Questioning about Hybrid, especially PHEV

For those that take only the occasional road trip or routinely exceed their battery capacity in daily driving, the 30 minutes in Bakersfield (or wherever) can seem like a bargain as compared to the time spent fueling up during the week, doing oil changes and other service on the ICE as required.

It depends so much on the individuals driving habits and priorities (and biases).

And the curb weight of the LR Model 3 is virtually identical to that of the Clarity PHEV. It's not just the weight of the fuel, but that of the fuel tank, ICE, exhaust system, and other support systems for the ICE.

 

Many of them are in non public parking lots. That was the case around downtown when I was trying to charge. Nevertheless 36 is not exactly a huge number for a city of 400,000 people.

If you have to stop in Bakersfield for charging, check out the antique shops in downtown. They are pretty good!

 

There’s no value in spending 30 minutes in Bakersfield, even if Dwight Yoakam is playing at The Shiny Spur Bar and Grill.
It would be an act of desperation to willingly stop there, with the only rationale being to plot ones escape.

Sometimes too much is made of these terrible inconveniences of fueling up and getting an oil change. By some estimates the average commuter, who doesn’t exist, drives 32 miles to work and back each day. Even without charging at work, that is within the range of the Clarity PHEV, particularly in warm weather.

It wouldn’t be surprising to discover that 90% of Clarity PHEV owners complete 90% of their driving in EV. I’ve gone 3 months without having to add fuel. Some owners have gone for a year on a single tank.

Yes, there’s an occasional need to stop at a gas station and, for some, a $65 once per year oil change and tire rotation. There is no need to spend any more time than necessary in an oasis like Bakersfield, Barstow or Needles.

 

This I agree with. For many the BEV will be better option, but PHEV has many advantages that makes it better choice for those who can get away with EV range in their daily routine. If you need to refuel Clarity every week then probably a BEV will work out better for you. But for 90% of drivers Clarity EV range is adequate for daily driving. Again if the cost of a long range Model 3 was the same as Clarity more people would have considered it, but after incentives it is almost 2 times more expensive.

Before pandemic on average I would refuel once every other month, excluding long road trips. That is 6x5 = 30 minutes for a year. You still need to do tire rotation etc. on your BEV, so additional maintenance on PHEV will not add much inconvenience.

 

If a driver were to “routinely exceed their battery capacity in daily driving” wouldn’t they routinely be seeking out a charging station, where a much greater amount of time is required to add energy than a gas stop?

This seems like a dreadful situation.

 

Is interesting. I looked at the numbers for our car. We drive EV only for about 90% of our drives, but that amounts to only about 52% of our total miles. We don't drive HV often, but 2 days a month we drive across state and back - 300 miles. Add in a trip to PA and back.

 

Yes. There is certainly a difference between the percentage of miles driven in EV and the percentage of trips made entirely in EV.

Based on fuel consumption, I’d estimate roughly 3K miles in HV and 7K in EV, so 70% of miles travelled have been in EV. Of those 3K miles in HV, 2100 were driven during 3, single day, 700 mile trips. The rest were on a few 100-200 mile drives and some commutes that required HV use. In all I’d estimate that 95% of my drives have been completed entirely in EV.

Does that mean that a BEV would have been a wiser decision? No.

 

I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet, but I believe the need to cram both an electric and ICE into the engine bay is the reason the car has a longer front end (more space). Also the reason, other than cost, that it uses resistive heat instead of a heat pump.

 

What about smiths cookies or Dewar's Taffy? Surely those are two good reasons to stop in Bakersfield.

 

I think the fuel cell stack and cooling takes more space. The Clarity motors are very compact. They fit in an Insight, so definitely there is no need to have a longer nose than an Insight.

 

It has also been reported that the car was originally designed as a Fuel Cell vehicle, making the dearly departed BEV and, still in production PHEV, some sort of offspring or step-kin. Components were likely designed or selected to fit in the available space.

 

No. Battery electric cars like the model 3 have 5+ times the range of the Clarity PHEV. If you do 100 miles a day, you leave each morning with a full tank. With even a long range PHEV like the Clarity, fueling 3 or 4 times a month takes time (plugging/unplugging the BEV vs PHEV takes no additional time). If you are driving a typical PHEV that has an EPA 20-30 mile range, that gets eaten up quickly, especially in the winter, and the time you spend fueling increases drastically.

Like I stated, an individuals driving habits will dictate which makes the most sense. Sometimes it is a PHEV, but for those that only add fuel once a year (and have to make an effort to burn that), it is very likely a BEV would serve them equally as well if not better.

I understand that the majority of users of this site havy convincee decided that a PHEV fits their needs better, and it is tempting to extrapolate that decision to being better for others. Not pointing fingers at anyone, but there is a tendency on brand/model specific forums for anything for users to have some weird need to reaffirm that they made the correct decision and are on the winning team by derided those who have made other choices (based on their needs).

I am fairly confident that I have recommended to more people that a PHEV is a better fit for their needs than almost all (if not all) users on this board. Please keep an open mind and try and emphasize the benefits of your choice (PHEV, BEV, FCX) and also acknowledge the drawbacks that all of those come with.

 

I misinterpreted your words as being in relation to a BEV traveling in excess of battery capacity and needing a 30 minute charge to get back on the road.

The Clarity PHEV would only gain approximately 10 miles of range after 30 minutes of charge time. Some might consider that a drawback. It would be, in my opinion, a complete waste of 30 minutes, unless it was at a topless car wash that served blue cheese bacon burgers.

It would be much more efficient to add 5-6 gallons of gas, in 5 minutes, and hit the road. If necessary, the batteries could be charged to ~60%, in about 45 minutes, while driving. Those are benefits in my book.

 

I never charge my car. 100% on gas. I was so close to get Camry or accord hybrid, but I bought this because of That generous tax credit and rebates. May install a level 2 if I moved to new place.

 

What is the SOC of your battery?

Many folks here recommended keeping the battery at 50% or more. It helps to have sufficient capacity in the battery to provide power to the traction motor while in HV. That’s also a reasonable SOC for long term storage, should you opt to never use them.

 

That's not relevant to my comment. It's also not relevant that 80% of the fuel carried by an ICE vehicle isn't used to propel it.

 

You made the statement:
"If an EV driver uses only 20 kWh of the 66 kWh capacity of the EV's traction battery it's not as if the remaining 46 kWh is being wasted"

I agree that the 46 kW is not being wasted, but there is a substantial weight penalty to lug around those extra batteries if they are never used.
That was the relevance I was trying to illustrate. With a gas engine, there is far less of a penalty for having a larger tank than you "need".

 

For us the Clarity is just about the perfect fit.

Typical EV only use cases:
- Our (non Covid) regular routs take us 25 miles round trip to take our son to school, and another 25 to pick him up. We charge at home between these trips.
- Add to the school trip another 5 to 10 miles for going to the gym, grocery shopping, and other events.

Our typical HV use cases:
- About every six weeks we take day round trips of about 350 miles for doctor visits, museums, and family visits.
- Twice each year we take 1,100 mile round trips for vacation or family visits.

So we run on EV 100% of the time for the 11,000 miles each year for school trips. Then say 8 350 mile trips on HV, plus the 2 1,100 mile vacations. The number of days we drive on HV is only about 23 out of the whole year.

The reason I don't care about hauling around 7 gallons of gas and the weight of the ICE, muffler, cooling system, etc. is that weight doesn't interfere with our daily EV usage. It might make a difference if we charged off the grid and had to pay for KWh to haul that weight but our car is pretty much fully charged by our solar system. In fact the marriage of the house, car, and solar is where the solar really pays for itself.

Yes we had to pay a lot to install solar but the justification was done solely to power the house before we even bought the car. It turns out the system can also handle the car needs. Adding the car brought our solar payback period down from 12 years to 8 years.

All I could hope for would be a few more EV miles to help get through the winter. 50 EPA EV miles would be enough for us.

Every time a new PHEV is announced I rush to see how many EV miles it will have but none has matched or exceeded the Clarity yet. At least none under $40K purchase price.

I hear PHEVs are very popular in Europe.

If Honda did upgrade the Clarity I'm sure the battery efficiency gains of recent battery technology would allow for more EV range without adding batteries or additional battery weight.

 

I bought a Honda Clarity plug in back on September 2018. While I rarely use any gasoline, I have this unhealthy hatred of using any gas at all when I am just driving around town. With a road trip it is totally expected, but when errand running, I just hate it when I don't have enough range to make it all EV. Perhaps it's just me, but I wish the EV range were between 80-100, at which point I would literally never use any gas except when leaving the county.

 

I also had the same question as Landshark about what state of charge you leave on your battery? Do you keep it somewhere around half/quarter for battery use in some circumstances? I almost never charge at home, because electricity is about 24/30 cents/kWh and I wait to charge for free at local Level 2 stations (Chargepoint and Liberty Hydra) nearby. Since gas is about $2.75/gal, that's about the cost for 42 miles of driving. Electricity for that same range would be $3.25 to $4, depending on what rate lectricity I am using at the time. This doesn't include ICE maintainance (oil change, etc.--but I'd have to do that yearly anyhow). So, rather than charge at home to top off, I just fill up with gas or use HV Charge (does anyone know how efficient that is in terms of mileage reduction when driving aded to miles gain to battery charge?)

I still end up using just electricity 90+% of the time from the Level 2 top-offs and have rarely needed to add gas--until recently when all those Teslas have started hogging the Level 2 chargers ALL DAY long.

That's another problem with BEV: they need to spend many more hours tying up the Level 2 chargers around town than we PHEV with 17kWh batteries that fill up in 2.5 hrs. Tesla owners have to buy the separate CHAdeMO cables if they want to chareg at non-Tesla Level 3 chargers. I NEVER see a Tesla using the CHAdeMO Level 3 charger and they are ALWAYS never used. Instead, they will tie up the 2 or 3 Level 2 chargers for 8 hours during a work day so no one else can charge.

What they really need to do is set up regular Level one 120V outlets around parking areas for free charging. This will be cheap (it's just a regular household outlet) and you don;t need fast charging when people are parked in work parking areas where they can leave their car parked for a 8 hour work day.