Toyota Motor Corp's "Estima Hybrid" and "PriusĪ" hybrid minivans have Li-ion batteries in their center consoles. But Honda has thus far placed batteries near the trunks of its vehicles in most cases.
Honda moved the position of the battery forward to improve the comport of the seats in the third row. The company considered placing the battery under the seats but concluded that it would narrow the space between the seats and the ceiling and worsen the comfort. Therefore, the company decided to place the IPU (intelligent power unit) including the Li-ion battery between the driver's and front passenger's seats.
The hydrid system and the components of the IPU of the new model are almost the same as those of "Vezel." In the IPU, there are a cooling fan, inverter (PDU in the picture), junction board, DC-DC converter, ECU (electronic control unit) and Li-ion battery in this order from the front.
To install a cup holder on the front side, Honda arranged the inverter, which is low in height, near the front side of the IPU, covered the area surrounding the IPU with a steel plate with ribs and adjusted the flow of cooling air so that hot air does not go to passengers.
To cool the battery and inverter, air is sucked from the back of the center console, and it flows into the gaps between the battery cells from the cooling duct on a side of the battery unit (from the front side to the back side in the picture). The air that has flowed into the battery unit cools the inverter, etc and is exhausted by the fan. Air is gradually exhausted into the interior of the vehicle by using a long duct that reaches to the area below the second-row seats so that the air does not hit passengers.
The lithium-ion battery is a product of Toshiba Corp. As in the case of Vezel and Fit, it uses 48 cells.
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