Torn between Clarity and Outlander PHEV

ClarityDoc, I cannot thank you enough for getting me out of this before it sank to this level. I owe you one. Please keep the level headed advice coming.

 

Sorry to inform you Ken you went there and just went there again.
You could have just sent him a PM.

Next time you want to start it up with me, please don't, it is annoying. Probably just as annoying as this stuff is to others.

 

What?


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Go try the rear of both with the front seats set all the way back.

 

Ok... so I leased an Electric Smart.... it had no back seat so the Corolla of every year was much bigger ! That Being said, I Drove the Outlander and then the Clarity...The Clarity is in my Garage... as is a 17 Volt.


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If the car ever gets delivered I will keep going back and forth between them for a more conclusive answer. For me they would both work fine.
6'5" guy will figure out if it works for them.....maybe it doesn't and he gets himself a minivan.
P.S. I think the general consensus is that the Outlander doesn't look like a good option and there is better in a similar class.

 

I own the Outlander PHEV, and am expecting delivery of my Clarity next week. I can tell you that the Outlander is a very nice ride, especially if you prefer the driving height of SUVs. I have a 40km round trip commute, and many days when the weather is good I make it both ways without a drop of gas. I did my first gas fill at 2550km. I find it to be very quiet as well, to me on par with the Clarity from the 30 minute test drive I took. One thing is for sure, when you are totally out of electric, the driving fun goes way down, the gas motor is pretty prone to over-revving and you don't feel like there's a lot of power in acceleration.

So why am I getting a Clarity instead of a 2nd outlander?

1)Range - while I make it full EV some days, some I don't and I find it annoys the hell out of me. The clarity will get me both ways on all but the coldest of days. That's valuable to me.
2)Back seats - I find the back seats of the Clarity more comfortable than the Outlander, so when there will be other adults riding along this will be the vehicle of choice
3)I like Honda - I am trading in my Odyssey on it, before that I had a Civic. The Outlander is my wife's vehicle.
4)Price - probably because it's a Honda a trade in, the dealer offered me a few thousand more on my trade in than Mitsubishi did, and made my monthly bill significantly less for the Clarity than the Outlander.

If someone offered me both on par with each other, I'd probably still take the Clarity for the sake of variety. I think both are good PHEV options, and I think the main thing to consider is EV range, driving height, and if you can handle the look of that rear wheel well!

 

After patiently waiting, I gave up on Outlander PHEV and got the Clarity. I feel confident that all players will have models surpassing the Outlander PHEV in 1 or 2 years and am willing to wait. The one advantage I'll offer up that you might consider is that the Outlander has the CHaDeMo port and so can rapidly charge its 12kWh battery to 80% in 30 min. And I am hopeful that charging stations will become standard at places of business so in a year or two you can charge at work and by that the Outlander will effectively double its range.

 

Like many others, I've been pretty fed up with waiting for the Clarity. How long did you wait for your Outlander PHEV? I wonder how long the wait on those are and if i can secure one with an actual delivery date i may just order one instead.

 

Guessing you are in Canada then.

The Outlander arrived in about 2 weeks, that was because my wife wanted a specific colour. I was in to the dealer on Friday and they have at least 2 on site, I don't think they are hard to come by.

 

One thing I have noticed with ev's and phev's is the best ones are designed from the ground up to be an ev or a phev. Vehicles like the Outlander, Prius, Fusion, etc. have to make too many concessions, range being the biggest, when they try to make a vehicle into something it wasn't initially designed to be. If there was a phev suv that was designed for that purpose I probably would have bought it over the Clarity, but there isn't, and probably won't for a few years. I fully expect my next vehicle to be more of an suv/crossover vehicle. I am thinking the Nissan one, probably, but who knows what choices we will have in just a few years? I am guessing a lot.

 

I haven't taken it very far yet, so max 45-60 minute tours. Can't provide better info at this time.

 

Just stay away from any mitsubishi!

Had 4 of them in the past, keeps getting worse and worse...


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What, did your brother-in-law who works for Mitsubishi keep giving you free cars? And after 4 you finally said "NO MORE!"?

I've never had a bad Honda (but acknowledge that all people aren't as lucky as me).

 

This whole discussion PROVES that Honda needs a 50 mile range CR-V or HR-V.

 

Honda's got a CR-V hybrid (available only in Europe and Asia though) with the PHEV version rumored to be in development.

 

We told our Clarity sales guy we would come back and buy a CR-V hybrid the week we could get one - but we're not holding our breath as I haven't seen anything about them coming to the US.

geo

 

In the new video from Alex on Auto for the 2019 Honda Insight First Look, he did hinted the rumor of a CRV hybrid at around the 0:45 second mark

 

I saw that the other day. There are a lot of design similarities between this and the Clarity with the hybrid system. He really goes into the reason for the high engine revving a couple of times in the video. It is designed to work that way. I really want this steering wheel in the Clarity, though. The button layout is much better.