i purchased my Clarity this past Friday. Overall I really like it and feel this was a good decision. I have not yet had an electrician come to the house to install the higher voltage plug so I am charging it on the cord that came with the vehicle. Do you recommend waiting until the battery is almost depleted, or charging it every night? Any other tips are greatly appreciated.
First, Congratulations on your new car! You will be very pleased with your choice. Some will tell you that your battery will last longer if you only let the charge level get down to about 20% and then to only charge it to 80%. In theory, they are probably correct. For me, in practical terms, I plug in my car every time I come home. The potential for shortening the battery life is inconsequential to me as compared to always having full EV range available. Getting your Level 2 EVSE installed and working will make your life so much better, too. Fully depleted to fully charged in about 2 hours 15 minutes is WAY better than 12 hours in my opinion. Enjoy!!
Welcome To take club, Nancy. You’re going to love this car. Without going into a lot of the physics and properties of Lithium Ion batteries, it’s perfectly alright to charge it every night. In a nutshell, the main causes of shortened battery life/reduced charge holding are temperature (heat and large loads when very cold), overcharging, and repeated depletion to zero charge. The good news is that Honda has taken this into account for you. There is a built in buffer at the top and bottom of the charge capacity, the battery is water cooled and the battery management system tracks the temperature of the battery pack. There have also been some posts with info and links to Tesla forums that show very little loss of capacity with daily charging and that there is no difference between many smaller vs fewer larger charge cycles. Only the early Leafs with air cooled batteries have had major problems with this. So although some may beg to differ, I think it’s safe to say that for our Claritys there is precious little to be gained by trying stratagems like only charging to 90%/depleting to only 20% of what the car’s algorithm allows or anything else for that matter. I charge almost every night, skipping only when I have sufficient EV range for the next day. So don’t worry, just drive happy! The only major quirk is that the HV range calculation is totally in error. When you fill up with gas the next time you will see it become wildly inflated (up to a 1,000 miles for some!).
While I enjoy being able to recharge in just over 2 hours, I must admit that we have yet to drive our Clarity twice on the same day with a 2-hour home visit between the expeditions. The big advantage of having a 240-volt EVSE for us is being able to run the climate-control system for a while before we get into our Clarity. It almost makes up for not having a heated steering wheel.
If you don't drive 47 miles daily, say 25 miles, your best charging strategy is to let it charge to 40mile and recharge when it reaches 10-15 miles left. The more battery capacity reserved, the much more charging cycles you would get. Say battery lost 20% capacity after 500 full charging cycle (true 0-100%), then it would lost 20% capacity after 5000 charging cycle if it is only used between 20-80%.
You didn't say if it's a Clarity PHEV or Clarity Electric (BEV). If it's a BEV, then you shouldn't charge the car if it's already at an 80% charge or higher, unless you're going to need that extra range the next day. But most of the Clarity owners here are driving the Clarity PHEV, so I presume that's what you're driving. As KentuckyKen already said, there probably is little if anything to be gained by not just plugging it in every night. In either case, whether it's a PHEV or a BEV, it's not good for battery life to regularly let the pack fall below a 10% charge, and it would be better (altho probably not practical for most drivers) if you try not to let it fall below what the car's display shows as approximately 15-16%. That would be ~18-20% of actual capacity, but the car will be designed with some "buffer" on the bottom to prevent you from draining the battery too low. One confusing thing about PEVs (Plug-in EVs) is that the car's gauges are not calibrated to the full capacity of the battery pack, but only the usable capacity, which will be somewhat less. And unfortunately, we're not going to be able to tell you exactly how much that buffer is, because Honda doesn't tell us. (Other auto makers don't for their PEVs, either.) At least until you are more familiar with the theory and practice of charging a plug-in EV, I think you should get into the habit of plugging in every night and letting the car charge as much as it's designed to. If you want to, you can read some of the existing discussions archived here that do a deep dive into the theory of maximizing battery life. Then, when you have a better grasp of the facts and the theory, you can choose to alter your charging strategy if you think something different will be better for your individual needs. But again, that theory is likely to apply more to BEVs than to PHEVs. And welcome to the InsideEVs forum, as well as to the world of driving a PEV!
The hybrid system would switch to ICE automatically while the battery still has 2 bars. Another sign is that the HondaLink app would show you while the EV range is 0, the battery still has 10 to 15% left.
You can run the climate system with a 120V charge system as long as its done charging (i.e. first thing on a cold morning) and still plugged in. We have yet to run out of charge during the day after charging overnight. We saved over $400-$500 by not having to put in a 240 line and buy a fast charging device.
When I bought my Clarity in February I expected to buy a Level 2 charger and have a 220v line run to it. Thus far I have been quite satisfied with the 110v charger which takes 12 hours from empty to full. For us it’s either under 50 miles total for the day or a single-trip that is over 50. At this point I have no plans to spend the money for 220v wiring and a charger.
Yes, thank you, I wasn't thinking clearly. As you say, the Clarity PHEV -- or any PHEV -- will not allow the battery to be drained dangerously low; it will kick in the gas engine before that happens. (Duh!) My apologies for confusing the issue.
While there is no definitive information available on what the displayed 100% charge level really is, so it's impossible to say for sure, if there's a reasonable amount of buffer at the top this would only be correct for very short drives in the 5 mile range. There's a thread elsewhere in which I linked to some actual curves, but basically if you run the battery in the 50-80% band you get more total watt-hours out of it over its lifespan than if you run it in the 30-80% band. So unless you only drove a couple miles, just plug it in every time. It's the simplest method and also will probably result in the best battery life, although you'll probably be able to put 100,000 all-electric miles on the battery and/or 10 years on the vehicle before you notice any degradation no matter what you do. In practice it's unlikely that anything you do will make a practically noticeable difference over the life of the car. Just plug it in every time you drive it and don't worry about it.
Thank you so much for the information. thank you for all the detailed information. I purchased the P h e v.
