At what level do you gas up.

I wait till the tank is about 1/4 to make it worth the 5 gallon fill.

 

Usually when the "low fuel" alarm activates but once as low as 7 miles left.

 

Can you provide more details on your "ran it dry" experience, do you mean ICE would no longer operate and you only had battery power?

 

No experience with the Clarity (yet) but I've done it on purpose with a C-Max hybrid (not the plug-in Energi I still have) for a fuel economy challenge: when the ICE quit running, I got a warning message to pull over and stop, used EV to get to safe place about 1/4 mile down the road and put in a gallon of spare gas I brought along on that final leg. ICE fired right back up, drove to station to register fill up amount for challenge.

 

Nothing to do with the Clarity. I just don't like the fuel tank to fall below half unless wer are on a long trip.

I don't want to leave the house only to discover I'm going to have to stop for gas. Also it's a safety and security thing should we need to evacuate for some reason.

 

During the Winter, I try to keep the tank near full on all vehicles in case of getting stuck and needing to have heat until rescued. With the Clarity, I can go for weeks without using any gasoline and then take a 200-mile trip which leaves the gas level around half. I just top it off at that point, even in Summer (or "July" as the season is called here) because it makes me more comfortable. The weight of an extra 3-4 gallons of gas isn't much of a factor considering the weight of the car.

 

I use almost no gasoline, so I usually put about 2-3 gallons in it, and gas up when there's 1 gallon left. Since outside of road trips I use maybe a couple gallons a year, there's no reason to lug the extra gas around, and that limits the chance of spoilage as well.

If I'm driving somewhere far away and know I'll be running on gas I just fill the tank on the way out of town.

 

Bought mine May 1 with a full tank, and have only put gas in it once. 5 1/2 gallons. Leaving tomorrow on another trip, so cant wait!

 

My wife and I had a bad situation and we ran out of gas once (but the car still had arround 20 miles of electric range). So a few things happened:
1. Low fuel light turned on, and we keep driving until all lines in the gas gauge dissapeared and the HV range showed 0 miles. After that we drove for around 15 more miles.
2. The car was on HV mode so when we run out of gas, the ICE motor stopped and a message appeared in the dashboard: "power system problem"
3. After that, the car kept running on electric mode, and when the electric range dropped to 15 miles the message changed to "power system problem, stop driving when safe"
4. Thanks God, we reach an open gas station when electric range was 8 miles. We put 7.3 gallons on the tank (0.3 more than specified on the manual). After filling up, I turn on charge mode and the engine started normally, then everything back to normal.

 

Thanks, that's what I was looking for. I certainly don't plan to intentionally run out of gas or even get near empty but it's still good to know what the car does in those situations.

And not that you would ever want to push it, but I would suspect that even if you had reached 0 EV range the car would have gone a little farther as you would technically be in HV mode and there would be another few percent of SOC remaining. But it would certainly be risk the battery to continue in that case. Running of out gas also has a certain risk of damage to any car, of course people do it all the time but that doesn't mean there isn't risk.

 

Glad to hear that tow trucks these days are equipped with EV charge cords as well as fuel.....

 

Part of my rationale for getting the PHEV rather than the BEV was to diversify my fueling sources as a form of earthquake and emergency preparedness. My (arbitrary) intent was to use 100 miles of HV range as a hard indicator for when I should fuel up, and not to let it fall below that. My commute is 40 miles round trip and most days, but not all, I make it entirely on EV. So depending on my weekend driving, a tank has been easily lasting 6 to 10 weeks for me so far.

So that was the plan, and then there's reality. I love not filling it up! So honestly I delay, based on my estimated short-term fuel consumption, and let it get down to 20 miles or so.

 

I've always preferred (when I had the means) to fill up to full each refueling stop. So anyway, I often drive the car with full-tank and sometimes the same gas for 1-2 months at a time. Just depends on if I have any longer trips or not.

When I first got the Clarity I was both worried about the 7 gallon tank, and also that if it say said 50 miles of HV left that really means maybe less than 2 gallons of gas (as the car gets ~40mpg). So I initially coached my wife and also myself to fill up when we got down to like 4 bars because of my fear we'd run the car out of gas unintentionally i.e. easier than our previous car.

Anyway, having owned the car now, I see it totally differently:
- As others have noted its a dual-fuel car. While I don't believe its good for any gas-mobile to run toward empty, its nice to know one has likely X number of miles of EV range should this unintentionally occur. So I'm actually much less concerned about the gas "side" then I was when I bought the car. The EV range estimation appears to be 'ball-park' correct. And while I wouldn't plan to 20 miles of EV range if it say 20, I would assume I get 20 miles of EV range if it says say 25 or more. Typical trips for me are on major highways where next opportunity for gas isn't more than 40 miles. [I realize there are places where that's very not true, and I do plan my trips accordingly. i.e. if I know I'll be doing a long trip in the rural west, I look at the map and think about likely fill up spots before I go. But I've always done this to one degree or another, and especially with my older cars which had less range than Clarity.
- I now just fill the gas tank when it warns, just like one would do with a "normal" car knowing that even if the actual fuel in tank is relatively low, the car's range on modest amount of fuel is extraordinary and generally with some EV range to spare.

This Spring, I drove the car 2700 miles (to/from) tucson az (from/to) eugene or. No problems. Also no problem getting the car to next opportunity to fuel.

-Dan

PS and not fuel related, the only thing I slightly miss from my old car (Subaru) is all wheel drive. As cool as that can be, my winter condition driving (i.e. snow) is really limited to maybe a couple weeks a year. I don't need to pay to have always on all-wheel-drive for the two weeks a year I want/need it.
(My other car is a 4 wheel drive Tundra -- older smaller unit, not the large ones they have now. It gets used for truck things, and for snow things)

 

I was wondering about the weight savings by not keeping the tank full, with other cars it can make a difference, with our small tank not so much as it turns out.

A lot of people fill up at the halfway mark even when driving around town with a gas station at every corner, mainly for peace of mind I guess. Half a tank with Clarity is 3.5 gallons, so on average they are driving around with 5.25 of gallons of gas which is 31 lbs of gas.

Some people fill up at a quarter tank which is 1.75 gallons. That's 4.4 gallons average, 26 lbs.

In your case assuming 1 gallon left at fillup that is 4 gallons average, 24 lbs. So compared to someone who fills up at the halfway mark you are driving with seven pounds less weight and also time savings from not going to the gas station as often.

You could just put in 2.5 gallons when you get the fuel warning and fill up to halfway, then you would have an average of 2.25 gallons in the tank at 13 lbs. But you would also spend more time at the gas station so probably not worth it.

 

The lowest I have ever gone is when I came home from a long road trip this 4th of July long weekend with only 4 miles HV range and 0 EV range. I was not stressed about it because by morning I knew I would have over 60 miles range. The next day I filled up when it was convenient. Love having a PHEV.

Although for safety I normally keep more than half a tank.

 

I wonder what that service costs, how much of a charge EVSE tow trucks provide, and how long does that take? I assume the trucks give only enough of a charge to get the range-challenged BEV driver to an EVSE, but that could take a significant amount of time--certainly longer than it takes to tow a car to a repair shop.