Clarity Issues

I have been driving a loaner Clarity for 4 days. When I picked up my new one today, it didn't act at all like the loaner. The battery was not charged, but the loaner had not been either. When I pushed on the gas, the engine whined like it was stuck in first gear. I know these don't actually have gears, but that's what it sounded like. The car had almost no acceleration, even in Sport mode. The salesman was with me and when I told him it didn't feel right, he had us drive the loaner. As soon as I drove that one off the lot, he could tell the difference. We took it back to their service area and he was told that they just needed to charge the battery. I had to bring the loaner back home.

While I was driving the new car in Sport mode, I pushed the accelerator past the indent and immediately smelled burning rubber or plastic. It went away when I backed off the pedal, but I'm concerned that I may have damaged the car. The salesman wasn't concerned about the smell at all. If they get the car so that it runs like the loaner, should I be concerned that it may have problems later? I really don't like the black on black of the loaner, but it runs great. Did anyone else have problems when you picked up your cars?

 

We haven't had any problems. The battery was only about 25% when we bought the car and we had to drive it home 220 miles so most of the first day we had it was pure hybrid mode. No one has mentioned the noise you speak of like a stuck gear. The only noise I hear it the weird hum it makes on purpose when under 5mph for the sake of pedestrians around the car.

 

This is not the slow singing that it does in the parking lot. Is definitely the engine revving. And it was a higher pitched sound than the loaner makes when it revs. And the car just didn't want to go when I pushed the gas. Again like it was stuck in low gear.

 

As another datapoint, we didn't have any issue like that either when we picked up our new Clarity.

 

I'll mention that I've heard it. Once it occurred when I intentionally put the car into HV Charge mode. High RPM resulted. Today, on the way up the mountain (from sea level to 5,000 ft) after the EV range dropped out, the same High RPM was a result. So, while I wasn't in the other car, that was mentioned I can say that there is a horrendous sound that comes from the engine when it's under strain. You likely will never hear it if you remain in EV for the bulk of your driving. Try out the HV Charge mode and see if you get that high ICE RPM. I have a feeling what triggered the high R's today was running out of EV range while heading up an extended uphill at relatively high speed. Once I hit the last section with switchbacks and curves, speed was much reduced and so was the engine noise. I'll have to say that even my Prius PHEV didn't have that kind of engine wind up… and I've made the same trip in that car many times.

 

Hi @barnesgj - looks like I am experiencing something very similar with our Clarity. It is about 500miles old now (majority of it driven in EV mode), but every time I enable HV mode (or the EV range ends), I get the high pitched 'ICE' grumble, lot of revving, and very slow throttle response. I have been confused about this for a few days now - I had test driven another Clarity before buying this and had not observed this behavior at all.

Given how little my dealership knew about this car (they don't even have any in stock right now to compare with), I am not sure how to approach this issue with their service center......

 

Yes, this is exactly what I experienced. Am concerned that if I take delivery on the car tomorrow when it has a full battery charge, it won't exhibit the same symptoms until the charge is depleted and I own the car.
Thanks for your input.

 

I'm not sure it's an issue as much as that it could just be a feature. It will be interesting to see how this goes. My conjecture is that it's a symptom of too much vehicle weight being pushed by too small of an ICE. That portion of the drive train is 103HP @ 5500RPM, so it's going to whine when it's pushed by itself. What I don't know is what role the electric motors play once the battery is out of EV range. It'll go into HV mode, but that also means there'll conceivably be instances where the ICE is doing the bulk of the pulling. The car won't go back into EV mode, but according to what I'm finding with charging, there are about 2kW left in the battery when EV = 0. This makes sense because the car will need sufficient juice to run itself in hybrid mode. If the system works the way I think it does, then the second motor is recharging the battery for use by the hybrid system, but it's never charging more than minimally. I think in HV Charge mode, the ICE contributes to the charge as well. Too bad there aren't some Honda engineer types on board here. Having access to someone at Toyota was really helpful during the early days with the Prius PHEV. I wonder if there's anyone at the Honda HQ in Torrence, CA who might be amenable to taking some of these questions…

 

I may be wrong, but I thought I read that the car is always propelled by the electric motor and the ICE, when running, was there simply to provide power to the electric motor when the battery was discharged.

I might be totally off-base.

 

Then the question is why would the loaner Clarity operate differently. When I drove it back to the dealership, it had 0 charge. Unless the new one just off the boat didn't have the residual 2 kW, maybe.

 

This would be one of the questions a Honda engineer could easily answer for us. My sense is that the 2kW are always there - constantly being regenned when EV range is depleted. However, the rubber/plastic burning and the other observations still seem concerning. Unless somehow the electric brake was on…

 

This is how the Volt works, I'm not sure Honda PHEV uses the same protocol. In some situations, the ICE does act as a direct power source. That's what I think is happening when the over revving is heard. It'd be nice to know from Honda engineering what 'situations' would result in the ICE acting as a direct power source. I can speculate, but without data, it's just that, speculation.

 

You've all triggered a faint memory - when we first took delivery of ours, the motor sounded like it was going to bust a gut it was straining so hard - but there was no charge at all - on the way home it got up to 20% battery and it was running smooth and quiet, even though it was still in HV mode. When I took my one HV trip (180 miles round trip), it was HV all the way to the destination; very little battery drop; no real motor noise in the cabin. I think (or is that a SWAG) that if the ICE is primarily driving the generator to provide electricity for the electric motor, it is a lot smoother sailing than when it is directly coupled.

I have got to believe there is going to be quite a shakedown period for all of us over the next 12 months with such a new design.

One great note - according to my Level 2 charger I've used 92 kWh over the last 407 (all EV) miles. At $0.12/kWh, that's approximately the equivalent of 4.33 gallons (at $2.55/gal here). A measly 94 mpge for my commuting (and that includes two weeks of the coldest days since last winter - of course here in West Texas that means 36H/16L). What I dread is the impact of all those upcoming summer 100 days from June-August.

 

PS - anyone heard about a solution for the Climate Remote killing the SiriusXM radio?

 

This may be a shot in the dark, and study carefully what it resets first:

 

I had another instance of no XM radio after preheating the car. This does seem to be an inconsistent issue in that sometimes we can preheat and still have the XM radio function while returning to the car.

However this time, with no XM radio, I held down the radio power button to reboot it, and that worked. This was while driving, so this does seem a preferable alternative to pulling over, turning the car off & on.

 

What temperature was it? I didn't like the Clarity on my initial test drive as it was cold and the battery was dead. This meant it didn't have much power and would rev like crazy and wasn't very fun to drive even in Sports mode. The smell was there too, but only burning off new car garbage, probably hardest engine has been run. It doesn't smell like that any more.

I think the issue is the Clarity doesn't have a battery heater in the US so if the charge is low and it is running on gas, it has to run the battery hard. If it is cold out it compounds this as it also can't draw into the battery buffer much to assist acceleration so the engine revs really high.

It isn't possible for you to control the engine RPM, so it should remain in a safe range, or it is a flaw in Honda's design (nothing you can do about it). It is disconcerting though, so if you don't like it when it does it you can probably make a video of it when the car does it and complain at dealer again.

 

It was in low 40s when it happened, but was in the 20s the night before.

I picked the car up today with a full charge and it had great acceleration with normal engine sound. I drove enough for the charge to drop to 0 on the display and it did not revert to the revving. I think it's going to be okay, but I had a talk with the dealership owner and the service manager and they are aware of the situation if it happens again. They also gave me 3 years of free service to compensate me for the inconvenience.

I really like the crimson and beige combo and am glad I didn't keep the black. So far, it's a great car.

 

For most of the nation, the current temperatures will be the "acid test" to see if your PEV really does have enough electric range for your daily driving needs! Of course you can always just drive slower to eke out more range if the car doesn't have quite enough "juice".

 

If I recall correctly what I read recently, altho the Clarity does not have a dedicated electric resistance heater for the battery pack, it does use heat from the ICEngine to heat the battery pack. So just as with the Volt, if it's really cold then the car may run the gas motor for a few minutes -- just a few -- to heat up the battery pack.

Many PHEV buyers bought their car with the intent of restricting themselves to the car's rated EPA range, and thus avoid using gas on a daily basis. For example, you can see discussions on Volt forums filled with posts on how to avoid having the Volt start up its gas motor to heat up the battery pack on cold days.

So I can sympathize with those who bought a PHEV with the clear intent of not burning any gas except in extraordinary circumstances, now faced with the reality that the car is going to start up the gas motor every time they turn it on when it's cold outside. However, let's keep in mind that such cars only burn gas for a very few minutes, and only a small fraction of a gallon, under such circumstances. So it ain't ideal, but it's still far, far better than driving a regular gasmobile!