warranty service. Success! It threw a P1447 error code, which is "Battery Degradation".
Over the last year, I've been dealing with an insurance claim - I lost control of my car and ran into a guard rail. They finally settled with me in January and determined that the car was NOT totalled. The damage to my car is purely cosmetic, so I took the check and applied it towards my loan, paying my car off. My worry was that a shady dealership could try and deny me warranty service because of the damage to my car.
I took my car into the dealership.. They were clueless, as expected.. so I gave them the relevant TSB's, they checked my VIN and said I should be covered. No mention of the damage or anything.
So I waited for about a week for the parts to come in, and finally on Thursday I got my car back.
New battery - $2700
New Battery Controller Module - $1500
New Motor Control Module - $1300
-------
$5500 - not including labor. 😱
They replace the BCM and MCM in my model year because they aren't flashable, and there are updates.
It's soo awesome to have full capacity back. Hopefully it will last another 10 years...
Thanks Honda!
Honda extended the warranty on the hybrid battery in the 1st generation Insight to 10 years or 150,000 miles. The only caveat is the warranty doesn't apply to salvage titled vehicles.
When I bought my car with 86,000 miles 11/07, the hybrid battery had about 2/3rds of it's capacity left. Over the last 60,000 miles the battery has slowly degraded to the point where it only gives full boost for 2-3 seconds, and I'll be lucky to get 2-3 bars(out of 20) of overall capacity before it re-calibrates to redetermine the batteries' State of Charge.
Usually when I drive, the goal is to keep the battery as charged as possible. However, since I was getting so close to the warranty period expiring, I decided to take the car out and drive it hard - the goal being to try and make it throw one of the hybrid system errors that provide battery warranty service. Success! It threw a P1447 error code, which is "Battery Degradation".
Over the last year, I've been dealing with an insurance claim - I lost control of my car and ran into a guard rail. They finally settled with me in January and determined that the car was NOT totalled. The damage to my car is purely cosmetic, so I took the check and applied it towards my loan, paying my car off. My worry was that a shady dealership could try and deny me warranty service because of the damage to my car.
I took my car into the dealership.. They were clueless, as expected.. so I gave them the relevant TSB's, they checked my VIN and said I should be covered. No mention of the damage or anything.
So I waited for about a week for the parts to come in, and finally on Thursday I got my car back.
New battery - $2700
New Battery Controller Module - $1500
New Motor Control Module - $1300
-------
$5500 - not including labor. 😱
They replace the BCM and MCM in my model year because they aren't flashable, and there are updates.
It's soo awesome to have full capacity back. Hopefully it will last another 10 years...
Thanks Honda!
