I have a 2010 Honda Insight and I’m trying to make sense of why the engine turns on and off when it does.
First of all, I’ve come to terms with the fact that (unlike a Prius I believe) the car is never being driven only by the battery, the battery simply assists the engine. The only time the engine cuts off is when I’m at a stop. If the battery is mostly charged up, when I come to stop the engine will cut out, but usually restarts within ten seconds or so. The manual says it turns back on if the battery charge goes too low or the heat/ac needs to cycle on. IME, but I’ll have to test it out if I remember, even if the heat and AC are off and the battery is charged the engine will still come back on.
My second question and the reason I’m asking is that I’m trying to make sense of why the engine never shuts off while the car is in park. It seems to me that it should cycle on and off just like it does when I’m stopped. I hate that when I’m in my car and parked the engine just keeps running and running even when I can’t seem to think of a reason why. It bugs me even more when I pull into a parking spot, I come to a stop, the engine shuts off, but as soon as I put it in park it turns back on, just so I can shut the car off. Seems like a waste. I’m trying to get in the habit of turning the key before I put it in park, but that’s an extra (annoying) step that I tend to forget about.
Any ideas?
I have yet to read anything about WHY Honda designed the car to restart when placed into “Park” but I have heard a number of owners comment on the issue.
I don’t know how specifically the Insight works, but some hybrids draw power from the energy used in braking. I suppose the engine keeps running since the computer thinks that it won’t really have much of an opportunity to draw energy from the braking system anymore since the user is now in a parked state. Why it doesn’t keep running on whatever electrical energy that happens to be stored up at the time, and then switching the engine back on when it’s nearly depleted, I’m not sure, either. This is all speculation of course, and is in all likelihood wrong.
However, I’ve spent enough time working on, and breaking down my '98 Civic, that I’ve asked myself “Why the **** did they do that?!???!?” a myriad of times.
Just to confirm: the Prius (and the Camry hybrid, which uses the same system only with a larger gasoline engine) is sometimes powered only by the electric motor running off battery power. This is mainly while maintaining speed on a flat or slightly downhill grade.