Hello All, I recently became a new owner of a 2018 Honda Clarity, Base model, and so far I've been loving the car. What I haven't been loving is the AVAS and how I can always hear it when driving under 20mph. I was able to *allegedly* disable the AVAS speaker on my car and thought I'd share how I did it since I've seen a lot of questions about it but no one posting a solution. DISCLAIMER: I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, and take no responsibility if you decided to perform this modification on your vehicle. This post is for information purposes only and you should consult your legal professional for information pertaining to the legality of disabling the AVAS on your vehicle. To start, the AVAS speaker on the 2018 model is located right behind the lower bumper assembly on the driver's side. Its a simple round looking speaker thing bolted onto a bracket. You can't get to the speaker from the top side of the engine bay, you have to access it from underneath the car. Getting to it isn't too hard, simply remove the lower shroud between the lower bumper and the shroud that goes under the engine. Removing it requires removing two screws (10mm hex head) and about 800 million plastic rivet clips. Once the shroud is removed, you can access the speaker from underneath the front bumper. To remove the speaker, simply unscrew the two fasteners on the bracket, disconnect the power clip, and it drops right out. The speaker's made by Denso and only has power going to it. No wires for CAN, LIN, etc and appears to be just a speaker without any additional electronics. I wanted to first try silencing the speaker with some insulation before completely disconnecting it as I thought the car might throw some DTC's with it being disconnected. To do this I took the speaker cover off: and found the speaker to be a simple paper cone attached to a voice coil. I then packed it full of insulation: and put the cover back and installed it in the car. This helped a lot but the thing was still rather loud and I could still hear it with the windows up. So plan B, I then tried disconnecting the speaker and made some boots for the connectors out of a rubber glove and zip ties to prevent any water intrusion. I then put the shroud back in place, put all the 800 million plastic rivets back in, and so far I haven't had any errors or check engine lights come up. Since there's no electronics in the speaker the only way for the car to know its been disconnected is if its reading the voltage and/or resistance across the speaker's cable which I don't think Honda would do in this case. Compared to other AVAS implementations out there, including those by Honda, this one appears to be an afterthought. This would make sense as the Clarity was first released in 2016 and the AVAS legislation wasn't really adopted until 2018. I'll continue to *allegedly* leave the speaker disconnected and see if the car complains at all. If it does I'll report back with plan C.
Thanks for the information. I wonder if they put the louder 2020 system in your car by accident. Our 2019 is barely audible from inside the car with the windows up and I don’t believe it has ever been noticed by a pedestrian. After your escapades, the quick fix would seem be to disconnect the plug and put some electrical tape on the ends. Quick, except for the 800 million snap connectors.
Our 2020 is much louder than our 2018. I also liked the 2018 sound more. Thanks for the info. I hate that feature. I paid a lot of money to have a quiet car, then the government screws it up. In 55 years of driving there has not been one time when the AVAS would have prevented an accident. Even in a busy parking lot îf someone is not paying attention i just wait until they are out of the way. Having that sound is rude. If I do want to make the presence of my car known I can toot the horn. The other thing is there are many ICE cars that are quiet. Why don't they have to have an AVAS?
It appears the more one dislikes the AVAS, the louder it sounds. I'm one of the minority who likes the Clarity's Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System. I also like the speed-varying Acoustic Pedestrian Protection sound from my compact, sporty BEV more than other owners.
I have a 20 and it’s pretty noticeable. The first time I test-drove the car I asked the saleswoman what the noise was. You can hear it with all the windows rolled up.
That is very true! I read a study which showed some gas engine cars to be just as quiet and even quieter than PHEV/EVs.
Thanks for the write-up. It will give me something to ‘experiment’ with. There are evidently people with very strong opinions on both sides of this issue so you can expect to get some very stern warnings if you talk about the subject much.
I wish we could change the sound at least. Benny Hill music. The theme from Star Wars. A barking dog.
I have had kids and adults run out from between cars and startled people in parking lots even with the artificial sound. Disabling it could open you up to a lawsuit if you hit someone given our fellow American litigating propensity. Although I doubt anyone would think to check the speaker operating state after an accident. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks to @Dr. Kris' hard work, we now know that the AVAS emitter is a simple speaker and there's a signal generator somewhere else. So to implement other sounds, one would have to either hack the signal generator (a simple matter of emailing Honda to obtain complete instructions) or build a waterproof box triggered by the AVAS signal that includes its own signal generator, amplifier, and speaker.
Bad news everyone, I got a new message on the instrument cluster today. This weekend I'll try revisiting plan A and then if that doesn't work then its time for plan C.
I’m not a sound engineer and I don’t play one on TV. I wonder if replacing the speaker with a resistor that is the same resistance, 4 ohm, 8 ohm, would fool the mothership into believing that the speaker was still connected?
Yes, that is essentially plan C. I took out the speaker again and pulled to boot off to confirm that it was just a speaker. Then I measured the resistance across the speaker and found it to be about 3.75ohms. I don't have an LCR meter so no idea about the inductance. I didnt' have any 3.75ohm resistors so I put a 2 and a 1.5ohm together for about 3.8ohms. I then stuck it in the connector, turned the car back on, then drove up and down the driveway a bit. The warning was gone and didn't pop back up after I left it in for about 10min! With that I put some electronical tape on the connector to hold the resistors in, put the boot back on it, and we'll see how long it lasts.
It sure would be sexy to find a male connector with 2 leads and solder the resistor to the leads. Either that or cut the wires to use the existing connector and splice it back together when you sell the car.
Might not be too tough to solder a SPST switch directly to the back of the speaker that would allow you to switch in either the speaker or the resistor load. I have been thinking a little about this too. My wife would probably get mad at me if I disabled the AVAS but perhaps I could use a relay circuit that is triggered by the LED on the automatic seat position switch. That way, it’s disabled when I drive it and enabled when she drives it. You could also take it a step further and close the switch that indicates the seat belt is plugged in.