Angry Bees Test, Result, Theories

The Volt's Mountain Mode or our HV Charge mode should be called "pre mountain mode". They charge the battery. What I am looking for is a mode where you start with a nearly full battery and the car combined steady battery power with engine power. So for example whenever the engine RPM exceeds 4500 rpm start drawing from the battery. The main goal is to increase performance and reduce engine noise in steep section.

I have driven the monitor pass in Clarity with medium+ load. It was very noisy, the car did not perform well. If I do it again I will just keep the battery charge and climb the steep section in EV Sport with some sharp accelerations to keep the engine running.

 

Ah, I see what you mean -- a mode where the engine is used to keep the charge up, but revs limited to reduce noise by allowing the battery to swing more widely than HV or HV charge usually do. Kind of like my HP laptop has a fan policy settings to optimize for quiet by allowing a wider swing of temperature (and by reducing performance some). Noisy computer fans in a quite room really bother me, so I leave it in that mode.

I think the Clarity's engine noise doesn't bother me because I'm coming from a 2007 Civic and before that a 1995 Neon, both of which could accelerate and climb hills adequately, but definitely not without a heck of a lot of engine noise! And we've had 2 Toyota Highlander Hybrids, which have more refined and powerful engines, but took some getting used to the disconnect between the engine revving sounds and the car's speed, which is how normal hybrids sound the entire drive. It's definitely more jarring in the Clarity to go from silent EV mode to the engine kicking on at higher revs, but I'm usually fine with it because it's a great tradeoff for most of my usage. Real loss of power would be a bigger issue, since I haven't experienced it despite trying I read others with interest to see what to watch for (so far, dealer-depleted batteries and very steep very high elevation climbs make sense)

I will definitely report back after tackling Monitor Pass though!

 

When I was trying to find people to beg for the Honda e to come to the US, I found how solid the wall was between me and anyone with a name at Honda. After giving up on finding email addresses I ended up writing letters to Honda executives, but as @Agzand experienced, no replies were forthcoming. No Honda e was forthcoming, either.

 

It is really frustrating. You can improve the car massively with a few lines of code, but the company just doesn’t have a channel to communicate with actual drivers. You get the typical useless surveys about dealership experience and service experience and if the sales rep explained what this button or that button do but no interest in user feedback to improve the product. No wonder Tesla’s market cap is now 10 times that of Honda.


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I've pretty much made peace with my car operating as it does. I try harder to be really soft with deceleration when the car is fully charged to avoid the ICE starting. That was my primary woe for my daily driving. Once I read about switching from HV to EV for a minute or so, and then back to HV to reset the target battery level and lower RPM, that at least gave me a tool to use if high RPM is ever a problem for me. If I am going to use the ICE, I generally go to HV mode early (with battery at about 90% so I should have a bunch of resets to use if I ever needed them). I have never really experienced high RPM with my car, but the terrain here is generally non mountainous and when I run the ICE, I almost always have a good bit of battery in reserve. I've used the HV Charge when I have accidentally depleted the battery, and with it I do hear higher RPMs, but not overly noticeable, especially if use can be targeted to part of the trip with 40-55 mph travel.

 

Not if it is a steep downhill (e.g if you have to go to level 3 regen). But you can definitely regen when it flattens out a bit. The point is to get the charge level up, either via regen or HV charge.


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Talk about burying the lead!

What's up with the replacement? What were the symptoms of it going bad? How many miles do you have on the car? How long is it taking to get the replacement part? Are you satisfied with the service department performance?

I think this topic deserves lots of information... What's up?

 

Well, believe it or not I recently got a response from the Clarity powertrain engineer. He was very helpful and was interested in knowing my opinion and suggestions about the powertrain. I explained to him in detail what I think will be useful for mountain driving (e.g. a new mode with 2/3 power from engine and 1/3 from the battery), and the fact that overall I am very satisfied with the car. He said there are some limitations due to risk of losing tax incentives. Basically any driving mode that keeps the engine running full time has this issue. He also said Clarity has a very rigid structures and their goal was to build the most efficient PHEV sedan in the world. Still I think the combined mode is possible (probably they have to program to shut off the engine at some intervals). I think there is a lot of potential left in PHEV powertrains, unlike BEVs which are pretty much matured in terms of powertrain efficiency, the PHEVs will be much better in the future.

 

ASTOUNDING! That powertrain engineer will likely be fired Monday for breaching the Honda/customer wall. Clearly you had the right stuff to both establish such a difficult communication channel and pose a question intelligent enough to elicit a response.

There's a Bimmercode app that lets people reprogram aspects of their electric BMW and MINI cars. Perhaps after your kind engineer is fired, he will take it upon himself to create a similar software API that people can use to see hidden data and experiment with the way their Clarity PHEVs work. OK, that won't happen, but I can dream.

 

I am sure that won't happen, because I contacted using publicly available channel. Besides I provided the feedback and information, not the other way around.

I remember BMW also had to restrict using the engine in i3 REX models due to similar issue (tax incentives). There could be some language in the tax credit law that prohibits a real blended power mode between the engine and the battery.

Regarding coding I had a coding tool for my Golf Sportwagen. I used it to increase steering effort, activate mirror dip when backing up (although it didn't have memory to return to original location, but still handy in a pinch), and several other things. I see some BMW i3 models on used market are coded to use entire gas in the tank (normally US model keeps 3/4 gallon or so unused). You can do it for simple settings, but adding an entirely new mode will require new software and it is beyond coding tools.

 

I have written this same type of response that I need to just make a copy of it and paste, but here goes again. I also live in Colorado and travel across for Denver to Grand Junction and back several times a year. Going over the same passes as the post. I have NEVER had a problem with angry bees.

It is a very simple thing. IF YOUR EV RANGE IS LESS THAN YOUR TRIP start in HV and stay in HV until you are close enough to a charging station. It truly that simple, no mountain mode, switching back and forth between modes, no HV Charge – none of that. Just stay in HV.

Under hv the car tries to keep the charge of the battery at the charge you started in. As you go up a pass the battery will go down – but it will be using BOTH ICE and battery to give you the power you need to go up the pass. As you go down you will use regain and put back into the battery the charge you used going up.

I just made that trip a week ago. Filled up and came back over, got home with ¾ of the battery still there – no angry bees at all.

 

Hey! I'm also coming from a Golf Sportwagen (2016 Limited Edition) and I wish there was aftermarket support/software solutions for customizing stuff like OBDEleven for Honda products. I'm considering the HondaHack but it doesn't seem nearly as powerful. In moving from the GSW to the Clarity, I feel like I've gone forward in powertrain technology and backward in infotainment/customization technology.

 

Yes I loved that car but it got totaled. I used OBD11 for those codings. Mine was a base stick shift, so the infotainment was similar to clarity, but in terms of driver assist features clarity is way ahead. Clarity also has better ride, feels larger inside, it is just more relaxing to drive. I am still tempted to buy a clean 2018 Altrack, but we have signed up for an iD4 right now, so I don’t think it will happen anytime soon.


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Bummer it got totaled! I wish I had the stick in mine (wife needed to be able to drive it and we came from a 6MT Mazda 3 Hatch that was a struggle for her), but the LE also had the base infotainment and that seemed miles ahead of Honda's software. Luckily it came with ACC, emergency braking, blind-spot monitoring, etc. The Clarity ride quality and interior space are amazing compared to the Golf. I also wish the Clarity was a wagon or hatchback; it would be the perfect vehicle for me.

 

I recently had a ‘loss of power’ experience.

I was going up a hill with cruise set at 78 mph. The OBDII showed the battery went down to 0.0% charge. The car continued with that battery reading for a couple minutes, but I assume the charge was still going down. Then the speed started to drop. It was dropping fairly quickly to 73 mph, but then I crested the hill, and everything recovered.

This is a hill that I take on a weekly basis, but it has been colder, so I had the heat on lightly. I also had about 500 pounds of equipment in the car, so it was fully loaded.

The engine went to 5400 rpm, and stayed there until the charge started to come back.

One bar on the battery gauge is about 2% SOC. Zero bars is 0% SOC. Two bars, and zero EV range is 11%.

I have not been pushing buttons lately. I just let the car go to zero EV range, and automatically switch to HV mode. This day, it just happened to hit zero EV at the base of the hill, and the engine had to warm up before it supplemented the battery. The engine hit full rpm before the speed started to drop. As the speed was dropping, the power gauge was just below the middle, so it appears the gas engine provides about half the gauge, at full gas engine power.

Since I solved the noise problem, I have not been switching to HV mode manually, or doing the HV reset. I have been pushing the car to see when there would be a problem. In the future, I will switch to HV at about 50% SOC before I get to this hill.

 

Great data point! What elevation was this? This actually fits well with the experiment I did a couple weeks ago, climbing from sea level to 8000 feet with the OBDII tracking, running out the EV range before the real ascent started (on purpose). In my case no matter how hard I tried pushing hard up the hills, I wasn’t able to get the SOC below 2% nor the battery gauge below 2 bars, and I always had full power. My engine similarly ran at ~5500 RPM as needed.

Key differences: I was going much slower (40-60 MPH max) because of curves, had no heat or AC running, and a lighter load (just me, no luggage). Hard to know which of those factors has the biggest impact.

Taking our 2 data points together, I am concluding that the engine has enough HP to supply all the power needed for steady state climbing in my scenario (and the battery enough buffer even at 2% for the brief acceleration bursts), and not quite enough to supply the steady state climbing power in yours. And it sounds like the key indicator is the gauge going to 1 bar, which serves as a warning that you’re not generating enough to keep up and could eventually lose some power, giving time to slow down or just to be prepared. Sounds like the car is willing to supplement the engine power with battery as needed for performance all the way down to 0 bars.

I'll finish my full writeup later, but wanted to have our 2 "bookend" reports together.