general problems of the 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid

Vehicle fails to accelerate and shuts down as moving through intersections. This has nearly caused a crash. This has happened several times believe it has something to do with the batteries, engine and transmission. The batteries fail to drive the electric motors, the gas engine does not engage and for some reason it will shut completely off. Took it to the dealer they said they could not detect a code or duplicate the issue. This issue has been well documented on many sites (including this one). There is a recall on the batteries but Honda does not want to change out the batteries. This needs to be a forced recall before people get hurt or killed.

Ima battery is defective, wears out earlier than designed, causes dangerously slow episodes of being able to accelerate from a stand still and accelerate to merge with highway speed traffic. Gets horrible fuel mileage, no where as advertised, especially in very hot weather. */01/2012 updated bf the consumer stated the ima battery light illuminated. The dealer suggested a software upgrade update. When the consumer turned the vehicle off, and back on again, the light did not illuminate. Updated 03/16/12.

About 2 years after purchasing our 2009 Civic Hybrid, it began to have serious acceleration issues. The problems appear to be related to the traction battery charge level, and it is worse when ambient temps are high. The fault is that the vehicle will unpredictably fail to accelerate, as the traction engine refuses to assist, and the gasoline engine and cvt barely accelerate the vehicle until rpms get up higher. After getting a warranty replacement of the battery, the situation was much improved, but now as the vehicle ages the problem is back, and worse than ever. It is impossible to confidently merge into traffic, as the vehicle is dangerously erratic in performance.

I have a 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid. After having the vehicle for less than 1 year I noticed that the battery began to suddenly drop it's state of charge (soc) during the first few miles of driving after the vehicle was parked for several hours. On sustained trips the vehicle will suddenly drop its charge about every 20 minutes. The safety issue is that when the vehicle suddenly loses it's state of charge (soc) there is a significant loss of acceleration. If the sudden loss of soc occurs at a time when you are pulling out into traffic, you find yourself being unable to accelerate to avoid the oncoming traffic. On several occasions I have pulled out into traffic with the soc reading 75% or higher, only to find that "at that exact moment", the vehicle decided to dump its charge. On several of those occasions I was nearly run into by the oncoming traffic. Honda replaced the battery in March 2010 and the problem went away, but after 6 months with the new battery, the problem returned. Honda refuses to replace the second battery, insisting that the vehicle is operating normally.

I currently am the lessee of a 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid starting this January, the hybrid battery charge level goes from almost full (8-10 out of 10 bars) to virtually zero (1 bar) every other week (the technical term for this is a "recall" or recalibrating). This summer, it started happening every 3-4 days, and whenever I had the a/c on. Then, it started to happen every 100 miles (which made it very predictable). The problem is that when in the 'recall' state, the car is almost unresponsive and does not accelerate much, if at all. This poses a safety hazard especially when making left turns when the oncoming traffic has a blind spot, or is coming around a corner. It also impacts fuel efficiency substantially. I have seen about a 7 mile-per-gallon drop in fuel economy. I took the car to the dealer who told me that there were no codes in the system but there were 3 software updates, so they installed those and that if I still had the problem, to come back. I still have the problem so I schedule the appointment and I take the mechanic for a test drive and he sees the charge drop rapidly and states that it's completely normal. I argue that is happens too often and he still says "it's fine. " about 3 weeks later the ima light and 'check engine' light come on. Turns out, it was a blown fuse (for the a/c electric drive, fuse #22) so they replace it, and tell me that they checked the current draw on the a/c just to be safe and claimed everything was fine. Now, about 2 weeks later, every time I start the car it does a recall. This is beyond annoying and now I'm starting to see drops of about 10 mpg because of this problem, as opposed to the previous 6 or 7. I'm thinking that Honda knows that their nimh battery cells are prone to premature failure and will not do anything to fix the issue.

Honda Civic Hybrid has a problem with the battery that the system uses to run the integrated motor assist between the transmission and the engine to assist the gas engine when accelerating. As the battery deteriorates, it does not charge as well, hold a charge and therefore does not assist as well to accelerate, causing a dangerous situation at times to merge with traffic or accelerate from a stand still.

Check engine and check ima light illuminated. Ima battery dropped to lowest power level. Battery level stayed low and both lights remained on 2 days. Dealer performed an update to ima firmware and lights went off however battery performs recall check at least twice daily. Mpg have dropped 6 mpg in the week following the check ima error. Dealer now states there is no issue. I still have no assist power from battery and vehicle is in constant charge mode.