Budget Battery Capacity Readout

I don’t do FB, which may explain why the link didn’t open.

Perhaps you could share some details on the group of 18,000 and why you’re “guessing” that 80% of those in the group have experienced engine failures.

I can only offer anecdotal evidence. In the 1970’s-90’s, my grandfather drove a number of vehicles well beyond 200,000 miles. None had an engine failure. In keeping with that family tradition, my father followed in his father’s footsteps. Numerous vehicles, high mileage, zero engine failures.

I haven’t been maintaining the high mileage, old car standard quite as well. However, over the past 40-odd years we’ve had at least a half dozen cars that were driven to the age of 10-15 years and had an average of about 150,000 miles. One of those, a mid-90’s Volvo, needed a new transmission at about 120,000 miles. A few years later that car was sold to a friend who drove it for a number of years. Eventually she sold it at about the 18 year mark, with the original engine still performing flawlessly.

I recently spotted the 2005 VW Jetta in a parking lot, that we sold in 2019 with 145,000 miles when we bought the Clarity. The owner approached the car and I mentioned that I used to own that car. She was the second owner since we sold it and it now had more than 250,000 miles on the original engine. It had needed some repairs, as would be expected, but no engine failure.

My next door neighbor is a retired auto mechanic. My brother in law has been a professional auto mechanic for 45 years and my nephew is an auto mechanic. None of them have ever said anything along the lines of “80% of 10-12 year old cars with 200,000 miles will have an engine failure”. In fact they all drive older, high mileage vehicles and only my nephew has replaced the engine in his truck. Not due to a failure, he just wanted something that burned more fuel.

Maybe it’s just a streak of good fortune that my experience with dozens of older, high mileage vehicles has resulted in 0% engine failures.

 

Because the group is entitled Engine Failure- Kia/Hyundai and there is a new pile of people joining it every day to try and figure out how to get their engines replaced by convincing K/H to honor their warranties. The problems are a combination of machining chips left in the engines and blocking oil flow, and/or carbon build up that chunks off and damages rings and blocks oil passages. The usual failure from either is a connecting rod coming through the block. K/H are replacing so many engines that some have waited more than a year to get theirs done. The group is mainly customers with these broken cars, along with a few mechanics and others trying to help them.The biggest issue they seem to face is that K/H does every thing they can to blame the problem on the customer and avoid paying for the replacement. The cars affected are most of their models from 2011-2023. Here's a sample reply from a mechanic at 1 shop, many people hope K/H have fixed the problems after all these years, but they clearly have not. Despite avoiding as many warranty replacements as they can, every K/H dealer seems to have one or more techs who do nothing but engine replacements.
If you'd like more samples from the group let me know.

 

Are you not cherry-picking data by choosing a forum dedicated to engine failures from one manufacturer? Do you suppose that everyone on a quilting forum would have an interest in making quilts?

Hyundai alone has sold about 18,000,000 cars in the US since 2011. 18,000 engine failures represents 1% of those sales and this is the manufacturer that is making all the news with a high rate of engine failures.

What would the percentage be if we included all the manufacturers that aren’t making the headlines?

 

Landshark: No I am not. There are only 3 other engine failure groups on FB, and 2 of those are also for Hyundai/Kia. The final one is for a single Land Rover engine and has only 1500 members. I did several more searches with engine failure synonyms and got one more group, also dedicated to Hyundai/Kia. It is obvious that no other manufacturer has engine failure problems anywhere near the scale of Kia and Hyundai. I tell everyone I know shopping for cars to avoid both of them like the plague.

 

When I asked the question about a 6-7% internal combustion failure percentage, it was implied that it included all manufacturers.

If we only look at one manufacturer, we’re excluding all the other data. Clearly you aren’t cherry-picking the best of the bunch by selecting Kia/Hyundai, but you are selecting a manufacturer that represents about 3% of US auto sales to try to make your point.

Look at what you’ve said. There are 4 engine failure groups on FB. Three are Kia/Hyundai. The only other group is Land Rover and they’ve had one reported failure from 1500 members. No other manufacturer has an engine failure group on FB.

 

Landshark you are rather confused. My original reply was that ONLY Hyundai and Kia might meet your 6-7% failure rate. Additionally some of my replies have been to emphasize to this gearhead group just how bad H/K are, and to steer you all away from those 2 brands.

 

Thank you for recognizing my confusion. Sometimes that happens when people provide an irrelevant response to a question they don’t understand. I mistakenly assumed that everyone was capable of following the conversation.

 

Yes rather sad that some can't follow more than a one dimensional conversation.

 

And some can’t even do that.

 

Hello all I have a 2018 Clarity plug-in hybrid regular model original owner bought in Dec 2017 now 83, 608 miles used primarily all EV miles charged at level 2 - Batt Cap at only 40.34. I commute about 25 miles each day at work and have a level 2 charger at work as well as at home. I was trying to enter my data in the Google spreadsheet but it would not allow me to or I am doing something wrong lol! Thank you

**Update I was able to enter data on the spreadsheet thank you**

 

I also have a 2018 Clarity plug in hybrid Touring model that I purchased in Dec 2017 now with 25,060 miles. About 98% EV mode charged with Level 2 at home. My battery capacity has gone from 54.6 in early 2018 to 50.45 now. I still show over 60 miles on the GOM after a full charge. I have a meter on my charger so I can calculate miles per KWH and I average about 4.35.

 

Digressing back to the ICE engine failure rate as compared to EV battery failure rate, the following screenshots were taken from a 2022 article that covers the most common problems with the Pentastar 3.6l V6.

Cylinder head failure was the most common problem and those represented 0.5% of all the engines produced from 2011-2013. A revised design virtually eliminated the problem. Another article discussed the failure of one of the engines at 626,000 miles. The failure was due to timing chain guides and tensioners.

 

Just a word of thanks -- especially to MrFixit and Landshark -- for all the information they and other owners have provided about battery capacity. I finally (and belatedly) took the plunge and ordered a Vgate iCar Pro Bluetooth 4 unit for my 2018 Clarity Touring with 32,000 miles. Looking forward to seeing and sharing the test results.

 

Just got in my Vgate BT 3.0 and used the free version of Car Scanner. I bought my 2018 Clarity Base about 3 weeks ago with 17,500 miles and have put on about 1,000 miles already with several complete drains and recharges. Battery Capacity reading is 50.56Ah and I generally get about 36 mile range displayed when topped up. Parked in a garage about 55* and the outside temp has been between 25*-49* when driving on my 22mile-each-way commute.

 

Received my Vgate iCar Pro BLE 4.0 as a Christmas gift, and installed it today. Since I'm new to this, I don't quite understand all the readings I received for my 2018 Clarity Touring with 31,600 miles (garaged). My battery capacity is 50.7 Ah. I'll attach a photo of the readouts I received. Thanks for all of your help figuring out which unit to buy, how to install, and how to evaluate readouts.

 

Thanks for the welcome! I just added my info to the spreadsheet. Great to see all that information!

 

Hey everyone,

Just picked up a 2018 Clarity and checked the capacity. Here’s a pic to add to the data collective.