EV Range

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Matt27

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This might be a basic question, but the last couple days my 2019 Clarity has seemingly lost a good amount of range. On Thanksgiving, I drove it about 50 miles to see family, charged it, and then drove it 50 miles back. All this driving was highway at high speeds. After I charged it when I got home, it said my range was down to 39 miles.

Normally after charging fully, it says about the 46-47 miles. I've generally gotten 43-49 miles on a charge depending on highway driving, AC use, etc.

At first, I didn't think much of it. Since I did 2 long trips of highway-only driving for Thanksgiving, I figured the car was still using that in the estimation of range. I figured I'd have normal range when I actually drove the car.

But I drove it over the weekend and to work this morning, and the EV ran out after about 38 miles (one caveat: I lent the car to my parents, so I'm using my recollection of what the odometer said after charging and then again when the EV ran out. There's a chance I'm misremembering). Then, when I charged it at work, it once again is estimating 39 miles on a full charge. If I was still getting my usual 43-49, I wouldn't care what the estimated range says, but between that and the lower range this weekend, I'm a little concerned.

Some maybe helpful context.
--Weather shouldn't be a factor. I live in California, so the weather has been consistently highs in the 70s and lows in the high 40s for weeks
--I bought the Clarity used about 4.5 months ago. It has about 20k miles total, of which I've put about 4.5k on it
--I use about 90% EV, and I almost always charge to full battery


I know there's a chance EV batteries lose some range over time, but this seemed to happen all of a sudden. Any thoughts on what might be going on?
 
I am wondering if Honda did a software update to more accurately reflect the real range. My estimated range dropped by about 10 km in the past few days too. I am only getting 65km estimated range on a full charge. It has dropped by about 10km since last week.
 
1) give it time. Don't fret over big changes in range until you've driven it for a few days.

2) This time of year current battery technology results in big range degradation as the weather changes and it starts to get cold. It doesn't matter if you own a Clarity or a Tesla.
 
yeah723 said:
I am wondering if Honda did a software update to more accurately reflect the real range. My estimated range dropped by about 10 km in the past few days too. I am only getting 65km estimated range on a full charge. It has dropped by about 10km since last week.
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Honda doesn't do over-the-air software updates. Only a Honda service department can update your Clarity's software.
 
The guess-o-meter™ is based on your recent driving. If you normally do a mix of city and highway but in the last two times driving you've been doing 50 miles of high-speed highway driving, ir will assume that you're just going to keep doing high speed highway driving and eating electrons at a faster rate. Also heating eats up and then ordinate amount of electricity since it uses a resistive heater to heat a coolant loop (versus the heat pump in some other electric vehicles)

If you want to look at actual range degradation it's the safest way to just look at the battery capacity using a reader
 
jdonalds said:
1) give it time. Don't fret over big changes in range until you've driven it for a few days.

2) This time of year current battery technology results in big range degradation as the weather changes and it starts to get cold. It doesn't matter if you own a Clarity or a Tesla.
Click to expand...

I live in New York State. The weather has changed obviously. In my neck of the woods, the average temp right now is right around freezing.

In actual range, my car has dropped off to average about 38-40 miles of total range. This has nothing to do with the guess o meter. Is that type of drop off normal from the suggest 47 miles per charge?

By the way, this question is for everyone. I didn’t want to start a new thread. Thanks in advance.
 
Silver Surfer said:
I live in New York State. The weather has changed obviously. In my neck of the woods, the average temp right now is right around freezing.

In actual range, my car has dropped off to average about 38-40 miles of total range. This has nothing to do with the guess o meter. Is that type of drop off normal from the suggest 47 miles per charge?

By the way, this question is for everyone. I didn’t want to start a new thread. Thanks in advance.
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Yes, that is completely normal and expected.
 
I'm in California too with similar weather as OP, and temps down to the 40s and even 50s can definitely have an impact if the heat or defroster is used. Combine that with higher speed highway driving (i.e. 70+) and it makes a BIG difference. I can get an actual 50-55+ mile EV range when my son (learning=slower driver) drives a lot of local 30-40MPH roads and on our under-construction (55 MPH limit) highway in good weather, or can be in the 35-40 mile range on cold days when I have to use defrost or heat and drive, er, faster, on open highways.

It's easy to accidentally use heat, especially if you use the "Auto" HVAC mode. The way to make sure there's no heat nor AC running is to turn off Auto, go to the climate screen and press the AC "off" button, and set the temperature for both sides to "Lo". One reason I dislike the automatic HVAC controls -- I never need heat blasted at me when it's already 60+ in the car, but that's what happens if I had the AC set to cool to 70 the day before.

There is some battery efficiency difference just from temperature -- I'll see a bit higher range when it's in the 70s-90s all day long (even with AC use) than when it's in the 50s-70s. But the heat and defroster are by far the biggest difference makers from my experience.
 
Here in Florida I saw a solid 10% reduction when the low temps dropped from the seventies to the fifties, even with tires pressures restored for the cooler temperatures. This is without using any kind of heat, I always leave the system in manual at minimum temperature.
 
Matt27 said:
This might be a basic question, but the last couple days my 2019 Clarity has seemingly lost a good amount of range. On Thanksgiving, I drove it about 50 miles to see family, charged it, and then drove it 50 miles back. All this driving was highway at high speeds. After I charged it when I got home, it said my range was down to 39 miles.

Normally after charging fully, it says about the 46-47 miles. I've generally gotten 43-49 miles on a charge depending on highway driving, AC use, etc.

At first, I didn't think much of it. Since I did 2 long trips of highway-only driving for Thanksgiving, I figured the car was still using that in the estimation of range. I figured I'd have normal range when I actually drove the car.

But I drove it over the weekend and to work this morning, and the EV ran out after about 38 miles (one caveat: I lent the car to my parents, so I'm using my recollection of what the odometer said after charging and then again when the EV ran out. There's a chance I'm misremembering). Then, when I charged it at work, it once again is estimating 39 miles on a full charge. If I was still getting my usual 43-49, I wouldn't care what the estimated range says, but between that and the lower range this weekend, I'm a little concerned.

Some maybe helpful context.
--Weather shouldn't be a factor. I live in California, so the weather has been consistently highs in the 70s and lows in the high 40s for weeks
--I bought the Clarity used about 4.5 months ago. It has about 20k miles total, of which I've put about 4.5k on it
--I use about 90% EV, and I almost always charge to full battery


I know there's a chance EV batteries lose some range over time, but this seemed to happen all of a sudden. Any thoughts on what might be going on?
Click to expand...

Yeah welcome to my world. Also a socal resident. When I bought my Clarity a few months ago, weather was in the 70's-80's, drove it in ideal conditions and rarely ran climate control, still a full charge was getting me 37 miles. Did the unplugging of the 12 volt for a few hours to try and reset the system, that didn't work except for the HV range which it did fix. Then took it to Honda to see if there were any software upgrades to be done, they said all current updates were installed. I've fully charged it at least 40 times from a mixture of home and level 2 public chargers, but the range stays at 37 miles so the argument of let the car "learn my driving" at least for me is not valid as my commute's are 95% city at 30-55mph tops. I also did multiple range tests where I ran the battery down to zero till the ICE came on, and the results always yielded 37 miles. So I'm thinking down the line, some sort of software update was installed that gets these cars stuck at a certain range as I've combed through multiple forums and found a lot of people having these issues.
 
Naughtysauce said:
So I'm thinking down the line, some sort of software update was installed that gets these cars stuck at a certain range as I've combed through multiple forums and found a lot of people having these issues.
Click to expand...
Wow sorry your car is giving such a small range. I drive at similar conditions city 30-50 mph with some highway at 70 and never get below 60 miles estimated and actual. Have you tried running the battery to zero and timing how long a refill takes at 110 volts? I could also do it with mine and compare the times, that would seem to indicate if the battery is being limited somehow or is failing.
 
David Towle said:
Wow sorry your car is giving such a small range. I drive at similar conditions city 30-50 mph with some highway at 70 and never get below 60 miles estimated and actual. Have you tried running the battery to zero and timing how long a refill takes at 110 volts? I could also do it with mine and compare the times, that would seem to indicate if the battery is being limited somehow or is failing.
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Yes, as stated in my reply, I've ran the battery down to zero multiple times and it always give me 37 miles of range. This is one of the first things I did to try and balance the batteries as this usually works w/ other EV/PHEV's I've owned. A few questions for you. Did you buy your car from new or used, are you in the US, and have you taken the car into service since you've bought it? Thanks in advance.
 
Naughtysauce said:
Yes, as stated in my reply, I've ran the battery down to zero multiple times and it always give me 37 miles of range. This is one of the first things I did to try and balance the batteries as this usually works w/ other EV/PHEV's I've owned. A few questions for you. Did you buy your car from new or used, are you in the US, and have you taken the car into service since you've bought it? Thanks in advance.
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I'm talking about the number of hours it takes to recharge so we know how many kw-hr the batteries can cycle maximum (approximately). There are more accurate ways to test this especially through the dealer.
I bought it new in the US in Oct 2018, has 55,000 miles, its been in for every service its requested (I bought an 8 year warranty so don't want to jeapordize that).
 
David Towle said:
I'm talking about the number of hours it takes to recharge so we know how many kw-hr the batteries can cycle maximum (approximately). There are more accurate ways to test this especially through the dealer.
I bought it new in the US in Oct 2018, has 55,000 miles, its been in for every service its requested (I bought an 8 year warranty so don't want to jeapordize that).
Click to expand...

Takes about 10-12 hours on level one, about 2 hours and 15 mins on a public level 2(which consistently charges at 6kw). I don't have a meter at my house, but at the Chargepoint I use, it consistently delivers around 12.3kwh per session from zero. Accounting for losses through the cable/thermal management/etc I'm guessing 11-11.5 is more accurate to what it's delivering to the car. I have a wireless OBD2, and calculated my usable battery to around 14.8kwh, that was a few months ago, I'm sure it's gone down since then as this battery degrades pretty fast compared to other PHEV's. So that means the car is not charging up to it's full potential and leaving around 3-3.5kwh on the table that I'm unable to utilize.

During your service appointments, on the report, was there any indication that they did any software updates? If you haven't got one, I would suggest staying away from them if you want to keep your EV range intact.
 
Naughtysauce said:
Takes about 10-12 hours on level one, about 2 hours and 15 mins on a public level 2(which consistently charges at 6kw). I don't have a meter at my house, but at the Chargepoint I use, it consistently delivers around 12.3kwh per session from zero. Accounting for losses through the cable/thermal management/etc I'm guessing 11-11.5 is more accurate to what it's delivering to the car. I have a wireless OBD2, and calculated my usable battery to around 14.8kwh, that was a few months ago, I'm sure it's gone down since then as this battery degrades pretty fast compared to other PHEV's. So that means the car is not charging up to it's full potential and leaving around 3-3.5kwh on the table that I'm unable to utilize.

During your service appointments, on the report, was there any indication that they did any software updates? If you haven't got one, I would suggest staying away from them if you want to keep your EV range intact.
Click to expand...
I've never charged anywhere with a meter so I'll let you know how long my home charge takes tonight. I've intentionally stayed away from level 2 charging, they seem ok for most BEVs but Clarity has a much smaller battery and I'm dubious about its effect on life. Looking on the receipts, all I got was one software update the first year. I'll make sure they don't do any more updates.
 
David Towle said:
I've intentionally stayed away from level 2 charging, they seem ok for most BEVs but Clarity has a much smaller battery and I'm dubious about its effect on life.
Click to expand...

The Clarity has a maximum charge rate of 0.4C with a Level 2 charger. That is a very conservative charge rate for a lithium battery. Battery capacity/size is irrelevant.

Fear not the Level 2 charger.
 
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