New Owner - Need Advice on Battery/Warranty

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jclu

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Hi All,

I'm very excited to join the group. I purchased a used, certified pre-owned 2020 Clarity in Ontario this last week, and I'm looking for some perspectives of people with a little more experience than me.

Situation: The vehicle started driving on the road in May of 2020. It currently has 91,000 km (56,500 miles). The battery capacity has degraded to 43.6 mAH (about 80% capacity), which puts it on the high end of expected degradation according to the data so many of you have been kind to donate. If the battery continues to degrade at the same pace, we could expect it to go below 36.6 mAH right around the time the 8-year battery warranty ends. So...

Question: Should I purchase a Honda Plus Comprehensive Protection Plan? This would warranty the vehicle for 10 years, 160,000 km. So that would extend the battery warranty by two years and give me about 12,000 km driving per year for the next 5 years (which is about what I drive). The warranty costs 4203.

What are your thoughts from your experience? Open to all perspectives.

Thanks for your time and help. Very happy to be a Clarity owner.
 
Welcome to the site! Enjoy your new car!

My opinion,
I've never been a fan of pre-paying for what might happen. Pay at event if and when.

put that 4200 in a fund producing 12% (not hard to find something like S&P to return that recently, or course, risky). That's a 5 year double. you'll have the 8-10k. And at that time, you can make the decision if it's worth it to invest ~20% of the car's cost, 70%? of the current value? (guess) back into a 10 year old car.

If you decide to replace the battery, you'll have the money to do it without throwing it out up front to a company who effectively will do the same thing and take a cut, hedging on the bet that you might total it, or deny the claim, or pay a ridiculous co-insurance/deductible/copay alongside with it(maybe?). Will your battery even meet their hard limits to justify them to pay out? What is the ah limit?

Honda Plus doesn't do this to be nice - they do it because it's profitable. Which means, you go in with 4200 and are on the losing side of the table from the start.

What happens if you total the car before then? $4200 out the window.
Change your mind and sell the car? is it transferrable?
does it help the car's value when it comes to re-sell it?
Will you even need it?
Is the battery just cold? cells needs to be rebalanced? (I don't know if that's even a thing for this car)
Is your dealer competent enough to perform the work?
 
jclu said:
Hi All,

I'm very excited to join the group. I purchased a used, certified pre-owned 2020 Clarity in Ontario this last week, and I'm looking for some perspectives of people with a little more experience than me.

Situation: The vehicle started driving on the road in May of 2020. It currently has 91,000 km (56,500 miles). The battery capacity has degraded to 43.6 mAH (about 80% capacity), which puts it on the high end of expected degradation according to the data so many of you have been kind to donate. If the battery continues to degrade at the same pace, we could expect it to go below 36.6 mAH right around the time the 8-year battery warranty ends. So...

Question: Should I purchase a Honda Plus Comprehensive Protection Plan? This would warranty the vehicle for 10 years, 160,000 km. So that would extend the battery warranty by two years and give me about 12,000 km driving per year for the next 5 years (which is about what I drive). The warranty costs 4203.

What are your thoughts from your experience? Open to all perspectives.

Thanks for your time and help. Very happy to be a Clarity owner.
Click to expand...
I purchased the full-boat extended warranty for my Gen1 Honda Insight and again for my 2018 Clarity, which arrived at the start of November, 2017. Honda never spent a penny covering either of those warranties. Perhaps if I had more than 23K miles (37K km), on my Clarity, something might have gone bad by now, I don't know.

The extended warranty for my MINI Electric was much more expensive so I'm self-insuring that car. The MINI gets more miles than the Clarity (it's our long-distance car)--I hope it proves as reliable as my Clarity.
 
brianc35 said:
put that 4200 in a fund producing 12% (not hard to find something like S&P to return that recently, or course, risky). That's a 5 year double. you'll have the 8-10k. And at that time, you can make the decision if it's worth it to invest ~20% of the car's cost, 70%? of the current value? (guess) back into a 10 year old car.
Click to expand...

Hypothetically, let’s say the SP doesn’t produce an annualized return of 12% over the next 4-5 years and the vehicle becomes problematic. Keep in mind that the Honda policy covers more than just the battery.

brianc35 said:
What happens if you total the car before then? $4200 out the window.
Change your mind and sell the car? is it transferrable?
does it help the car's value when it comes to re-sell it?
Will you even need it?
Is the battery just cold? cells needs to be rebalanced? (I don't know if that's even a thing for this car)
Is your dealer competent enough to perform the work?
Click to expand...

A nickels worth of research can sometimes be worth its weight in gold.
 
Wow. $4203? Even converting to Freedom Dollars (/s) that's a lot. The US cost for mine was ~$1000, and for that price I bought it (although in the US it goes to 8 years, but I get a longer battery warranty from being in a CARB state).

For that price, I doubt I'd buy it. Note that
  • the drop in capacity isn't linear, and will depend on how it's used (e.g., miles on gas vs. battery, fast or slower charge, possibly whether it's left out or inside in the winter), so there's no guarantee you'll get there in 8 or 10 years even if it's on the high side of wear so far, and
  • From all indications, The car will work with a battery less that 36. You don't need too much battery to run it as a hybrid.
 
Thanks everyone! I really appreciate the thoughts and perspectives. I've decided not to purchase it. In addition to everyone's thoughts, I figured I'd send along the last piece of info that helped me make the decision.

I took the data that everyone has so kindly contributed and I really roughly estimated how much the battery degrades over time after the initial degradation. I think the lines fit reasonably well for my purposes at least.

When you do the regression on the values in the graph below, i.e. vehicles that had already driven 15,000 miles, it estimates that every additional 10,000 miles driven results in about 1 mAH of degradation. So in my case, starting at 43.6 mAH, if I degrade at 1 mAH per 10,000 miles (or per year for how much I drive), I wouldn't be expected to degrade below 36.6 mAH for 7 years. That's 2 years after the extended warranty would expire.

There's no way to know. So I guess only time will tell, and I'll save up for whatever repairs are necessary when I get there. Thanks everyone!

clarity_battery_degradation.webp
 

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jclu said:
So in my case, starting at 43.6 mAH, if I degrade at 1 mAH per 10,000 miles (or per year for how much I drive), I wouldn't be expected to degrade below 36.6 mAH for 7 years.
Click to expand...

Why are you expressing battery capacity in mAH’s?
 
I'm late to comment on this thread. To the OP, I agree completely with your decision, and with the advice given. The cost of the extended warranty matters. When I got my 2018 Clarity new, thanks to this forum, I found a US dealer that would sell me an 8 year, 120K warranty for $1500. Even if I never use it, the $1500 price point made sense to me (meaning 5 years past the included 3). If someone offered me that deal for $4k, I'd just say no thanks.

I realize this gets specific, but in my specific case, the ah measurement has gone down consistently 1.5ah/yr. So there may be some flux with that.
I live on a hill and drive / charge the car from zero to full daily. Not sure what all effects battery degradation (but I do a lot of charge cycles from zero to full).
 
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