Clarity Won't Start - No Power

Do you have a charger you can put on it?

 

That is interesting I’m going to have to look more closely at my battery and post an update.

 

Also I would keep the car outside somewhere you can monitor it and leave it running on EV and if you have a voltmeter check the voltage and make sure it’s somewhere around 14 Volt (13.8-14.2) it will take a few hours to charge the battery. If you have a another vehicle you could take the battery out and take it in to a store like auto zone to see if they can full charge and test it also (make sure to call first)

 

Also another note it will show zero range until it figures out what is going on.

 

The sight glass shows the condition of the acid solution, its specific gravity, for ion exchange on the plates, but it can't show the condition of the cell plates. You can have a blue sight, but a shorted cell, or a deteriorated or oxide plates, which can drain a battery or hold an insufficient charge.

 

With honda hack you can see the 12v battery voltage level on the head unit. Whenever it reads 14.4V it means it's charging. It definitely does not always charge as I've driven it with the voltage reading 13.2V.

Also, I originally assumed (due to it's small size and non existent need for CCA) that these were AGM SLA, which definitely die after 2 - 4 years. but no, they are full on liquid lead acids. I agree they should last much longer.

 

Also, your traction battery capacity may reset to 55AH as in my case and stay that way for years

 

it sort of sounds like you may have left it on. I've done this once before. when you plug it in, it will shut off the power train, but the 12 volt system remains on and i don't think it charges the battery. it may have stayed this way and drained the 12 v..

 

I think the theory is that it reduces the voltage when the 12V battery is fully charged.

It's not uncommon to hear of Clarity owners who leave their car sitting for a week or two, only to find that the 12V battery is now dead, which normally wouldn't be the case with most cars if the battery is not that old. One theory is that the Clarity has a heavy parasitic drain. However since other people have left their Clarity for even longer periods with no problem, that seems unlikely. What could be happening is something more in the middle, maybe the Clarity has a bit more parasitic drain than normal, but it only causes a problem if the battery has already been weakened by one or more full discharge incidents and can no longer handle the parasitic drain of the Clarity for more than a week or so. Which would be true for other cars also, but maybe Clarity is a bit more vulnerable.

 

I have never heard of this, and it makes no sense. Charging is initiated either with the key fob, or by a scheduled timer charge, or by using HondaLink to immediately start charging. A small amount of electricity is needed to listen for the key fob, and to listen for incoming "calls" via Telematics, but it does that whether or not the car is plugged in.

Even if you do a charge from 30% (or lower) to 100% SOC in one charge? That's normally all that is needed to update the battery capacity. Yours must have really gotten stuck for some reason after it reset to 55 Ah.

 

Anything over 12.7V is a charging voltage. I’ve observed voltage changes from ~13.6-14.4 when loads are added or removed.

In my experience, AGM’s tend to last much longer than FLA’s, in both starting and deep cycle applications.

 

You're misunderstanding what I said. Try literally starting your clarity (Put your foot on the brake, press power) Then PLUG IN your clarity to an EVSE with it fully powered on and ready to drive. It will put it into a mode where the car is still fully powered on (fans running, headlights on, dash on, radio on etc.) except the 'blue' part of the dash will turn white indicating that the traction battery is offline so you can't drive it, but everything else is 'on'. I beleive this will drain the 12v battery overnight as the EVSE will not directly charge teh 12v and with the traction battery off, the DC to DC converter is not on. I have not tried this in a while so I can't remember exactly if it will charge or not in this mode, but I seem to recall being puzzled as to why it was not charging when I accidentally did this before.

Re the 55AH setting, I have documented my woes in another thread. Yes even from below 30 to 100% The theory is that the Clarity may be rejecting readings that are too different from the 'saved' reading. My capacity did finally start to move a few months ago, but it only moved in spurts. as in it would move around 0.5AH then stay stuck again for a month even after 4, 20% to 100% charge cycles then move again 0.1AH then stay stuck for another couple months etc.

 

In UPS and emergency lighting applications AGMs don't last more than 4 years in my experience.. at my previous workplace we literally had a dumpster full of AGM batteries as we had to constantly replace them starting at around the 2 year mark. This isn't a case where the UPSes or emergency lighting were constantly being discharged. They were being top up charged and would eventually fail after a few years with maybe two power failures a year that were less than 30 minutes usually. Meanwhile car batteries seem to last over 5 years with regular shallow cycling. My entire family have never replaced a car battery less than 5 years with my last car battery lasting 10 years. My wife's current car, a civic is in year 6 and haven't replaced the battery (my clarity knock on wood 4 years). Granted everything is annecdotal, but the mountain of AGMs we went through were real.

 

Oh okay you are talking about the modified version of ON mode that occurs when plugged in. However the 12V battery gets charged in that situation, i.e. I see 14V indicated in Car Scanner, and also the red battery icon is not displayed on the instrument panel like it is in regular ON mode.

When not plugged in there are three modes available:

ACCESSORY (press power button once without pressing brake pedal). This runs off the 12V battery and powers the infotainment system and the USB and 12V charge ports.

ON (press power button a second time without pressing brake pedal). This also runs off the 12V battery, and powers up the full instrument panel display, the power windows, the DRL's, and also runs the fan, although no AC or heat since they require the HV system which is not active in ON mode (although the 12V seat heaters work). As a side note, many people have inadvertently drained their 12V battery by sitting in their car in ON mode without realizing it, since what is seen on the instrument panel in ON mode is very similar to READY mode, with only a few subtle easy to miss differences, the main one being the absence of the READY indication, but also the EPS (electronic power steering) warning indicator appears:



And as I mentioned the red battery icon is displayed, indicating that the 12V battery is not being charged




READY (press power button while pressing the brake pedal). The HV system is powered up and the car can be driven (and AC and heat are available)

MODIFIED ON (my name for it). If you are plugged in when you press the power button twice without pressing the brake pedal, you go into a modified version of ON mode. It looks very similar to regular ON mode, in both versions there is no READY indicator. However in the modified ON mode the HV system is active, you can see an HV amp indication in Car Scanner, and it also shows 14V indicating that the 12V battery is being charged. Equally telling is that the red 12V battery indicator does not appear on the instrument panel.

Interestingly A/C and heat are not available in this mode even though the HV system is active, which is somewhat annoying if you are sitting in your car while charging. While charging all you can do for climate is to run preconditioning, which gives you basically no control of climate, it stops you from using the sound system, and if you are in your car for a longer period of time preconditioning cuts off after 30 minutes, which also ends charging so you have to start it all back up again.

If I try your experiment and have the car already running in READY mode, then I plug in the charger, it goes out of READY mode into the modified ON mode that I just described. One quirk, once it's in modified ON mode, even though it says on the screen to press the brake pedal and the power button to start the car, that doesn't work and it remains in modified ON mode. I have to turn off the car then start it again to go into READY mode.

I don't think I would say it indicates that you can't drive because it's the same as what is displayed in HV mode. The indication that you can't drive is that READY does not appear on the display.

 

When I first got my Clarity I was always perplexed hearing people describing their power circle turning white. Mine was either blue or gray but never white. So I assumed this was some type of mode that I had never seen, maybe the infamous "System Check" that many people blame (incorrectly in most cases) for their unwanted engine startup woes. I figured that since I never saw a white power circle then apparently I never experienced a System Check.

It took me a long time to eventually realize that actually everyone was seeing the same gray power circle that I was seeing, but for some reason everyone calls it white. Now some parts of the display like the numeric mpg display are white, actually a very light gray but close enough that I would call it white. But not the power circle which is decidedly gray. But I guess I must be wrong since everyone else calls it white. And I don't think it's just people repeating what others have said, as new people come on and they also call it white. But my eyes say something different. No problem with my eyes, my other car which is white looks white, copy paper looks white, etc. but the power bar on my instrument panel is gray.

Important? Not all all. Just interesting (to me anyway) that everyone calls it white.

 

very informational. and yes youa re right i did not remember seeing any warning dash lightgs other than the information in the middle sayhing stuff like 'unplug the car you dolt'.

But I still wonder about the traction battery status and the 12V system DC-DC being on. As you said the climate control systems are not fully on even though you can run the fan. And second, I've often been in the car while plugged in and charging AND in the 'modified on' in order to check the live data for battery capacity and always noted that the 12v battery was not charging (sometiems the voltage was as low as 11.X on cold days). It may have been that it just so happened every time I did this it jsut happened to decide not to charge teh battery, but I remember noting it at least a dozen times and never noting the 14.4V.

Also question about your final experiment.. your car was still plugged in when it let you go into 'ready mode'?

 

Just FYI about possibly leaving your EV in the ON state and draining the 12 battery. This happens ALL THE TIME at the local EV discovery center. Because of the number of people going through and the silent nature of the EV's. Each car treats the situation differently, but I know for a fact there is some situation where the clarity will completely drain the 12 volt without draining the traction battery as it has happened, but I can't really remember what the theory was that caused it. Usually though, it is as a result of climate systems being active that first drain the traction then drain the 12 volt. It's only overnight that most EV's need to kill their 12v battery.

Another fun note, it seems that the volt will actually fire up the ICE to combat the battery drain while the clarity obviously won't. We commented this could be dangerous if you park the volt inside a garage.

 

Is there a preferred expert to diagnose the system and fix the problem? Honda mechanic? A specialist mechanic?

 

I’d need more information before pointing the finger at battery chemistry alone.

Were the batteries made by Discover? Entegra Motorhomes use Discover L16 AGM’s as OEM equipment as house batteries (energy storage to be inverted when not connected to shore power), not starting batteries. Failure of these batteries, at or around the 2 year mark, occurs more frequently than one would expect. In nearly all cases, the batteries had been properly maintained while in use and in storage.

Conversely, there are countless applications where AGM’s have been in use for 10-14 years in RV’s and as energy storage for solar installations.

What was the criteria for replacing the batteries in the applications that you mentioned? 80% of original capacity?

 

I don't know the brands, they were quite literally all kinds and if you took a look in the dumpster there were dozens of different 'brands' in there. It just might be a case of using teh cheapest batteries, as youa re right, I also know of some home installations where the batteries last a very long time, yet again, UPSes in these same homes all die in a much shorter time frame even though they aren't at all cycled even remotely as much. I have another example which is electric scooters both kids and adults. Those SLAs don't last at all.. maybe two years (though they ARE rated for only like 300 cycles so two years is around right), but they are too cheap. I'm reminded of different FLA battery brands, which i totally took for granted in my previous statement, so I totally agree now you can't just quote tehnology alone. but to get FLA batteries that actually last they often are 2x-3x more expensive than the ones that fail in a couple of years. We jsut generally never buy the cheapest FLA's and hence get like 10 year life out of them, it jsut so happened for us that the stock dealer batteries also seemed to be pretty good.

I have a question though. do you think not using the SLA's and jsut keeping them topped up in a warm environment is detrimental to them? That's the only thing I can think of, as UPSes get really warm due tot he power conditioners in them. To answer your other questions we replaced them when the UPS told us to. The emergency lights are tested and I would imagine theyh are replaced according to some guidline. I jsut know, we liked to mess with the dumped SLAs to pwoer stuff for fun every now and then and they don't have much capacity. Often though it's becuase they are bone dry. Maybe the heat does evaporate the electrolyte even in paste form?