I've had my 2018 Clarity for just a couple weeks now and I have yet to feel a click in the peddle, or any sensation when pressing far enough to engage ICE. Is this a feature that can be turned off, or is mine just not working? Input appreciated.
Are you sure you’ve pressed it hard enough to go all the way down to the firewall. At first I thought the click was the end of travel. It does take some pressure to get past it. Try it with the car off and press hard and see if you feel it and if the pedal does in fact go all the way down. If there is truly no detent/click at all, I’d take it in.
It depends what mode you drive. The detente only impedes ICE activations in Eco mode. In Normal or Sport, you can activate the Ice without passing the detente.
Ah ha! I get it now. As the cars default mode is EV (unless changed with a button), the accelerator pedal is only driving the electric motor. KentuckyKen, you are dead on. If I push the pedal to the floor until it stops, then push passed that, it switches on the ICE and turns off the EV light under the D which I guess would mean the car is now in Hybrid mode without lighting up the HV in the battery indicator. Next wondering is when will it return to EV, or is it locked in the rest of the driving session?
Good question. Since I’ve never pressed hard enough to turn on the ICE so I have no idea. Hopefully the less ICE fearing among us can answer that. We do know that generally the ICE will at least stay on long enough to warm up and stay on longer in cold weather especially if cabin heat is called on. Glad you got it figured out. All this new fangled “fly by wire” stuff takes some getting used to. All this digital, computer controlled stuff works well and has many advantages, but I shudder to think what these systems will cost to fix one day.
The engine stays on at least long enough to get warmed up. Honda didn't want the engine frequently starting and stopping without giving the oil a chance to warm up. You can defeat the engine-protecting warm-up interval by pulling over, shutting off the car and starting it again. This procedure is not recommended. Some posters on this forum believe you can return to EV Drive mode by selecting HV Mode and then deselecting it, but that's not my experience. I tried to explain the modes in this long post.
If ICE is already "warmed up", that is it's already been operating for quite awhile in HV, then yes, I've found in my experience over the past year that I can reliably depend on using the HV Mode button to get into EV. This most frequently occurs after we've been on the freeway in HV mode already - so ICE is at operating temperature already. Still, anytime there's a load on the motor like a hill or acceleration past the detente - regardless of HV mode state - the engine will once again start up. It's not that big a deal to me - I'm not trying to win any MPGe awards or anything. I get that people want to maximize their use of electrons, though, and minimize their carbon footprint, but the car's designed to do that already even without our intervention.