We're having a cold snap here in Northern Alberta and this morning it was -35C thermometer with a 8-10 kmhr wind feeling like -44 or so. The Clarity has been great so far but around -15C or so the engine starts when you hit the start button and does not shut off unless the temperature rises above that. Range has taken a hit with this cold but still getting about 40 km with 30% battery left. Also around once your below 0c it starts telling you that ambient temperatures are low and you should plug in. Plugged in and fully charged the car goes into warming mode which is like a trickle charger keeping the battery up and warm. Even at -35 I'm getting warm air from the bbq heater in just a couple blocks so I'm pretty impressed. The charge cord however is not rated for these temperatures. Had a heck of a time getting it back in the trunk this morning. Felt more like a solid rod than a cable. Cheers and Happy New Year to all you EV'ers
What a bummer it would be to crack the insulation off your charging cable because it was too cold when you tried to bend it! I wonder if any EVSE company has addressed this problem. The popular Grizzl-E is a Canadian company so they must be aware of it.
That's -31F for those who haven't done the conversion. Hope you don't mind some questions, those of us who live well below the 49th parallel tend to be fascinated by hearing about temperatures that make a walk-in freezer seem like a sauna. Are you preconditioning prior to driving? If so the resistance heater will already be warmed up when you start out, and the cabin heater has a relatively short length of exposed heater hose in the engine compartment, so the coolant in the cabin heater loop has a pretty good chance of starting to warm up before you drive off. I don't have experience at those temperatures but I am guessing that even though the gas engine was running immediately, it would not be producing any cabin heat within a couple of blocks, especially if it's just idling, is that correct? If you have the Vgate OBD-II reader mentioned in the battery capacity thread you can monitor your engine temperature and RPM during the first few miles which might be interesting.
The Grizzl-E is still stiff but ok. Its the Honda portable that I use mostly at home and everyday at work. I will check the Honda cable when it warms up a bit. Cracks should be warranty lol.
Ok so preconditioning is hit or miss. If I park too close to the house it doesn't work. Maybe it gets a mobile signal thats blocked because the message says that I must be in an area with low signal. I don't think the gas engine is tied to the heating system at all. Strictly bbq heater. If you just let the engine run without pushing the HV button the display says that some engine and some battery are driving the wheels but it can't be much engine because the battery bars drop quickly. And it doesn't rev very high. Pushing HV after I hit the highway slows the battery drop to a crawl and you can hear the bees buzzing. I have a 38km (24 miles) one way commute. I did take a battery capacity reading before winter really blew in and it was about 56kwh. Temperature was about the same today and the dog door flap shattered like glass when Schnauzer went to do his daily. I left the vGate in the glovey so I'll have to bring it inside to warm up to try and get another reading.
It's normal for HondaLink communication to be hit and miss sometimes. But if that doesn't work you can also start preconditioning using the fob. You first press the door lock button on the fob, then press and hold the fan button for a few seconds, the parking lights will flash six times letting you know that preconditioning has started. Of course that means stepping outside into the cold to do this but it only takes a few seconds. And usually the fob range is pretty good so you shouldn't have to walk all the way out to the car, you just need a line of sight view where you can see the parking lights and confirm that preconditioning has started.
If the Clarity is close to the house, you should be able to start preconditioning using the fob without going outside.
That should work as long as you can hear what's going on. I have mine set so that it does not beep when I lock the doors. And even if the door lock beep is turned on I'm not sure if it will beep when preconditioning starts. If it does then that would definitely be a better way to do it.
It is actually, if you look in the back of the engine compartment (one day when it is warmer outside!) you will see a tangle of heater hoses. Two of these hoses pass through the firewall into the cabin as usual, one of them being the heater inlet hose. The source of heat for the heater inlet hose comes from both the resistance heater and the engine. There is a hose that carries coolant from the engine into the resistance heater, but it first passes through a valve. Normally this valve is closed so that the only coolant flowing through the inlet hose into the cabin is coming from the resistance heater. But if the valve is open warm coolant from the engine is added to the mix. I used to assume that anytime the engine was running and warmed up that the resistance heater would shut off and all of the cabin heat would come from the engine. So when I was driving HV I would crank up the heat as much as I wanted, because I figured it was free heat. But as it turns out apparently the valve only opens when it is too cold for the resistance heater to maintain the set temperature in the cabin on its own. But otherwise it continues to use the resistance heater exclusively, even as the engine simultaneously dumps waste heat overboard through the radiator. I have not been able to confirm this but there are indications this is how it works, even though it goes against all common sense. All I can figure is that they felt they could better control cabin heat with just the resistance heater and so it only uses engine heat for the cabin when it is necessary. And I would think -30C would be a situation where it is necessary! But you probably won't get cabin heat from the engine for a long time, if ever at those temperatures, because of the next point. It is normal that when switching to HV the engine goes through a warmup cycle before it provides any appreciable power. Even in warm weather you see the exact same thing, switch to HV and the EV miles continue to decline as if you were still in EV mode. After a few minutes the EV miles stop going down, and normally you hear the engine getting louder at that time as it begins to contribute power. The only time the engine provides immediate power is when you stomp on the accelerator, as even a cold engine provides power in that situation. Probably doesn't hurt the engine as hybrid engines are designed for rapid start, but it's probably not great for it either to do that all the time, which I assume is why in normal HV situations it will continue to use the battery while the engine warms up. Now your situation and temperatures is a somewhat different scenario, the engine is coming on simply because it is so cold outside. And apparently it is only started up for the purpose of providing cabin heat, since if I understand correctly you are still in EV mode? Well I guess even if you are in HV mode it sounds like your engine is coming on sooner than it normally would because of the cold. Maybe there are also some other reasons why they feel the engine should be running at those temperatures. But as mentioned above it's understandable that it will start out idling and not provide power until it has warmed up. But in -30C weather I would think that if it just idles it will never warm up, especially not while the car is moving with all of that air that cold flowing through the grill. Unlike a regular gas car which if it's in motion then the engine will definitely be at higher RPM. That's why it would be interesting to monitor RPM to see how long it remains in idle in that situation. I wonder if the system realizes that because of the cold temperatures it needs to be more aggressive warming up the engine, or if it's more or less oblivious and just keeps idling the engine at low RPM waiting for warmup to occur, which it likely never will. I have heard that some Prius Prime owners in really cold climates use cardboard or foam weather stripping to block the front grill to help the engine warm up. They keep it on all winter as apparently in temperatures that cold the engine does fine without air coming through the grill. I'm not recommending that, just pointing out the challenge of getting heat out of an engine that is not being used as much to drive the car as it would in a normal gas car.
Here's a diagram of the Clarity PHEV's heating system showing how both the engine and resistance heater work together to warm the heater core in the cabin:
An interesting thing... I have a ScanGauge II connected to my OBDC port. I have Water Temperature (WT) as a regular display in my gauge cluster. Running around at a reasonable outside temperature of 40 degrees F, with the HVAC turned off, I turn on HV mode and watch the ScanGauge. FYI - ICE runs around 1500 rpm until the WT reaches approximately 140 degrees F. Then ICE will spin up to attempt to recapture any battery loss while it was warming up. Normal operating WT on mine is about 179 degrees F. At normal operating temp, turning on the HVAC causes an immediate drop in WT. I've seen it go from 179 to 150 in about 15 seconds as the heater core dumps its coolant in with the regular coolant. It stabilizes and then returns to normal operating temp a few minutes later.
