EV Range

Discussion in 'Clarity' started by TigerTown, Mar 20, 2018.

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  1. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    I applaud your experiments here, and your detailed publication of the resulting data! Thank you, sir.

    This certainly underscores the fact that even EVs are less energy efficient when driven by a "lead-footed" driver. I've seen some people -- all too many people -- claim otherwise; claim that there is no energy efficiency loss from rapid acceleration in an EV. Theoretically this isn't possible; the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that no reaction is 100% efficient, which leads to the logical conclusion that lead-footed driving and jack-rabbit starts will always, always be less energy efficient, regardless of whether it's a pure gasmobile or a pure BEV or (like the Clarity PHEV) something in between.

    But it's great to see some real-world test results confirming the theory! :)
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  3. jdonalds

    jdonalds Well-Known Member

    I think I tried Sport mode for 5 minutes one day. I was surprised at the increased acceleration, but realized I was wasting money so I switched back to EV mode. I'm pretty happy in the smooth riding, comfortable, quiet car that I know is costing me close to $0 to drive due to the solar system.

    It will be fun to make that 13.5 mile trip next Tuesday in Sport mode though.
     
    Dana Mitchell likes this.
  4. dstrauss

    dstrauss Well-Known Member

    Maybe I am getting too far into grandpa mode, but Sport mode is too sensitive for my tastes. it's not just the case of better acceleration - the accelerator is very sensitive and jumpy with the slightest touch, and if you have it in max regen, it accelerates and brakes far too hard over a narrow band of foot pressure.

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    KentuckyKen likes this.
  5. Same for me. 2800 all electric then first trip to gas station. 1000 miles.

     
  6. jdonalds

    jdonalds Well-Known Member

    Okay here are the results from my third Tuesday evening trip to church. These results aren't very interesting though, I'm planning a fourth trip with different conditions.

    For this trip this evening I started out in Sport mode with Econ off. I was trying to see how poorly I could drive the car in terms of energy use. What I did wrong was to really push the car, moving the accelerator past the detent as much as I could. That fired up the ICE of course.

    With the ICE running much of the time the battery wasn't doing all of the work, so the EV range only dropped from 46.3 to 33.2 which is 13.1 EV miles used for a 13.4 mile trip. This is better than the previous test but as I said it is because the ICE is taking up a lot of the slack. The gas tank gauge read 16 bars when I started, and 16 at the end. The trip was too short for the gas gauge to provide any useful data. That would have required filling the tank before and after the little trip.

    I consider this test a flop because I really didn't learn anything from it. My plan for next week is to once again use sport mode but to push the car as hard as I can without forcing the ICE to come on.

    A couple of comments:

    1) Man this thing has some great acceleration. It seems that much quicker because of the lack of an engine sound (until it kicks in). I'm just not used to it because we have Econ turned on almost all of the time and we driver gingerly. Acceleration off the line is pretty decent, but accelerating in the mid range (say from 25 mpg to 50 mpg) is impressive, even before the ICE kicks in. I kept chirping the tires when coming off the line.

    2) I was under the impression, from many comments on this forum, that the Regen level I set from the paddles while in Sport mode would be retained. But it kept kicking out completely or reducing the level. I didn't pay attention to see what driving conditions I was forcing that caused the Regen to drop like that. You can see it in the photos below. Every time I saw the regen level being low, or off, I'd reset it to the top level.

    Images taken at roughly the same distances as test 1 and test 2 (previously entered in this thread)...
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  8. loomis2

    loomis2 Well-Known Member

    The regen level always holds for me when in sport mode. I have never heard it acting differently until your experience now.
     
  9. Rajiv Vaidyanathan

    Rajiv Vaidyanathan Active Member

    I tried HV mode for the first time last weekend as I was trying to save my battery and while driving around at about 40 mph, the EV range kept dropping. Even on the highway, my EV range dropped a bit but the HV range diminished rapidly. So, in HV mode, it doesn't seem to maintain charge, but it just drops at a slower rate (even while gas is being guzzled).
     
  10. KentuckyKen

    KentuckyKen Well-Known Member

    I think I and others have found that it uses HV battery to about 58% and holds it there. I’ve only had one hwy trip so not 100% sure on this. Remember that 2 bars are the zero mark and not the very bottom of the scale, so it should hold HV battery gauge at around mid scale or slightly lower if this is true.
    How low did it let yours go in HV mode?
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2018
  11. ecosha.wa

    ecosha.wa New Member

    Thanks very much J for sharing your experiences and taking the time to document them so thoroughly. I've owned mine for about 10 days now and was worried why my EV Range was only 41 after fully recharging, but now understand that the estimated range will vary based on temperature and one's driving habits. I guess I was expecting that it would always fully charge to the same state regardless of temperature, and that the range one actually experienced is what would differ, but I can appreciate why it would be useful to have a more accurate estimate to begin with. In any event, I'm relieved to know that there's nothing wrong with the car's batteries, as the dealer was unable to provide me with an adequate explanation for the discrepancy, (they told me it was a vehicle setting I needed to adjust so as to fully charge the battery).

     
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  13. Rajiv Vaidyanathan

    Rajiv Vaidyanathan Active Member

    Someone else had mentioned that after doing a full charge, they switched to HV mode and it held the charge on their entire highway trip which allowed them to use the full EV range at the destination.

    So, that is not possible?
     
  14. AlanSqB

    AlanSqB Active Member

    That matches my experience. If I put on HV on the highway after leaving my house, the charge level stays put until I turn it back off again. This is how I drive when I commute to the big city for days I have to work there. EV at home to the highway, HV on the highway, EV in the city when I arrive.
     
  15. AlanSqB

    AlanSqB Active Member

    HV Charge will only charge the battery to 58%. That's a different mode than just HV.
     
  16. PHEV Newbie

    PHEV Newbie Well-Known Member

    From my experience, going directly to HV mode after a full charge on a road trip did not hold the full charge. I suppose it's possible if your route is flat and you drive at moderate speeds so the car can run efficiently the whole way with the ICE alone. I live in a region that is very hilly so I notice the battery supplementing the ICE often so it doesn't have to work so hard going up hills. Under these conditions, it doesn't maintain the charge until it drops down to about 70%, then it maintains the charge all the way to my destination several hundred miles away. While it was maintaining the charge, I noticed the EV range could drop by up to 5-6 miles temporarily, if needed to supplement the ICE for upgrades, before recharging back to where it was during downhills or flats. In this way, the ICE was never strained and the car provided outstanding mileage (about 48 mpg on my last long road trip after subtracting EV miles). If you deplete the battery, it'll depend almost entirely on the ICE so it'll rev like crazy on upgrades even at moderate speed so don't deplete the battery on road trips!
     
    Rajiv Vaidyanathan likes this.
  17. Lucien Mcleod

    Lucien Mcleod Member

    It is pretty quick believe me! In sport mode especially. I'm getting 49 miles on a full charge. I'm only 200 miles in. Awesome Ride!!!!!!
     
  18. Saguaro59

    Saguaro59 New Member

    I charge every night and the EV range is almost always 57.
     
  19. bpratt

    bpratt Active Member

    Now that the weather has warmed up and I don't use the electric heater, my EV range is usually between 55 and 57.
     
    bfd likes this.
  20. KentuckyKen

    KentuckyKen Well-Known Member

    The estimated EV range seems to be based on several factors especially past driving/charging.
    As a result it will vary considerably with driving style/efficiency, temperature (both as it relates to battery capacity and use of climate control, esp. heat), weather (use of lights and/or wipers), roads (flat or hills), speed (higher aerodynamic drag), and any non-motive drain on the battery (esp. heat and defrost).

    From Feb to April, and in temps from 40 to 70 F, I have gotten EV ranges steadily increasing from 48 to current 62. This is with practically no use of climate controls except for some seat heat early on and with 90%+ daytime driving. Also with moderate driving, limited driving over 55 mph, flat terrain, and no extreme cold or heat. So I consider this a baseline for what the car can do with no non-motive drain on the battery.
    I fully expect this to go down as I start using the a/c. Next winter I expect an even bigger reduction when I start using the electrical resistance heat/defrost for the first time. I have found the EV estimated range to track very accurately with the actual range. It’s never been more than a mile or two off.
     
  21. bfd

    bfd Active Member

    The way I understand the Honda hybrid system, it makes me wonder how the wheels would ever be driven directly by ICE at lower speed. The gearing just isn't there to make that work very effectively. If the ICE generates as much electricity as the travel consumes then HV travel shouldn't affect EV range. But if you're traveling uphill, or stressing the electric motor in other ways, then the system would use more stored energy from the battery - and possibly not return that power to the battery as fast as it's being consumed by the motors.

    I only say this because my experiences of going into HV for longer distance travel always seem to consume EV range up to about 35 miles. Then it holds that range indefinitely. But then I've also determined that those observations were pretty continuous uphill travel (going from 800ft elevation to 4000ft elevation). If I still had a longer daily commute on a somewhat more level trip, that'd be another test. I might then expect the HV to pretty much maintain the battery charge level. I'm not entirely sure what happens at higher speeds like 70-80mph which are pretty common around here despite the 65mph limit… at those speeds, the ICE could easily maintain speed and possibly generate excess electricity.

    I think that around town, at speeds under 50 mph, the hybrid system would tend to keep the battery pretty close to full (if it started there to begin with).
     
  22. jdonalds

    jdonalds Well-Known Member

    Was the Econ on or off?
     
  23. jdonalds

    jdonalds Well-Known Member

    Well I did test #4 tonight. Four Tuesday's in a row. But once again I found the results to be inconclusive.

    The test I attempted tonight was to drive as electric energy inefficient as possible. I put it in Sport mode and drove as hard as I could but it was just way too easy to cause the engine to fire up. So what I ended up with was a mix of EV and HV; not what I wanted. The engine is supposed to kick on when the power indicator pushes into the white zone. The trouble is it seems the ICE will start before the power indicator is in the white, and the power indicator seems to jump rapidly when it nears the white zone.

    Here are the results anyway:
    The EV range dropped from 50.4 (nice) to 37.2 which is 13.2 EV miles used for a 13.4 mile trip. But as I said it is because the ICE is taking up a lot of the slack. The gas tank gauge read 16 bars when I started, and 15 at the end. The trip was too short for the gas gauge to provide any useful data. That would have required filling the tank before and after the little trip.

    Putting the car in Sport has a dramatic effect. The car really zips along and accelerates much more rapidly than in Econ mode.

    Last week I mentioned the car would drop out of regen while in Sport mode, contrary to what is reported by others. Two things I noticed about the Regen behavior.

    1) The regen won't stay at level three in Sport mode if the battery is fully charged. For most this isn't likely an issue but one mile from our house is a 1/2 mile 14% grade that fully recharges the battery (which was just 100% one mile back when leaving the garage). Once the battery charge drops a bit then regen will work normally.

    2) ACC mode kills the regen in Sport mode. I know it may seem silly to use ACC on a 13.4 mile round trip in the city but I do like to play. This is the main reason regen kicked off during my Sport mode drives.

    So what's left? Nothing. I have no more tests to run. The only thing I've really proven is the car can squeeze out much more efficient power use in Econ mode with careful driving habits. But we knew that already.

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