Negativity

I would encourage you to take your vehicle to a local "National Drive Electric Week" car show and tell folks what you like and dislike about your car.

https://driveelectricweek.org/

 

My dad has never been a fan of ev/phev's but I got a message from him yesterday saying he was taking his cr-v in for an oil change and looked at the Clarity in the showroom. He sounded genuinely impressed. I told him we love it, but he is probably fine with what he has and unless he wants to install a 240 volt charger he probably wouldn't like it, even though it can be charged from a normal wall outlet. But who knows, maybe he is at least considering a car like the Clarity now that he has seen one up close.

 

Electric vehicles are on their way and fast. Doesn't matter if people like it or not... IT WILL HAPPEN. Every car major manufacturer knows this and are ramping up R&D like crazy. It wont be long when the same money will buy you twice the performance, half the cost to drive and no maintenance when compared to a gasoline car. We will think of gas like we do about steam engines. The car manufactures predict this shift will happen no later than 2025.

 

Well the sad truth is that cars like the Clarity, for reasons I don't understand, don't seem to be an overwhelming success. Yesterday we were coming back from shopping at the Tanger Outlets on Long Island. For fun, we pulled into a nearby Honda dealer, only to see if they had Claritys in colors we hadn't seen. Thus far we've only seen one besides our own and that too was silver. We had seen a white one at a dealer when we were buying ours.

However the dealer we went to yesterday had 23 (twenty three!) Claritys in stock! Judging from the dust that was embedded in these cars, it looked as if they had been there for quite some time. Even a sales guy did a double & triple take as we pulled into the lot with our Clarity. I saw him examining our license plate, probably to see which dealer had sold us ours.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarwantsingh/2018/04/03/global-electric-vehicle-market-looks-to-fire-on-all-motors-in-2018/#260e7da02927

 

Ken, why cant they make EV's look like a normal $*&# car. This is not helping. They could have easily made the clarity look like a sleeker version of the accord. Weird looking cars are turning people off. Telsa looks awesome but the pricetag is double what it needs to me for the masses to buy.

 

NO CAR company is providing distribution of their profit for sale of car and money they make on maintenance and repair. The later component is significant. So far no car company had figured out how to make money on ev and along with push from oil industry, the charge will be a slow process. Canada may lead this as compared to USA, since gas prices are killing. People have to step up to be in this game and it will happen at a pace slowerthan we think.

 

I have a friend who has moved to another state now, but he sells cars at a Honda dealership. The sales people in that dealership have been told not to push the Clarity because the money they make on service is greatly reduced. He said the dealers make most of their money from service and not sales.

 

I think you are forgetting about Tesla having close to 400,000 reservations. Those reservations required a deposit of $1000. Thats 14 billion in sales in one pop. THIS SHOOK UP THE CAR INDUSTRY! If they would have been able to fulfill those 400,000 model 3s then the electric revolution would be miles ahead. The people want them and will buy them as soon as the first company gets it right and has the supply available. Also, Tesla Model S smoked the luxury car market...by a large margin.

 

Hear, hear!

 

As soon as Tesla gets its Fremont act together - and they most assuredly will - the EV revolution will be in full swing. If you think about how many tries it took them to get their Space-X systems to work efficiently - and that's an ongoing proposition - it's easier to understand what will happen when they finally get their plant to full capacity. And once they do, they will be cranking out cars at an impressive rate. With Ford's announcement about cutting way back on production - there should be some near-future opportunities for Elon Musk to take over a few more factories.

 

This is certainly a great example showing that the general public needs more education about various types of EVs! How could anyone still have range anxiety if driving a PHEV? (With the exception of a BMW i3 REx, which I don't regard as a true PHEV, but rather a "BEVx"; a BEV with a limited power, auxiliary gasoline-powered generator bolted on.)
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Yup, agreed on all counts. It costs no more to make a stylish EV, yet the manufacturers, with the exception of Tesla, seem determined to make their EVs the ugliest in their vehicle lineup. It’s just a bizarre thing to watch.

It’s almost as if the manufacturer says, “Now what can we do to make this vehicle the least desirable in our fleet?”

 

Then you would love my house - 32 panels on the roof, enough to power my Clarity for 36,000 miles a year.

 

I think that's intentional corporate policy, not any accident. A relevant quote from a few years back:

“Until we see Audi, Mercedes, VW, Toyota, GM, Ford deliver a BEV that similarly dusts their own top-of-line ICE product in performance AND value for money, there will be no effective BEV competition for Tesla. And this isn't going to happen for a LONG time, not for technical reasons, but because ICE carmakers cannot remain viable companies if they start killing off their highest margin products. The ICE carmakers will put batteries into version of their products for the customers who ask for 'the electric one'. They will build low-end, compliance BEVs to earn the ZEV credits they need without cannibalizing their high-end ICEs. They will build hybrids and PHEVs to get their CAFE and CO2 g/km numbers. But they aren't going to deliberately kill off their top profit making products just to compete with Tesla -- at least not until Tesla gets a whole lot bigger than they are now.” --Randy Carlson
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It's notable that the Bolt EV has a body type quite different than most or all other GM cars. I'm far from the only person who thinks GM deliberately chose an odd body type so that the Bolt EV will remain a niche market vehicle, offering little or no competition with its more popular gasmobiles.
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When the car is designed in Japan you get a different result than what people in other countries are expecting. Consider that the Honda N-Box is like the top selling car in Japan, which looks like a micro box taxi. They have a Japanese anime style in the typical design.

European designed Hondas have a completely different style.

 

I’m a weirdo. I think the Clarity looks great. If it had a glass roof, it would be perfect in my eyes. Otherwise, I like it very much.

I even like the funky trunk window.

 

Our ideas about what a car should look like go back to 18th century coach design and the early 20th century's first automobiles. Dash boards exist to ward off the mud thrown up by the horse's legs. Shift levers created the necessary mechanical advantage to move gears around, but now just satisfy some unconscious masturbatory urge.

Form should follow function. Aerodynamics, not sex appeal should govern body design. Bottom line: I agree with Alan: the Clarity looks fine.

 

You arent a weirdo, I like the look too, minus fender wells on rear, but its growing on me.