Eva Farkas
New Member
Hello everyone! I'm new to the forum, as I'm a new Clarity owner (Touring model), from Toronto, Ontario (Canada).
We received our car on Feb. 15, and 9 days later, I ran into a charging error when plugged into a 240V public charger. The green charging light on the car's plug-in port was blinking rapidly, then would eventually go out. Charger did not show a fault (I tried multiple chargers in various locations to see if this would be different, thinking, maybe it was a charger error).
This happened on a Saturday, so I anxiously waited until Monday morning to take the car to the Honda dealer. They hadn't seen this problem (car's too new on the market!). They did a "system reset", which basically means they removed the negative terminal on the battery (under the hood, not the main battery on the bottom of the car) to restore factory defaults.
The error went away, and they were able to charge normally. They release the car to me and said "let us know if there are any more problems".
Fast forward 4 days, and the error pops up again! Both times, I was a 240V public charging station (we don't have charging at home yet, as we live in a condo, and it's an uphill battle to get charging installed there).
So, I take the car back to the dealer, and they immediately get the Service Manager to talk to me. It seems that after my initial report, Honda Canada contacted the dealer the next day, to let them know this is a known problem.
Honda's explanation:
This not an error with the car. The car has a built-in protection mechanism in its software that trips if there is current fluctuation during charging. So if the current changes (even slightly, or momentarily) during the plug-in charge, the system shuts down to protect itself, throws the error, and the error message must be reset.
In other words, the power source must be "clean" (pure, uninterrupted, etc.). Honda recommends using Honda-installed 240V charging (ie. at dealerships).
HAH! That's crazy!
So, the Service Manager says, yes, that is crazy. No one can charge at the dealerships on a consistent basis. It's not practical and that's not a solution.
So, Honda is now apparently working on a "software fix" which essentially will change/remove this shutdown feature, allowing "unclean" power to charge the car. Not sure how it will work (how severe can the fluctuation be? will there still be some type of protection available?).
Apparently this is not supposed to be an issue if you are charging on a standard 120V plug-in, using the supplied cable/charger device that came with the car.
Timeline is April/May 2018 for the software update implementation, and probably will be done on a recall basis. I will be getting a call from my dealer, as I am the only one who has reported this so far.
Anyone else in this boat?
We received our car on Feb. 15, and 9 days later, I ran into a charging error when plugged into a 240V public charger. The green charging light on the car's plug-in port was blinking rapidly, then would eventually go out. Charger did not show a fault (I tried multiple chargers in various locations to see if this would be different, thinking, maybe it was a charger error).
This happened on a Saturday, so I anxiously waited until Monday morning to take the car to the Honda dealer. They hadn't seen this problem (car's too new on the market!). They did a "system reset", which basically means they removed the negative terminal on the battery (under the hood, not the main battery on the bottom of the car) to restore factory defaults.
The error went away, and they were able to charge normally. They release the car to me and said "let us know if there are any more problems".
Fast forward 4 days, and the error pops up again! Both times, I was a 240V public charging station (we don't have charging at home yet, as we live in a condo, and it's an uphill battle to get charging installed there).
So, I take the car back to the dealer, and they immediately get the Service Manager to talk to me. It seems that after my initial report, Honda Canada contacted the dealer the next day, to let them know this is a known problem.
Honda's explanation:
This not an error with the car. The car has a built-in protection mechanism in its software that trips if there is current fluctuation during charging. So if the current changes (even slightly, or momentarily) during the plug-in charge, the system shuts down to protect itself, throws the error, and the error message must be reset.
In other words, the power source must be "clean" (pure, uninterrupted, etc.). Honda recommends using Honda-installed 240V charging (ie. at dealerships).
HAH! That's crazy!
So, the Service Manager says, yes, that is crazy. No one can charge at the dealerships on a consistent basis. It's not practical and that's not a solution.
So, Honda is now apparently working on a "software fix" which essentially will change/remove this shutdown feature, allowing "unclean" power to charge the car. Not sure how it will work (how severe can the fluctuation be? will there still be some type of protection available?).
Apparently this is not supposed to be an issue if you are charging on a standard 120V plug-in, using the supplied cable/charger device that came with the car.
Timeline is April/May 2018 for the software update implementation, and probably will be done on a recall basis. I will be getting a call from my dealer, as I am the only one who has reported this so far.
Anyone else in this boat?