Clarity Issues

Thanks, @dstrauss . Here is my version of your wording:

I am surprised and disappointed you do not have a monitored private forum for registered Clarity PHEV owners with issues about the new car. Your dealers know next to nothing about these vehicles (many don't even know they exist). At http://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?forums/clarity.53/ we have started cataloging some of these issues. I myself have many questions and issues with my 3-day old Clarity and the dealers just do not know enough to answer technical questions. Why have I never been able to operate in pure EV mode? I am guessing it is because of the low temperatures here (single digits), but the ICE starts up as soon as I start to drive. I have never been able to get my remote climate start to work. Under what conditions does it not work well? You really need a forum with a Clarity specialist answering questions regularly. We are the early adopters and will end up being the technical advisees to people who are going to be buying this vehicle down the line. We are also the ones most likely to be opinion leaders on this vehicle and evangelists for this model. Thank you.

 

I live in Cincinnati, not Minnesota, but there may be something wrong with your car. I guess you won't be able to tell for sure until the weather warms up a bit, but it was in single digits here for about a week and I'm pretty sure we still had ev mode working. And I've always been able to get remote climate to work, both with the app and the key fob. My car is in a garage. If your car is parked outside in those temps that may explain it though.

 

Car is always parked indoors.

But, perhaps I need to get Hondalink working first. When I try to connect on the app, it won't authorize it since my zip code is apparently "wrong." Then, I have it send me the code through a message in the car. I enter that code and it asks me to create a 4-digit key. When I enter the key, it says INVALID CODE and won't proceed. I've tried it three times already, but haven't had the time to devote to problem solving yet.

 

I had to call them up to get the app to work. Apparently there is a very small team that helps with that. They were extremely nice and helpful.

I really hopho you would say the car is parked indoors. I can't even imagine parking outside up there in the winter.

 

@Kysayshi,
I had that message once too. It was a day where it was right around freezing and ice was accumulating on everything. I think it had to do with the radar getting ice/snow buildup on it. After I parked in my garage and it had melted off by the next morning, all seemed to be fine. I've never had the issue with snow, just that one time for ice.

I suppose (if it wasn't bad weather that day) perhaps your bow blew in front of the radar and caused it to get an 'out of range' reading?

I have no idea how Honda's system specifically works, but I used to do radar research and I would suspect they probably have something implemented where if it gets too 'quick' of a response (aka something blocking the sensor) it assumes there is a problem and for safety reasons disables itself.

Let us know what you find.

 

As far as how HondaLink communicates with the car, I've wondered the same thing. I've got to think it ties into 3G or 4G though. I once was flying back into the airport after a really bad snow storm and, after the plane landed and we were taxing and allowed to use phones again, I started the preconditioning in my car via the phone app. When I got out to my car in the parking lot (which was surely further than 90 feet away from the inside of a taxing airplane AKA tin can) the car was nice and toasty and all melted off.

 

Console yourself with the fact that Winter is only three months of the year. Wait, you live in Minnesota... well, five months of the year.

Not that I mean to make light of your situation, but since there's really nothing you can do about it (unless you want to trade in that brand-new car for something else, which seems unlikely), perhaps it's best to take the glass-half-full attitude.

 

I would gather it is based on the Acuralink feature, which is the push button assistance in Acura cars, like GM Onstar. These run on 2g/3g and in newer modes, 4g. So they probably use the same hardware (without the assistance button feature) to connect to the car over a cell carrier. As long as the car and your phone can connect to their server, then you are connected to the car.

 

Five months if we're lucky.

Today, I got home on ICE. Then just before going in, restarted the car and I got the blue bar on the instrument panel and pulled out and went for a 10-mile drive on the highway purely on EV power. It was a thrill!

So, how come when I got home and restarted the car, it went to EV mode even though it drove me all the way home on ICE? The switch over from one mode to another may not be as smooth and automatic as people think.

 

We are noticing that it sometimes has a hard time switching back to ev once it turns on the engine. As with most electronic devices, turning it off then back on again fixes a multitude of problems. I mentioned earlier that I gunned it once for a second just to pull out into traffic which turned on the engine to provide the extra oomph, then I spent the rest of the drive (like 10 minutes, with a pretty full battery) waiting for it to switch back to ev, which it never did. I felt guilty running it that way when I knew it didn't have to.

 

This is exactly the problem I've had if it jumps from EV to HV - like no going back with out a power down.

This thing really needs some software upgrades...

 

The engine operation appears to be tied to battery temperature, and the US model does not have a battery heater, so on days where the temperature is hovering around 0 to 10 F the engine will run a lot. I have noticed that if you leave with a warmer battery (attached garage or car just finished charging), the car will stay in all electric longer.

The issue is that lithium batteries can't provide much power at low temperatures without damage, so it minimizes charge and discharge power to protect it and runs the engine in addition. We get up to a month a year like you mention in Iowa, you probably have a few more weeks? Supposedly Canadian models have a battery heater, which might help prevent it from running on gas so much.

Second, it helps the heater out to burn the gas, effective at making waste heat. Any PHEV will have the issue of running the engine at those low temperatures, less than 0F and my Volt runs it at least half time and never really gets warm inside like the Clarity does.

 

So what does the Tesla do with no ICE to begin with - battery heaters?

 

Yes, Tesla and other BEVs use battery heaters. Some PHEVs do too (Volt has one, I noticed my car can draw several KWH from the wall over night in my garage doing nothing but maintaining battery temperature). This is why pre-conditioning them is important to maximize range (it takes the power to heat the battery from the wall instead of the car).

If you leave a BEV unplugged overnight in the very cold it will drain a lot of power to maintain the battery temperature.

 

Tesla cars, and some or many other BEVs, use a resistive heater inside the battery pack to keep it from dropping below operating temperature, draining battery power to keep it warm. That's the only thing I'd add to Viking79's excellent summary of the subject, just above.
-

 

10F seems to be the magic number. I've noticed when I start the car at an outside temp of 10F or more, it starts in EV mode. Yesterday was a warm 13F in the afternoon and I drove all the way home in EV.

Under 10F, it automatically kicks in the ICE. This morning, it was a balmy 19F in my garage. No problem and I pulled out of the garage in EV. Within a few minutes, the outside temp showed 9F and the ICE kicked in immediately. Interesting.

Also, at these temps, the highest EV range it has ever shown on a full charge is 29 miles. I'm hoping it will creep closer to the 47 miles when it warms up. Has anyone seen a 47 mile reported range on a full charge?

 

A few people in warmer climates have seen it read over 50. So far this winter in Cincinnati the highest it has shown for me is 39. It is usually around 31-33.

 

53.6 here when the overnight temp in the garage was 56, outside 47...in fact have seen that estimate a few times, and given my old grandpa ways of driving is fairly accurate as the mileage drop in the EV range is usually about 110% of actual odometer mileage.

 

I've seen 47 on the screen now that the temps are back up in the 70s, but have never achieved it on the road. I'm not a conservative driver, though.