My First Long Distance Trip

Discussion in 'Clarity' started by LastTexasClarity, Aug 7, 2019.

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  1. Ryan C

    Ryan C Member

    True.true. It’s operating well beyond my expectations.
     
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  3. 2002

    2002 Well-Known Member

    But just to confirm the HV mode indicator turns off, correct? Some have reported and I have experienced a couple of times that the HV button is sometimes "sticky" meaning you press it but the HV mode indicator doesn't change, i.e. if the HV mode indicator is on it stays on, or if it is off it stays off, and you have to press the HV button again to get it to change. For me it is very rare and until now I just chalked this up to a finicky button, but after reading your post I am wondering if there are brief moments during transitions when you can't toggle HV mode on or off, so I will try and pay attention the rare times that it happens to see if it occurs during certain scenarios, or if it really just an occasionally sticky button.

    Not that this is what you are experiencing because you are raising a separate topic of ICE not shutting off when you expected it to, which I think has now been explained that it was probably in warmup. I assume that in those situations the HV mode indicator turns off when you press the button but the EV indicator is not coming on right away because ICE is still running. So that would not be the sticky HV button situation but the normal warmup situation.

    Perhaps a separate issue you are raising is that sometimes when switching from HV to EV mode there is a couple of seconds delay before the EV indicator appears. I think I may have seen the delay also but I don't know if it does it all the time or only under certain conditions. Generally after I see the HV mode indicator turn off I look back at the road, I am not watching for the EV indicator to come on since I know it will if I have more than 0 miles EV range. But I will start watching it to see if a couple of seconds of delay is normal.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2019
  4. Ryan C

    Ryan C Member

    Yes the HV indicator does shut off. I dealt with the “sticky” aspect of the button the first week so my recent observations have been after confirming I actually hit the button correctly. The “sticky” button is seemingly more prevalent in my particular unit tbh. Once I’ve firmly hit the HV button it will always turn the “HV” LED on and and off on the dashboard it’s just a question of whether or not the “EV Ready” LED is lit up and therefore will switch directly to EV mode on the fly.
    Assuming a warm motor in HV mode keep an eye out for when it shows EV Ready on the dash. If u accelerate and that LED extinguishes you should see it come back on within 2-4 seconds of you reducing speed and then u can turn HV off and go straight to battery. The times where this has consistently worked was when the battery was over a 50% charge. I noticed that below 50% battery charge the EV Ready LED doesn’t come back for several minutes. My initial assumption is it’s the software prioritizing a 50% battery charge over running all electric. I don’t see this as an issue or a concern rather I’d like to see if anyone else can replicate it as I think it’s really interesting to observe this car operating. I also get a little mad when I use gas for no reason. I’ve gone since July 28th without filling my tank and I really want to get to the one month mark.
     
  5. 2002

    2002 Well-Known Member

    Assuming that I understand correctly what you are noticing in your experiments with the EV indicator, your car is probably working normally, you are just getting into some finer nuances of the car. I will try and explain what you are seeing. I don't know 100% for sure if your car is working exactly like everyone else's without doing similar experiments but it seems to be, and you might also be noticing some things that we had not noticed before.

    NOTE - to anyone new to Clarity who is reading this, this is all geeky minutia that some of us armchair EV quarterbacks like to talk about and is not necessary at all to enjoying your Clarity or getting great gas mileage in your car!

    Also none of my following comments are related to ICE warmup which we are pretty sure is what is causing some of what Ryan C has experienced. What I am addressing is Ryan C's comment about what he is seeing related to the EV indicator turning on and off when the engine is already warmed up.

    First to make sure that we are on the same page, the EV indicator is simply an engine on/off status indicator. By itself it does not tell you if you are in HV mode or EV mode. You may already know that but again just to make sure that we are coming at this from the same viewpoint.

    HV mode is "charge sustaining" mode, the mode that regular hybrids drive in all the time. As the name implies the goal of this mode is to try and maintain a target SOC, which is basically the SOC that the car was at when you turned on HV mode. In HV mode the car is driven primarily using ICE but it will regularly use the battery to provide instantaneous acceleration as needed. As the battery capacity gets used up the engine will charge it back up towards the target SOC.

    When driving at very slow speeds in HV mode the engine will shut off and the EV indicator will appear. This does not mean that you are in EV mode, you are still in HV mode just with ICE temporarily turned off. You will notice that the power circle is not mostly all blue like it would be in EV mode, only a small segment is blue indicating the level of power available without ICE coming on. As you drive under battery power the blue segment gets smaller. This is because the car is still in HV mode (i.e. charge sustaining mode) and it has a limit how much it will allow you to drain the battery before it will turn ICE back on again.

    This may seem like this is not related to your highway driving scenario but it is. Driving on the freeway in HV mode the car is still working the same, primarily using ICE, using battery for acceleration, and constantly recharging the battery to maintain SOC. But there can be times even at freeway speeds when the engine shuts off momentarily and the EV indicator comes on. This occurs when the battery has a surplus of battery power above the target SOC. This can happen for example from regeneration on a slight downhill. The system doesn't just leave the extra SOC sitting there instead it shuts off ICE and drives on battery power for maybe fifteen to thirty seconds until it uses up the extra SOC then ICE comes back on and the EV indicator "extinguishes" as you said. Regular hybrids use up excess SOC to leave room for regen in their small battery. On a PHEV it is presumably leaving room for later grid charging (it has no idea if maybe you are about to arrive home).

    So now, after having said all of that (thanks for bearing with me) it sounds like you are on the freeway in HV mode and waiting for one of these "EV moments" to occur. In your experimentation you have noticed that when the EV indicator comes on, if you accelerate the EV indicator will turn off. Yes and it would have anyway, you are just speeding up the process of using up the extra SOC that caused the EV indicator to come on. For curiosity you may want to time how long the EV indicator stays on with steady speed compared to when you accelerate to extinguish it.

    Then you said when the EV indicator turns off you start decelerating and then the EV indicator comes back on. This is because decelerating causes regen and the SOC goes over the target again and the EV indicator comes back on. All of this seems normal.

    You are saying that you have noticed that the EV "comeback" that occurs when decelerating after the first EV indication extinguishes, seems to take longer to come back when the SOC is less than 50%. That is interesting, it would take more testing to confirm this, but if it is the case it would indicate that the system is less willing to use up extra SOC charge when you are at lower overall SOC and requires the SOC to go higher over the target SOC before it turns off ICE than it does when the overall SOC is higher. Is your 50% estimate just from looking at the bars on the display?

    Next you are doing something that I don't fully understand. You are switching from HV Mode to EV Mode while cruising on the freeway, which is fine, that's not the part that I don't understand, it's just something most of us probably don't do as often which is why we don't notice exactly what it does. I think most people switch to EV while exiting the freeway. But sometimes we might for strategic reasons change from HV to EV mode while on the freeway in order to make sure that we use up all or most of our EV range prior to arriving home. But when we do we just turn off HV mode at any old time. Whereas you are trying to time it and switch from HV mode to EV mode while the EV indicator is illuminated. Are you doing that for a reason?
     
  6. Ryan C

    Ryan C Member

    Clarification: I LOVE this car so anyone observing this the car is amazing and I’m enjoying debating and exploring its quirks.

    Couple of things. First, the only reason I’m switching modes is simply to observe what the vehicle does. There is no logic to it for driving purposes and I am pretty much done playing with that in case it is creating additional wear for the vehicle. Second, I am currently at 170 mpg and climbing. On my commute I start and end in EV mode because I can make it to my destination with battery left over and I can generally charge there and drive back with battery remaining as well. In theory, as long as I can charge at work, I should never need to buy gas again and this is the goal I generally have in mind. My commute is 38 miles each way so this puts me in a unique position to attempt to use this car as an EV only with HV mode as an occasional back up. Pretty much the only situation that comes up that causes me to want to pull over and restart the car is when I accelerate too quickly and it engages the ICE. Based on your previous reply it makes sense the car won’t go back to EV even if I mash the button as it’s seeking a high SOC while most of the time I’m running the battery pretty low. If I can’t charge at work I just go into HV mode then switch to EV once I’m on surface streets.
    Everything in your above post made sense but I just needed to add the context that I bought the car because it’s dang near perfectly built for my commute in EV mode only and it’s my goal to do 90% of my miles in EV mode. Using HV mode is a relative rarity.I’m having to use ICE about 1-2 days a week so it’s getting cycled. My last gas fill up was July 29 and I have 80 miles left in gas and I want to make it 30 days before my next fill up so I get kind of crazy about not wanting to use ICE unnecessarily and I want to be able to disengage it whenever possible
     
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  8. 2002

    2002 Well-Known Member

    I'm sure you already know that in Econ mode it is harder to start ICE. I normally use Econ or Regular, and maybe three times since owning the car have I accidentally started ICE by accelerating. Then I tried Sport mode and I had the engine running in less than thirty minutes! But that's because I wasn't used to the pedal mapping and I pressed on the accelerator out of habit like I would in regular and it was enough to start ICE. I probably could have adjusted to it but there were other things I didn't like about Sport mode so I don't use it.

    If I accidentally turn ICE on I try not to worry about it, I just let it run through warmup as needed. If the car is moving it uses the power anyway, and if stopped it charges the battery, so it's not a total loss even though it can be annoying. When it happens I also try and turn it into a teaching moment and think about did I really need to press the pedal that hard, or could I even have avoided the situation in the first place. In most cases pressing the pedal all the way adds some risk especially with other cars around. So now we have an incentive not to do it if we can avoid it.

    I forgot to mention when the EV indicator comes on while you are driving on the freeway be sure to glance at the power indicator as it will show how much battery charge is available before ICE comes back on. Assuming you keep your speed steady you will see it evaporate pretty quickly and then the EV indicator goes away.
     
  9. Geor99

    Geor99 Active Member

    Id also recommend Sport for cruise control. It is much more responsive and you wont have people behind you blowing their horns at you for accelerating too slowly:)

    Also, my car does not run well with 0 battery, especially on hills. Id definitely recommend keeping ev miles throughout your trip.
     

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