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Before I bring my car in, I wanted to know if what I'm noticing is normal or not.
Two things:
1) A couple of times in the last two weeks, I've notice my SOC meter at 1 bar. I haven't been accelerating hard, the A/C wasn't on, and I'm not doing anything to stop the car from charging. It goes back up to full charge in a fairly short time. I didn't notice this happening before.
2) I am getting a high pitched whine that seems to be coming from somewhere around the top of the drivers side windshield pillar. I can't swear to it, but that's what it seems to me. I haven't been able to figure out if I'm doing anything consistently when the noise appears. It usually goes for 2-3 seconds or so. I believe the last time it stopped was at about the same time I took my foot of the gas.

I don't totally distrust the dealer, but I'd rather not leave the car with them if these are normal. Everything else seems fine except my mileage gauge was off by about 2mpg this tank. I've read that it's not great, so I'm not concerning myself with that.

Thanks,

Dana

I hear the high pitched noise too. Can't speak as to whether it is normal, but it seem to occur when I relieve pressure on the brake, but my foot still remains on the brake. I can make the sound go on and off by pressing the brake hardish, then relieving that pressure (difference between braking at a stop light, and sitting at the stop light waiting to go).

I assumed it was part of the braking system.

As for SOC changes, I think those are pretty well documented on this site in many threads. They call that a Recalibration, where the computer is recalculating the amount of charge in the battery. My understanding is that they are normal, though in my case, with daily frequency, I believe it is indicative of a dying battery. The jury is still out on that.

There is typically a high-pitched whine when the regenerative braking is recharging the IMA battery pack. This sound will be more noticeable at slower speeds and higher regeneration levels. So far as I know this is a "normal" condition.

Your 2010 model will have revised software managing the SoC so what you may be observing may also be a "normal" situation.

Regardless, it never hurts to raise these issues with your dealer.

Cheers,

Roger

After further checking, the noise definitely has nothing to do with acceleration or braking. I hate to bring it in for something that's intermittent because they could drive it (horribly) for an hour, and find nothing.

I had read about the recalculation, but don't recall seeing anything about 1 bar. That's good to know. I'm not sure why it would start doing that all of a sudden (or maybe I just noticed it), but I'm really not sure how it decides when to charge itself and when to let itself run down. It doesn't work at all the way I would expect it to. I'll just assume it knows what it's doing.

Thanks for the answers.

Dana