Honda CRV For Bug Out Vehicle

Recently Ferfal at The Modern Survivalist did an blog post on SHTF bug out vehicle and he reviewed a 2003 CRV.

We are a fan of Ferfal for his first hand experience with social unrest and living through an economic collapse, and we highly recommend you checkout his book The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse.

Ferfal makes great points about the CRV that we mostly agree on, but we would like to add some of our thoughts since we have experienced several issues with the Honda CRV (2009) to consider when deciding on it as a BOV. We know the issues below exist in the 2009 – 2013 models since we have reviewed both the 2009 and 2013 Owner’s Manual.

To start with, in the 2009 model, the CRV does not turn off the headlights or interior lights if left in the ON position allowing the battery to drain.

You can imagine the scenarios where this can become more than an inconvience and instead be a huge liability. The last thing you want to find in your garage after loading up your car to bug out is a dead battery.

The 2013 CRV now has an Automatic Lighting Off Feature, but they still list in the manual:

Do not leave the lights on when the engine is off because it will cause the battery to discharge. – 2013 Owner’s Manual

We will be checking to see if the interior lights can be left on in the 2013 to drain the battery.

Next, the power to the accessory power sockets gets cut off unless the key is in the ignition and it is turned to the ACCESSORY (I) position.

The accessory power sockets can be used when the ignition switch is in ACCESSORY (I) or ON (II). – 2013 Owner’s Manual

If you are charging your phone or other device or running a small inverter off of the accessory power sockets, you may want to do it without the keys in the ignition. If you want to leave a phone in the car to charge and you know your car battery can handle the task, you should be able to leave it in the car and charge it up.

Another option that Honda seems to think is a safety feature and we feel is a huge liability is that when you unlock your CRV with your key fob and you do not open a door or the hatch within 30 seconds, the car relocks itself! In the 2009 model, there is NO way to change anything about this setting.

We have talked to a Honda dealership and they claim that it is a safety feature for your benefit. Honda seems to believe that it is designed with the thought that if you unlock your car, decide not to go in it and then forget to lock it, they will do you a “favor” and re-lock your doors for you.

This feature can be an inconvience when you unlock your car and get distracted for a moment and then go to open the door to find it locked itself. But it can also be a safety issue if you are going to your car, unlock it and then get in a complication with an assailant only to break free and find your door has been locked again thanks to Honda. Those seconds to unlock could be the difference between your escape and a situation that just got worse.

In the 2013 model, unfortunetly you still cannot disable this feature, but unlike the 2009 model, you can at least change the time it will wait before it automatically relocks to 90, 60 or 30 (the default) seconds:

If you do not open a door within 30 seconds of unlocking the vehicle with the remote transmitter,
the doors will automatically relock. You can change the relock timer setting.

We find that 90 is the best balance, but would still love to see the ability to allow us to disable this feature completely.

Next on our list:

The power window lock button on the driver side must be switched off (not pushed
in, indicator off) to open and close the windows from anywhere other than the
driver’s seat.

When the power window lock button is switched on (pushed in, indicator on), you can only operate the driver’s window. Turn the power window lock button on if a child is in the vehicle. – 2013 Owner’s Manual

When you engage the window child locks, it not only disables the windows being put down and up from the passenger and back seat buttons, but also from the driver’s controls. Just because you don’t want a child to roll down their window doesn’t mean the driver might not need to make a split second decision to roll down one of their windows. It should be set up so the driver always has complete control.

Here are some other notes about the Honda CRV that may be of interest when bugging out or just in general:

There are times when you may want to have the car in position (I) or ON (II) and you do NOT want the daytime running lights on, which would draw attention to you. To do so, you need to intiate the parking brake before putting into into either of those modes. If the parking brake is not on prior, the daytime lights will come on.

There are automatic door locking and unlocking feature that have several different settings you will want to checkout. For automatic door unlocking, we prefer the doors unlock when the ignition is turned off vs when put in park. Ignition off is more likely to produce a situation where people are ready to get out of the car, where there may be a time when you just want to throw the car in park and not reduce your security by having your doors unlock. For automatic door locking, we prefer the shift to Park option.

The Dual Deck Cargo Shelf or the Tonneau Cover is not standard in the lowest model and is nice to “can be used to conceal items in the cargo area and protect them from direct sunlight.”

The Honda CRV is a great car, reliable and with good gas mileage. Those are covered well. It is the details that need polish. Picking defaults that could be considered safety “features” by some and inconvenience and liabilities by other and which cannot be overridden is a concern.

No matter what car you buy, read the Owner’s Manual before you purchase it and especially after you buy a vehicle.

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