Battery Charge Level

steilkurve · December 27, 2009

Hello all. Have had my HS250h for two weeks now. Really love the car. One question though with regards to battery charge. I can't seem to be able to ever charge it completely. The last 'bar' never gets charged. Now it's winter and cold where I live so perhaps that affects the battery. Anybody ever fully charges their battery? Thanks in advance.

Argelius · December 27, 2009

Hello all. Have had my HS250h for two weeks now. Really love the car. One question though with regards to battery charge. I can't seem to be able to ever charge it completely. The last 'bar' never gets charged. Now it's winter and cold where I live so perhaps that affects the battery. Anybody ever fully charges their battery? Thanks in advance.

I was trying to find a reference article somewhere for this, but I believe the battery circuitry is designed such that the battery (based on what the indicator shows) is never supposed to get up to 100%. I'm 99% sure this is correct, but can't find supporting info right now...

KGenaidy · December 27, 2009

I've had my HS250h since 10/17/2009. My experience has been that getting a 100% charge is infrequent. It usually only happens if I've had to use the brakes quite a bit and the pack is already "mostly" charged.

I don't worry about it ... just try to make sure it's "sufficient" (>50-60%) to take advantage of the hybrid modes. I try to keep it >60% unless I'm using EV for the end of my drive in our neighborhood. For my vehicle, "charged" is usually between 80-90%.

My previous hybrid behaved very similar and I agree w/Argelius that this is "normal" behavior.

steilkurve · December 28, 2009

I've had my HS250h since 10/17/2009. My experience has been that getting a 100% charge is infrequent. It usually only happens if I've had to use the brakes quite a bit and the pack is already "mostly" charged.
I don't worry about it ... just try to make sure it's "sufficient" (>50-60%) to take advantage of the hybrid modes. I try to keep it >60% unless I'm using EV for the end of my drive in our neighborhood. For my vehicle, "charged" is usually between 80-90%.

My previous hybrid behaved very similar and I agree w/Argelius that this is "normal" behavior.

Thanks for the replies. The reason I was asking about it is that I understand the battery pack is composed of several independent batteries. Given I never seem to be able to charge the last 'bar', my hypothesis was that one of the independent battery was not functioning. That being said, I've otherwise noticed what you've noticed. I tend to be around the 80 to 90% charge most of the time.