Driving on mountains

When encountering mountains, make sure you have as much charge in the batteries as possible.

For example, if you are going to be going up a mountain, use HV mode as much as possible to conserve your battery capacity.

If, for whatever reason, you've depleted your battery charge, and you know you are approaching a mountain, long-press the HV button to invoke HV-Charge mode. This will allow the car to charge the battery to a maximum of 57% (I think) so that you'll have battery power to supplement the engine/generator.

The engine in the car is a generator (for the most part) and it generates electricity to drive the car when called on.

If you're going up a mountain without much battery charge, then the engine will work very hard to generate the electricity needed to drive the electric motor in the car.

Hope that makes some sense?

 

@David in TN covered this well.
Just curious - What was the state of your battery charge when you were experiencing this?

 

If you "never charge the battery" the car will do just fine under 'normal' circumstances (where terrain is mostly flat, or mild up's and down's). Under more severe conditions with sustained uphill climbs, then having some substantial charge will greatly help to keep the engine from sounding like it is struggling. The engine (or battery) should not be damaged, but it can be a little unnerving.

My suggestion is when you go on a longer trip (particularly if you are unfamiliar with the expected conditions), then use the HV Charge mode in order to build up a substantial battery charge (maybe 50%+). HV Charge will stop when it reaches 56%. Having this extra battery capacity will assist the engine during long climbs and reduce the noise. If you have an option to charge the battery, then make it a point to charge when planning to depart on a longer trip. You can preserve some charge for unknown circumstances by going into HV mode while you still have significant charge left.

 

While the engine/generator noise is rapid and noisy you won't hurt the car. Just keep driving. But as others have said keep a charge, my target is at least 50% charged when going over mountains.

 

You'll be fine.

But having a PHEV (especially this one which has a longer EV capacity than many others) that you don't often charge the battery on isn't using the car to its fullest potential...

 

My opinion is no damage...

The car is very good at protecting itself, and you would have had all kinds of warning messages. The car probably would have prevented you from driving at all if the battery was approaching the damage point.

 

Yes. Two bars represents ~15% SOC. You were below 20%. A full gauge, 20 bars, represents ~90% SOC. Honda doesn’t allow the batteries to be charged to 100%, which would be a cell voltage of 4.2V. Target voltage is just below 4.1V.

It is quite impressive that you managed to travel 10 miles in EV with 2 bars. The SOC had to be below 5% at that point. How many bars were showing when you arrived at a gas station?

Lithium batteries can take some abuse. Some general guidelines are to avoid charging above 90%. Honda has built that into the BMS, so don’t concern yourself over that. Avoid discharging below 10-15%. Honda has, sort of, built that in as well. However it appears when the vehicle is out of gas it will operate in EV for ~10 miles.
For long term storage, charge the batteries to 50-70%. Avoid rapid charges and discharges.

In case you didn’t notice during your travels, there is a whole lot of nothing in N Cal, Nevada and Utah. Keep those batteries charged and start looking for gas after -200 miles.

 

I just drove hwy 299 the other day. In order to go uphill your engine is gonna rev, it's going to be loud and it's not going to hurt your engine. I switch it to sports mode like you but only so I can do some one pedal driving to put some EV miles back in the battery and settle down the engine.