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Until the past year or so, the Civic Hybrid had been by far the best selling gas-electric model introduced by Honda. However, the second-generation model introduced in 2006 has not been entirely problem-free. There have been several lawsuits against Honda claiming that the Civic doesn't meet its advertised mileage claims. While those sort of claims are often dubious given their dependency on factors like driving style, climate and terrain, premature battery failures are not.

According to the Los Angeles Times, it appears that 2006-2008 Civic Hybrid models are suffering an abnormally high rate of battery failure at relatively low miles. The nickel-metal-hydride batteries are evidently prematurely losing their ability to hold a charge – particularly in hot weather areas like Arizona and when used in a lot of stop-and-go traffic. The Civic Hybrid has a dual compressor air-conditioning system with an engine driven primary compressor and a smaller electric compressor to keep the system going when the engine is shut during a stop. Using the air conditioning will cause the battery to go through more charge cycles, eventually wearing it down. Read on after the jump for more on why the battery might be failing and how Honda is attempting to address it.

Update: Honda spokesman Chuck Schifsky let us know that the software updated for the 2006-8 Civics is based on the changes that were introduced for the refreshed 2009 models. The 2009 models apparently also got an updated battery but obviously that change isn't going into the older cars. The original 2006-8 models would spend a lot of time during hot weather use with the A/C on which apparently caused the charge cycling rate to increase wearing down the battery.

Update 2: Honda confirmed that the battery pack did change from 2008 to 2009 but its not clear exactly what was updated.