I am planning on leaving my 2026 CRV Hybrid in my garage for an extended period of time. How long can I let it “sit” without starting? If it needs a battery tender, any recommendations??

 

“Extended period” is too vague for specifics. My ‘22 sits for 3-4 months/yr.

I charge the drive battery to 80%. Not an issue.

The 12V battery will only last about 3 weeks before it discharges to 50%. That is the point where you begin to damage the battery and reduce capacity over time.

So to prevent that, I have a tender hard wired so it is plug n play. However, because of the parasitic draw being greater than 50ma, the tender goes into a death cycle. (Noco Genius 1)



You can see it here beginning at about 17:30 until I turned it off at about 18:45.

If you remove(disconnect both cables) that will not happen. What will happen is you will lose your settings. The systems will reset when the power is restored AND after a short drive with some exceptions.

I avoid that by putting the tender on a mechanical timer set for two hour/day on time. That removes AC power outages from the game.

Honda makes a tender called Optimate,
Battery Tender (probably the best) and Noco are three good choices. Noco has replaced my tender but said that the Genius 1 cannot keep up and suggest that when this one croaks I upgrade to a Genius 5.

If you are going to park for longer than 6 months you will need to take additional steps.

Keep in mind that Honda makes these cars to be driven, not parked.