Greetings from Virginia

There is an option here allowing you to "ignore" posts from certain users you may find unduly aggressive or offensive to your person without having to leave a thread you may want to follow. Setting that on will make you unable to see or receive any further abuse. It really helps...

 

A few notes on the Ignore feature. It does not prevent the ignored member from responding to posts made by the person doing the ignoring. I’ve made clear to most, if not all, of those I’ve chosen to ignore that they are being ignored. However, some insist on responding to my posts. How do I know this?

I don’t use the InsideEV’s app. The page is bookmarked, so when it opens, I am not logged in. Prior to logging in, ignored posts are displayed. It is also possible to “show ignored content” once logged in. Periodically, I read all posts. This allows me to respond to non sequiturs, off-base assumptions or other irrelevant comments. This practice may or may not benefit the other members by making clarifications on the topic. In some cases, it may even help the ignored better understand the situation.

Also, keep in mind that offensive comments often travel on a two-way path.

 

I may have erred in stating that we sometimes drive 5 miles downhill and 5 miles uphill while using 10 miles of EV range. Yesterday, we got back to the Clarity, in Oregon, after being in Michigan for about 7 weeks.

We ran a few errands, driving 19.5 miles in total while observing a drop in EV range of 17.6 miles. As usual there was almost no loss for the first 4 miles. Near the mid-point we had travelled 10 miles and used 4 miles of range. This included 3 miles of freeway driving at 60mph (it’s a 55mph zone). All other driving was on surface streets and country roads at speeds between 25-50mph. Temperature was 56F.

The last 9.5 miles used 13.6 miles of range, which is to be expected since we went from about 1300’ to 2000’ in elevation. The extra 4.1 miles used on the return matches almost perfectly with the zero miles used on the first 4 miles of the trip.

 

Thanks for finally understanding.

 

This should be easy for a moderately intelligent person to understand.

 

I think the way to measure the hill problem is the number of trips one takes down/up the hill per day. We know there is some loss due to the hill. Whatever increment that is, you multiple by the number of trips you do per-day that start at home, and do the down/up loop. So if you lose 3-4 EV miles coming up (or whatever that loss is) multiply that by the number times the number per day you come up the hill, and that's your loss. If you do less up the hills per-day, you lose less range.

 

Does your methodology only consider the difference between the loss of range as displayed by the EV range estimate and the actual miles traveled on just the uphill portion of the trip?

 

No. What I've noticed is that if I'm heading home and I know I'll be close to home, I will then I allow my car to go to 0 EV range. Very consistently, within a 1/4 mile of the guess-o-meter displaying 0, the gas engine kicks on. That's why I tend to believe the EV estimate. i.e. for my driving pattern its been pretty accurate. I also do the feature where I have my A trip meter set to reset each time I charge the car. I know my distance to/from work is 5 miles (almost exactly) so if I do 4 legs of 5 miles each I hit 20 miles or often barely exceed it.

If one looks in the HondaLink app you can see a numeric representation of the EV range left. When you see 0 on the dash and 2 bars, the percentage is maybe 7-10%. We know there is a buffer. So I make sure there's enough in the buffer to get home and plug in, without ever tempting a true 0%. We see the EV bars go to one when this percentage goes below 5%. Some Clarity owners never see that, but its easy to do in my car if one is not careful.

Anyway, the reason I stress the 'hill' is that in my experience, and for my usage, it outweighs every other factor for EV range. We all know and been discussed at length that say using cabin heat kills EV range. No argument with that, its just that I don't lose 10 or more miles of EV range by using the cabin heater.

One last thing as it may benefit others: I think the folks who have repeatedly run the car with too little EV are the ones that experience the rare condition of losing power (i.e. on the freeway) which can be dangerous. It's a rare outcome, but I'd bet the folks who see this repeatedly ignored lots of "angry bees" and low EV range.

As to why some folks don't see some of these issues with low EV range, unrelated to the hill, I think the traction battery gets damaged sitting on dealer lots for months with no charge. That was my Clarity's case. I suspect there is a correlation between the cars that sat for months with no charge, and the cars that don't get the best EV range (estimated or actual).

When using a volt meter to test batteries you can notice a bad battery in some cases with low voltage, but in others you have to measure with resistance to see a problem. Maybe in some similar way the amp hour reading doesn't tell the whole story. My amp hour reading is similar to other Clarities of its age, last tested at about 48ah, but I don't see as good of EV range as some others on the forum. So there may be multiple factors.

 

The EV range estimate becomes more accurate as it nears zero. There’s simply less room for error in calculating remaining range when there is very little range remaining. Likewise, it is reasonably accurate when the car is consistently driven in the same manner.

If I’m correctly understanding your driving habits and methodology, which was mixed in with a great deal of battery degradation theory, you’re making multiple, 5 mile, round trips on a single charge. What’s interesting about that, is your vehicle should be in a better position to recapture regenerative energy on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th trips, than ours, since we always fully charge after each trip. It’s possible that, for some reason, your car isn’t able to recapture that energy as efficiently as others.