Clarity regenerative braking issue

Johnhenkles

Johnhenkles

New Member
I stumbled onto something utterly baffling yesterday. You’ll think I’m pulling your leg, but when I put my EV in reverse, it seems to actually recharge the battery!

Yesterday I found myself wedged into an impossibly snug parking spot yesterday and engaged in some serious vehicular gymnastics to get free. This gymnastics required a lot of backing up. That's when I noticed something curious – instead of depleting, my battery percentage was climbing. I rubbed my eyes and took another look, just to be sure.

Now, the science of it? I'm no Edison, but my best guess is that when the car moves backward, this so-called "regenerative braking" system gets its wires crossed and flips into reverse, turning that motion back into stored juice for the battery.

Is it just my EV that’s acting the quirky genius, or have any of you fine folks observed this phenomenon?
 
I don't know about this, but it reminds me of the old days where if you drove backwards the old mechanical odometers would run backwards.
 
Johnhenkles said:
Now, the science of it? I'm no Edison, but my best guess is that when the car moves backward, this so-called "regenerative braking" system gets its wires crossed and flips into reverse, turning that motion back into stored juice for the battery.
Click to expand...

Science isn’t based on guesswork.

An outside force (energy) is required to move a stationary object in any direction. Some, not all, of that energy can be captured through regenerative braking.

Edison or Einstein might suggest the existence of some observational errors.
 
Johnhenkles said:
I stumbled onto something utterly baffling yesterday. You’ll think I’m pulling your leg, but when I put my EV in reverse, it seems to actually recharge the battery!

Yesterday I found myself wedged into an impossibly snug parking spot yesterday and engaged in some serious vehicular gymnastics to get free. This gymnastics required a lot of backing up. That's when I noticed something curious – instead of depleting, my battery percentage was climbing. I rubbed my eyes and took another look, just to be sure.

Now, the science of it? I'm no Edison, but my best guess is that when the car moves backward, this so-called "regenerative braking" system gets its wires crossed and flips into reverse, turning that motion back into stored juice for the battery.

Is it just my EV that’s acting the quirky genius, or have any of you fine folks observed this phenomenon?
Click to expand...
Can I assume you were driving a Clarity (you wrote "EV"), you didn't push the HV button, and you weren't backing down a hill. If those assumptions are true, then you were using battery power, not regenerating it. I cannot explain how your Clarity or EV registered an increase in its battery's state-of-charge.
 
Landshark said:
Science isn’t based on guesswork.

An outside force (energy) is required to move a stationary object in any direction. Some, not all, of that energy can be captured through regenerative braking.

Edison or Einstein might suggest the existence of some observational errors.
Click to expand...

Maybe when I go backwards, it tricks the re-gen system into thinking it's its own outside force, kind of self-bootstrapping its energy in an eternal feedback loop. Or, just maybe, it's quantum entangled with another car – so when I go backwards under power, another car somewhere else rockets forward in re-gen mode. Of course, for that to work, the energy would have to quantum tunnel back to my car. Makes perfect sense, right?
 
Just curious where you're getting your battery percentage from? I don't remember that being a display parameter unless you plug in a scanner... (or am I remembering a different car?)
 
Let's assume that:
1-The referred 'EV' was a Honda Clarity PHEV. TBD, although likely, since this is the Honda Clarity forum and I don't think there are many surviving EV or Fuel-Cell Clarities. But I might be wrong.
2- The backing was done downslope. That doesn't look like a possibility, since the OP tells us he was wedged and had to do a lot of back-and-forth to free himself. On my particular case, every day I have to back down a slope (my driveway) which is pretty steep, and never have noticed any hint of recharge. I think that would require some substantial amount of time backing up.
Let's keep scratching our heads...
 
The Clarity PHEV lacks a display that shows SOC as a percentage. Any device that displays SOC as a percentage, that isn’t measuring current going in and out of the battery, will provide questionable data.
 
They may be getting the current battery level from a scanner and dividing by the capacity, although that seems unlikely (and it's unlikely that the battery level that comes from the ODBC is accurate to that degree). Alternatively they're talking about the GOM going up, in which case this is this entirely a wild goose chase.
 
Yesterday when backing up I saw a DECREASE on GOM's "remaining EV miles". So no, backing up doesn't "recharge" the battery by itself. Not that it would make any sense whatsoever.
 
Landshark said:
The Clarity PHEV lacks a display that shows SOC as a percentage. Any device that displays SOC as a percentage, that isn’t measuring current going in and out of the battery, will provide questionable data.
Click to expand...
Measuring current going in and out of the battery would be a supremely stupid way of measuring SOC. Battery management systems calculate the SOC based on a crap ton of black magic (math), precalculated tables, and some inputs. Typically it starts with the battery's voltage, then applies environmental correction factors, and so on. A scan tool can absolutely get you the SOC in percentage, iirc it estimates the SOC to 2 decimal places (in base 10) for mode 22.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top