V
Vaughn
Michelle Vadeboncoeur said:What is your battery management style?
Given that I have hundreds of users who pay little attention to me
except when they want something, I would say that our battery management
consists of providing the manufacturer's recomended charger and hoping for
the best.
Deep charge/discharge cycles will shorten longevity in NiMH batteries.
I hear different stories about this.
the hybrids have sophisticated battery management systems, which never
let the batteries go outside a certain range of %SOC (State of Charge),
which greatly increases their life.
I hope this is true.
Besides, the warranties are all for 8 or more years (in the US) for the
batteries.
That is good, (although I see no mention about that on the Honda
website) but not sufficient. A $3,500 repair bill (or whatever, it won't be
cheap) on a 8+year-old car can be sufficient to give it an early trip to
the junkyard to be melted down prematurly to be made into a new car with all
of the ecological impacts that implies. If these cars do not have a normal
lifetime, then they are a bad deal, (speaking of both economic and
environmental impact.)
I don't see people complaining that their bumpers are going
to need replacing after 3 years when most bumper-to-bumper warranties
expire.
I do! Particularly the $500 to $1,000 built-in repair bill to replace
a timing belt when they could apply 1960's technology for another $10.00 and
use a timing chain that would probably last the lifetime of the vehicle.
Vaughn