Budget Battery Capacity Readout

Thanks to all who put in the hard work on this!

I hooked up my adapter this morning and got 47.4 Ah. Bought 7/2019, currently 40k miles.

Do we have a master thread of interesting PIDs somewhere? I tried clicking through.

 

This is my first post. I got a used 2018 Base with about 31K miles two weeks ago. This forum has been awesome far as learning everything about this car, so basically I don't have to ask any questions.

My battery capacity reading seems really high at 55.12 Ah. Not that I'm complaining, but that sounds too good to be true. I will say I am getting above the 47 mile range so far with the summer weather being what it is in the Washington DC area. I'll check again next week. And I'll update the google sheet right now.

 

Thanks, Mr. Fixit! The previous owner had it on a lease, was named Betsy (her iPhone was still in the BT devices as 'Betsy's iphone') and from her XM presets listened to oldies, 60s and easy-going music. She didn't appear to have changed any of the defaults either. Probably not one to abuse the car based on those limited facts! The backseat was immaculate and she hadn't even removed the peel on the glass partition in the back. You might be on to something in that she never or rarely plugged it in and drove it almost exclusively like a hybrid. She never reset the 'A' trip and it shows a MPG of only 52.1. The 'B' trip mileage that I've put on shows 199.9 as I normally stay within EV range.

Anyways, I agree not to baby it, been experimenting with the different modes and may stick with Sport mode with increased regenerative breaking. The family loves it for the comfy/plush ride, compared to the 2018 Civic SI I traded in which was comparatively harsh and low to get in/out of.

Overall, I'm really happy with this purchase. I looked at BEVs for a few weeks (was really close to pulling the trigger on a Chevy Bolt EUV right before the battery recall), and somehow this car came on my radar and quickly decided this was perfect for my situation.

 

Just a note to say thanks to everyone who has driven this "project" and contributed to this thread. It has grown to be an intimidating thread to read through, but as others have said, the reality is that it is quite simple to get this setup and running to read our car's battery capacity. I've added my data to the google spreadsheet. (2019 base, 18,304 total miles, 11,386 EV miles (est.), 49.86 Ah.) Thanks again.

 

Are you still having range issues due to the software update? I'm seeing pattern of range loss due to that software update. Just bought my car and can't crack 37 miles on a full charge.

 

There is no range loss due to software. The number is a guess or estimate based on your last few drives. If you drive fast, fast accelerate you will have a low estimate. It again is not the real mileage you will get that depends on a lot of factors, temp, using heater or AC, speed, incline or decline. My range is mostly in the 60s but when I drive at interstate speeds the next day my EV range is in the low 40s. It is due to how I drove the car last.

 

Her original post states that after the update, she never got her original range back. I highly doubt her driving habits changed dramatically right after the update. I'm well aware of how the GOM works as I've had a plug in and a full BEV since 2015 and know how driving habits/weather/temp/etc affects range. I'm hoping she replies.

 

This thread is making me feel a bit better about my capacity loss on my new to me vehicle.

36,432 miles and it was reading 47.48 AH

Still a bit disappointing how fast it's degrading compared to other BEV's that constantly level 2/DCFC and have over 100k miles and still have sub 10% degradation. I'm hoping that it's reached its peak degradation and it slows down to a trickle from now on.

Makes me think Honda didn't really know how to combat degradation w/ thermal management. Whenever I charged my GM, even w/ a level 1, you can literally hear the coolant cycling through the batteries to actively cool them as it charged. Whenever I plugged the Clarity in, no such noise happens, just a bunch of whirring sounds almost like a fan coming from the engine bay, which I hope it's not being air cooled during charging.

 

The big question: Do GM owners have a @MrFixit enabling them to track the health of their batteries?

 

Haha, no Mrfixit but they do have Eric who actually does real world tests and provides valuable information for Bolt owners.

I wish Honda didn't treat their PHEV customers like children who couldn't handle basic EV information in their UI. Bolt owners have the advantage GM giving them vital information to make EV/PHEV ownership as easy as possible.

 

Thanks for the nice post. I'm one of the battery baby-sitter
As my battery gauge was not dropping for several months now since the first time I read it, I was even thinking maybe my adapter is bad.
After some thought, I decided it was about time to charge to 100% then let it drain until engine kicks in, and then recharge fully again so that the battery gauge is recalibrated. I was going to wait for the 50 day mark since last engine startup as I think the automatic engine startup for gasoline maintenance happens after 50 days, but not have been able to confirm this yet.

Anyways, it took me 3 days to plan and follow a fully charge (finished charging 100% Monday morning 30 minutes before I leave home) -> discharge until engine kicks in (Tuesday morning half way to work) -> fully charge (Tuesday afternoon at workplace). After that, the battery gauge is reading 54.46 Ah now. It was 54.64 Ah ever since this thread started. I usually keep my charge levels between 40%-75% these days, but occasionally it'll hit 100% as sometimes my home charger looses internet connection and then looses its mind.

This is a 2019 Clarity PHEV bought in CA, shipped to OR.
Has 18k miles right now. These days it's 40-65F when I'm driving. I got actual 52 miles before the engine kicked in with one 100% battery. After the recalibration, guess-o-meter is showing estimated 56 miles left on EV range, but the temperature was 65F at the time so I think it is realistic.

Oh, when it was 100% battery SOC and I used max regen before a stop sign, the engine kicked in for 12 seconds to use up the additional energy. I'm thinking it was purely electric battery rotating the engine to use the power and not using any gas even though it sounds like a normal engine idle noise. Because it wouldn't make sense to use few drops of gas and heatup the engine for just 12 seconds, and that wouldn't help spending the extra electricity from regen. Do you guys think that's what's happening when you fully charge and go down a down-hill when your battery is full?

 

Thank you for this post! Didn't want to buy an Autel given the beta nature of the support, but I have the OBDLink MX+ and I can confirm it works just fine reading those extra "sensors" from Clarity PHEV.

Two questions:
1. I guess I ended up importing the sensors twice, because I now have them listed twice in the options, how can I reset that and re-import them again without deleting the app/cache?
2. I bought my car used, so it spent first two years in Southern Texas and now it's in British Columbia, when entering data into this spreadsheet, what should I enter?

I just wish this information were available when I bought the car used, so I could have checked the battery status.

 

What was the result of reading your battery capacity? Do you have one of the only Clarity PHEVs in Canada with power seats? You probably won't need the Canadian Clarity battery heater in BC, right?

 

46.02 (just added to the spreadsheet).
No, mine is the intentionally base model, we have dogs which are anxious to get out when we stop and my concern was that they would destroy the (faux) suede of the interior pretty fast.

PS. If anyone can recommend a Honda dealer with a great service/knowledge of Clarity between the border and Seattle I'd appreciate it. I've had a few cases where the car wouldn't charge from L2 chargers, there's an NHTSA advisory on that, but Canadian dealers so far refused to update/reflash the car.

PPS. Is it possible to pull the data on the actual EV vs gas mileage?

 

Some of the Chargepoint dual chargers still won't work with my car. We have a bank of 3 dual Chargepoint chargers where I park at work. One is notorious for not starting a charge no matter what you do. One will sometimes stop charging in the middle of a charge. The other one usually works. My point is that public L2 chargers are hit and miss as to working, with or without the update/reflash to the Clarity.

I keep an Excel spreadsheet with all the gallons of gasoline purchased and miles driven. With it, I can tell with reasonable accuracy the number of gasoline miles driven (gallons x 40), which leaves me with the number of miles on EV. Also with the estimate of number of gasoline miles driven, I can approximate the number of hours on the gasoline engine (estimated gas miles divided by average speed when burning gas). I also use this spreadsheet to estimate the kWh of electricity that the car has used. Here is a screen shot of the spreadsheet for our 2019 Chevrolet Volt:



This should give you an idea of what can be done to approximately track stuff just by keeping up with gallons of gasoline purchased.

If anyone is trying to figure out the strangeness of this history...
In Feb 2021, my wife had to start driving it to help out with her parents every week. This caused an increase in the gasoline use from highway miles on the trips. Then in late May it was in a collision which put it in the shop for nearly 6 months. There are about 3 gallons in the Volt's tank now. She started driving my Clarity in June which put more gasoline usage and highway miles it. Hooray! I have my Clarity back now!