37 miles full range in warm weather? Is it charging all the way? Also charging issues on level 2

I’ll try to not confuse you for anyone other than the person who posts the words.

Perhaps GM will one day produce another perfect EV on a superior platform once they figure out what’s wrong with their current model.

I’ll consider myself an above average EV/PHEV buyer, since I couldn’t give two hoots about wanting an abundance of data from the car. A fuel gauge and speedometer are about the only necessities.

Sure, those Tesla hipsters and other BEV owners salivate over charging rates and such. Could you imagine a couple of goobers at the fuel pump saying: “This baby’s pumping 4 gallons a minute, at 25mpg that’s 100 miles per minute. Hell yeah! I’m gonna step over there and have a smoke.”

I didn’t buy this car to dork out over the technology that makes it work any more than I bought a motorhome to become a diesel mechanic.

Now, to your original question about 37 miles of EV range. For the first 20 months of ownership, I drove our 2019 in LA. A couple of semi-regular routes were Monrovia to Burbank and Monrovia to downtown LA. Both round trips were 45-46 miles. Out of approximately 200 such trips, I can count on one hand the number that were not completed on battery power. Those would have been situations where traffic conditions allowed speeds of ~70mph in both directions. Typically, the EV estimate showed 2-7 miles remaining and the battery gauge had 3-4 bars at the end of the trip.

In February of 2021, battery capacity was measured at 49.9Ah with ~15K miles. The car continued to make those trips in EV, through April. Given what you’ve told us about your driving conditions and habits, you should be seeing, and getting, more than 37 miles of EV range.

 

Thats my normal, I drive 50+ most of the time on highway with very little in city / stop and go traffic and get mid 30s most of the time, never seen 50+ and often just leave temp on auto ~67 degrees.

 

Yeah I really wish the pre-conditioning would reliably start for me. I have it set to run @ 7am and then always try to manually start it again at 7:30ish before we leave at 8 but the car is still cold most of the time we get in. Would save a lot of power to have it pre-heat from 50s -> 60s on the charger.

 

You can set a schedule from the honda link app, but afaik it requires the app to have good communication with the car which for my case often fails (very poor cell service, I use wifi calling as much as possible).

 

Yes, the ICE is very liberating. I’m sure your aware that in the Clarity, the ICE can both, generate electricity to power the motor and drive the wheels directly.

In the unlikely event that I ever feel compelled to own a BEV, monitoring miles per kWh would not be a concern. The car is going to have a certain range, under certain conditions. It’s just a pointless obsession over fuel/energy efficiency. What’s the attraction in stewing over such mundane data?

 

This is exactly right... The capacity times a nominal cell voltage (not the current cell voltage) is what should be used.

If you haven't already seen this - the Clarity has a quirky climate control. It defaults to automatic which means it will attempt to achieve the temperature seting on the display (by using heat if necesary, even when you dont want it to). For example, if your climate control is set to 75 degrees, and it is 65 degreees out, it WILL run the heater until it 'warms up to 75. The only way I am aware of obtain fresh outside air (AND not allow the heat to come on) is to explicitely turn the A/C to "OFF" (it usually shows neither on or off)... Then you also have to crank the temperature control all the way down until both sides read LO. Otherwise there is a chance that the heat comes on. The Clarity heater is electric resistance, and it takes a very large toll on EV miles.

 

I would think it would be based on cabin temperature. Even if outside temperature is lower than the set point I would think it wouldn't turn on heat as long as the cabin temperature is higher than the set point.

I just press the AC OFF button and it seems to work fine. Whenever I am running just the fan the set temperature is always lower than the cabin temperature, and usually lower than outside temperature.

Although if outside temperature is lower I suppose if I ran the fan long enough the cooler outside air coming into the cabin could in theory cause the cabin temperature to drop below my set temperature and turn on some heat, but for me that's not going to happen very often and not worth the extra steps of setting the temp to LO and then later having to remember to set it back to my previous set temperature to avoid getting a blast of arctic air the next time I turn on AC.

But now that you have mentioned it I will probably keep a closer eye on it so that I can shut the fan off if it reaches that point. I wonder if the OBD-II data will show if the resistance heater is running? That would be helpful.

 

I have always calculated loss percentage just from the Ah values. Ah is the only variable that is changing, is there an advantage to adding nominal voltage to the equation? I get the same result either way:

3.7 x 84 V = 310.8 V x 55.00 Ah = 17.094 kWh
3.7 x 84 V = 310.8 V x 47.48 Ah = 14.757 kWh

(17.094 - 14.757) / 17.094 = 13.67%

(55.00 Ah - 47.48 Ah) / 55.00 Ah = 13.67%

 

Nothing wrong with your math... If you are intersted in pecentage loss there is no differemce.
The reason to incude the votage is if you want to know how many killowatt hours as compared to Honda's specified 17 kWh rating.

 

Yes, it is based on cabin temperature. The point I am trying to make is that often it is comfortable enough outside (and in the cabin) that I don't want the heat to come on. If the car has been sitting all night and it is 65 inside and out, but the previous day, I was running the A/C with a sepoint of 75, I don't want any heat, but the car WILL run the heater in order to raise the temperature from 65 to 75.

Just pressing the A/C off is not sufficient. If you press A/C off, but leave the temperature setting at 75, it will run the heat (if the cabin is less than 75). Cranking the temperature to LO totally prevents the heat from 'accidentally' running when you don't want it to. This is especially true if you want fresh air ventillation. The ventillation is lowering the cabin temperature, while your setpoint at 75 is running the heat to compete with the cooler outside air. You don't have to crank it all the way to LO, but unless you do, you have to pay attention to be sure your setpoint doesn't cause the heat to come on when you don't want it.

 

There’s no advantage. I was simply explaining the correct method to convert Ah’s to kWh’s.

 

Yes I see now that the message that you were replying to was discussing kWh.

Also I agree with MrFixit that it's more interesting to see the comparison in kWh which most of us are probably more familiar with than amp hours, at least as it relates to our cars.

 

Ah’s alone, doesn’t provide very much useful information. Sure, we can say that a 50Ah battery that now measures 45Ah, has lost 10% of its original capacity. We need to know the voltage, as well, in order to determine the amount of energy available from the battery. Once we get to kWh’s we’re all using the same unit of measure.

 

I did a couple of tests and it may be at least partially based on outside temperature like you were saying previously. I found that HV Battery Current in Car Scanner gives a pretty good indication when the resistance heater is running. However this only works when you are parked so that nothing else is going on. It would show around 0.4 amps when the heater was not on (DRL's were off). I had climate running and AC OFF selected, and if I adjusted the set temperature upwards the amps would suddenly jump from 0.4 to around 7 to 9 or so, then settle down to between 2 and 5 or so. The reading bounced around a lot whenever the heater was on. It's understandable that it would be constantly adjusting the current going to the resistance heater, but it was rapidly swinging over a wide range several times per second which seems odd as conditions won't be changing that fast. When the heater was off things held pretty steady at around 0.4. I could also hear the heater pump come on which circulates the coolant into the cabin, the sound of the pump running generally occurred at the same time as the elevated amp readings although not exactly, for example sometimes the pump was still running when I lowered the set temperature and the amps dropped back down to 0.4, I guess it figured there was enough heat in the coolant already for the new set temperature and so it just circulated it. The pump itself seems to use little current.

In one of the tests the outside temperature was 66 degrees, cabin temperature 82 degrees (car had recently been sitting in the sun). I found that if I set the temperature to 75 or above the heater would come on. If I set it to 74 and below it would not. Now I don't know if maybe it is looking at a different cabin temperature sensor than I was looking at in Car Scanner, maybe for example there is a sensor under the dash that was reading 74 degrees and that's why setting the temperature to 75 caused the heater to come on. But if it was using 82 degrees cabin temperature then it doesn't make sense why setting to 74 degrees would cause the heater to come on. The only theory I have is that maybe they think that it would be less comfortable to bring in 66 degree air and so they add some heat to it on its way in. Like maybe they mix enough heat so that the 66 degree outdoor air is warmed up to the set temperature of 75 degrees, so that you have 75 degree air coming into the cabin instead of 66 degree air. This will still be cooler than the current cabin temperature of 82 degrees so it will cool the cabin, but it will just take it longer. Some people might think that this would happen pretty quickly as the volume of 82 degree air in the cabin could probably be replaced with 75 degree air in a couple of minutes or so. But cooling (and heating) doesn't work that way, as you are not only cooling the air but also the seats and dashboard and everything else which needs to be cooled down.

Second test the outside temperature was 51 degrees, cabin temperature 68 degrees, I found that a set temperature above around 61 degrees would cause the heater to come on. Again my theory is they figure that even though you are asking the system to cool the cabin down a few degrees, they figure that you don't want it to do that by bringing in 51 degree air, so they warm it up a bit on the way in. Anyway that's my attempt at guessing why the heater comes on when the cabin temperature is higher than the set temperature.

I should point out that my tests were done in Normal mode as that is what I usually drive in. It's possible that Econ mode may work slightly differently.

 

The temperature readings are not always consistent with common sense (I think your theory that there are multiple sensors located who-knows-where is a plausible explanation). I think your experiment has demonstrated that the heat will come on in circumstances that you don't want it to. To me, the most common occurence is when the outside air is comfortable enough, and I just want fresh air... I don't want A/C, and I don't want heat. The only way I have found to absolutely avoid heat and A/C is by commanding the A/C to OFF, and dialing the temperature setpoint down (I just go to LO because I can just crank it without paying atention). The way I look at it is if the A/C setting is neither ON or OFF, that implies "Auto", and it will apply heat or cold depending on what IT thinks you need (based on the setpoint). To avoid "Auto", I turn it OFF.