3rd Day Owning my Clarity Touring....

Great to hear from another happy Clarity owner. Unfortunately, when the grid goes down, the gas pumps don't work.

Geezer tale: I remember way back in the summer of ought-3, when a Canadian power glitch sent the whole northeast (including Michigan) into darkness for two days. It was tough to find a working pump anywhere. Fortunately, the blackout happened in the middle of the month, right between my monthly visits to the gas station in my 70-mpg Insight (any chance to mention my Insight, I take it).

 

Enjoy your new ride! It's awesome isn't it?

Well the typical rebuttal is "The gas stations won't be able to pump gas because they have no power too" and that's true but only to a certain extent. Having gone through Hurricane Harvey, many folks were out of electricity for weeks but the local gas stations were back up in days with (you guessed it) diesel generators powering the stations. Many of the disaster relief folks had solar setups for their operations which were great to see (and not hear) too.

 

I have a touring and coming up on one year anniversary! Extremely satisfied clarity fanatic! Just love whizzing past those gas stations everyday in a car so fun to drive. I love the way it performs too. The smooth, almost silent acceleration, and with plenty of pep for my liking. I still have to keep an eye on my speedometer when taking off. Reaches speed limit very quickly and has very good passing power. I have no regrets at all. I also like the option to just use gas if nessacary. Congrats on your new Clarity!

 

Here in Tornado Alley, many gas stations have backup generators just in the event of a widespread power outage. Folks gotta have fuel for their Dodge Challenger Hellcats!

 

You refer to pep: in case you haven't fully discovered it, Sport mode has nice responsiveness, maintains regeneration setting, recovers speed more quickly in ACC, and has minimal if any impact (relative to Econ mode) on EV range.

 

drive in sport mode to make the car feel much quicker- unless you really floor it you won't turn on the ICE and EV milage is not noticeably reduced.

 

Welcome to the Clarity family, and welcome to this forum. If you're like some of us, you will enjoy getting to know more about the "internals" of your car by reading the discussions here. Of if you just want to enjoy your new purchase, that's absolutely fine.

 

I’m on day one of ownership and enjoyed my first ever gas free commute (not counting the summer job I biked to 20 years ago).

The greatest benefit I am looking forward to is mimicking the events shown in the following documentary with my friends who also own electric or hybrid vehicles.

 

Or, if the road is clear, put in sport and just mash the go pedal to see what it can do. The Clarity really takes off (ICE on and all). Kinda fun to try once in a while, don't be scared by the engine noise. Just make sure it is clear ahead and there is no traffic joining the road, or no one about to make a left turn in front of you, because the Clarity will fly.

 

However, SPORT Mode might have an impact on your HV range if you don't restrain your ankle and the Power/Charge Gauge strays out of the blue zone, causing the ICE to fire up for 10-20 minutes or whatever it feels like.

It's too bad you can't optionally have the accelerator pedal's click point adjust to work in SPORT and NORMAL Modes the way it does in ECON Mode. I say optionally because SPORT Mode aficionados might not like to feel the click when they're questing for maximum power.

 

OK, to whom do I surrender my Man Card to. I’ve even never been in SPORT and don’t plan to since @insightman’s post that it leads to smoking and drinking (and then probably a biker gang and tattoos).
Evidently, I missed the click or detent in my life where I went from young stud to old man. (Maybe it was last month when Uncle Sam forced a Medicare Card on me without even asking!) Sigh...

 

I've had my Medicare Card for a while, but still waiting for my Man Card to show up in the mail. I don't smoke or drink or have tattoos, but I rode my bike (bicycle) to Hell and back the other day. Does that qualify me for any kind of card?

As usual, lots of Harleys were parked outside the Hell Saloon (formerly the Dam Site Inn), but I'm not part of that biker crowd (no more motorcycles was part of the marriage deal). No, thanks to keeping my Clarity in ECON Mode I had the willpower to stay out of the saloon and instead visited the Go To Hell ice cream parlor and the Hell In A Handbasket store. Then I took a selfie and pedaled my way home. From Hell.

 

I did a bunch of back-to-back runs from 0-60 in our Clarity where I “mashed” the “go pedal” and timed the results. Conclusion: maximum acceleration is essentially the same regardless of mode selected:



The full report - with boring video - is in this thread:

https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/using-sport-mode-disadvantages.5591/

 

Interesting and expected. Though sport mode does persist regen settings and econ mode has other features to improve energy efficiency. All the driving modes have their uses.

But there is something more depressing than depressing the pedal. With roads choked up in traffic, pollution and CO2, and with a healthy percentage of people who drive like idiots- the name "sport mode" connotes nothing fun or sporty to me. Maybe they should simply call it "more depressing" mode.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

 

I'm with you Ken ... I've only ever used ECON or HV/HV Charge modes over my first 28000 km and am completely satisfied with the handling and love the lack of gas usage!

 

Engineering Toolbox calculator says 4400# car going 0-60 in 8.94 seconds is 108 hp. Just a data point...

 

One factor to note is the “slight positive grade” I noted on my spreadsheet. I suppose that’s would have to be figured in somehow. In the foothills of the Appalachians, it’s very hard to find a perfectly flat and straight section of road.

 

After all of the recent talk about Sport mode I couldn't resist and I tried it again last night, and I got a ticket! No, not a speeding ticket, an HV ticket. I was in EV in stop-and-go freeway traffic and was going around someone and needed to get past them relatively fast (nothing excessive) so I slightly tapped the accelerator pedal and next thing I know I hear ICE coming on, which of course I had to listen to for the next five minutes even when stopped. Although I was glad to see that even while stopped that it was making itself useful by slightly increasing my EV range. In normal mode I think maybe twice I have accidentally activated ICE. I'm pretty sure if I drove in Sport mode regularly I would adjust to it.

However what I did NOT like about Sport mode is how ACC acted. I did like the acceleration part, in fact that was a big improvement over Normal mode which I normally drive in. However not the deceleration part. I kept thinking it was going to ram into the car in front of me. I was using my normal two-bar ACC setting, maybe if I set it to 3 or 4 bars that would help I don't know. For me Normal mode handles deceleration just the way I like it, and I accept that the acceleration is weak. The way I look at it we divide the tasks, ACC handles deceleration and I handle acceleration. I think in any mode you have to do that anyway when someone in front of you leaves your lane because ACC takes forever to figure that out. To me, deceleration is the critical part because of the safety aspect. I really like how ACC helps me stay safely back from other cars which is why I almost always use it except for driving situations like curvy roads where it is inappropriate.

 

I am always surprised at how much difference even an almost-not-observable grade makes. One way to measure this is when moving my airplane ... there is an almost imperceptible grade between the hangar and the gas pump, but it makes a huge difference in how much effort it takes to go versus come.