Found an Unicorn!

Hello from another Nutmegger
Mine is Maroon. I agree, don't see many on the roads in the Northeast.

 

Not that much of a unicorn. I park next to one frequently at my university (professor) and there's another one in my Manhattan neighborhood

 

The kid at the dealer I took mine the other day for maintenance here in Vegas was all excited with the car and regretting "they only sold it in California". I told him "even worse, they discontinued it". I have received already two e-mails from the dealer asking me if I wanted to sell it to them at a very god price. No way, at least until the extended warranty is over or I find a PHEV with EV range near 50.

 

"...I find a PHEV with EV range near 50." --> Yep I think you hit the nail on the head. I didn't know about Clarity, but my buddy got a Hyundai Sonata PHEV new in 2017 and it originally had 27 miles of EV only range. In that vehicle, it's a bit more of a hybrid then electric because (at least here in Oregon one needs to use heat often), and the Hyundai always starts the gas motor to do so. Also today if EV range diminished same as in Clarity, I'd be at like 20 miles of EV range now.

I live on a hill, so when my car was new, the best I got was 47 miles of EV range, but that has drifted down to 36 presently. I really desire about 25 miles of EV range to do my normal commute and trips between charging. Anyway, since the number, even though lower now is still above 25, I'm golden. I can drive all electric and sometimes do for more than 1 month at a time. Of course, my longer distance/highway driving uses gas. But yeah, I can basically determine when/if I burn gas which is awesome.

I think the PHEV cars that advertised a lower EV range would still work for me (as in good hybrid) but I doubt I'd be able to do all EV say 4 years in like I do with Clarity.

-Dan

 

Is 48 close enough?
You’ll just need to find 3 more Clarity’s to trade in.

 

Really funny, I was thinking about also posting about the P440e. It just has an inline 6 that gets 16 mpg on premium fuel when burning gasoline. And it takes 38.2 kWh to get the 48 miles of EV, so less than half the miles per kWh as our Clarity. Hard to be happy with this, especially with the $106k pricetag. But yes, it is another PHEV with nearly 50 miles of range.

 

Yea I've seen some of the decent offers from Carvana etc and considered bailing mostly since it's been discontinued but I'm in similar boat that really ~50 is the target EV for me too. 40 mile one-way trip to work where there is free L2, and during the winter obviously things drop... Had a Fit EV previously but prefer the benefits of PHEV.

 

HAHA! Unfortunately I have a sort of short circuit in my brain that makes it skip over info on cars it automatically detects I could never afford...

 

Good to know! Range isn't everything... More reason to stick to my good old Clare. I should have said "until I find a comparable PHEV with all the advantages of the Clarity, or better".

 

UPDATE: Last Sunday I pulled into my church's parking. When I was about to enter a kid called me apart and told me: "sorry sir, can you tell me what kind of car is that?" I told him what it was and his face lightened up and he exclaimed: "I knew it! I knew it was a Honda hybrid! We were taking bets here on what it was, someone said it was a Cadillac, others that it was an Acura..."
I guess maybe someone would like to argue this is not a testament to Honda's absolute lack of interest on advertising this car and have more people buying it...

 

Hi new here and sorry to revive this month-old thread, but I have a question (or two). Reading this, I take it your Clarity battery range has degraded considerably more than I would have expected. I'm not sure what year yours is, nor the mileage, so that is one question. I considered a Clarity myself before settling on a 2019 Sonata Plug-In that I had to ship from California to Georgia. Was one of only two in the entire country through Carmax, Carvana, and Autotrader (within 500 miles of Georgia). I have a 50-mile work commute where I have access to six chargers right outside my office suite in our parking deck and in the shade and I have an L2 at home. I figured if I could cut the "gas" part of my drive in half, that would be fine; but the range would need to be 25 or better to do that and I wasn't sure I'd get it with a three-year-old car with 44k on the clock. Fast forward to three weeks in now and I'm getting at LEAST 25 miles of EV range if not 27-31. So my battery's range seemingly hasn't degraded at all. And this is with a mostly 75-80mph commute on major highways and interstates with the driver-only air setting on in Georgia summer heat. I'm pleased, but I'm interested to know what might have caused your rapid degradation?

Of course, I deplete my charge each way into work. I let the car sit and cool for a few hours prior to plugging it in and 2.5 hours later, I'm ready to go. I do this twice a day and I don't leave it sitting with a full charge if I'm not planning to use it within a few hours. Is there anything more I should know about taking care of the battery? I picked up the Maxcare warranty from Carmax since it's an exclusion list plan which is very good and local Hyundai dealers I would use tell me they've had no issues with them. I'm covered to 150k (which will give me four years), so hoping for little degradation by then. Would love to be able to get a couple more years out of it to 200k, but what are my chances?

 

Well, they sold a lot in California, but but for 2018 and 2019 they were sold nationwide. I bought mine in Austin Tx in the summer of 2018. Of course no one knows what it is because while it was sold here, I never saw an ad for it on TV. I do an occasional Clarity here in Austin, but outside of the Austin area, which is extremely liberal, I never see them anywhere else in Texas. My bet is because the Honda Element was a huge seller here, Honda figured the same market would consume some Clarity models so they were absolutely sold here. Just not many. I kind of enjoy the fact that there are not many in my local area. I am sure if I sold it, I could get what I paid for it.

 

To beliEver- So my Clarity from Day 1, never got the range others report. Although I live on a 1600 ft elevation steep hill which I know reduced estimated and actual EV range, I still don't get great range, so not sure my Clarity is a good sample. I'm not upset or dismayed, and have accepted my situation. In fact if my traction battery dies inside the warranty period, that would be OK with me, because I love the car, and wish to keep driving it as long as possible.

So my range hasn't depleted steeply from day 1 in my opinion. I would say my day 1 range was lower than others report. I say this too, because I sometimes spend 10 days on a valley floor, visiting family under good weather conditions and my range just never delivers the way others here report, but like I say, for me that's not a new condition.

So for my Clarity specifically, when it was brand new and under ideal weather conditions I would usually see about 43 miles of estimated and actual range. The best I ever saw was 47. I got a 52 once after coming down a mountain which I now know is bad data. So I went from say 43 to 36 over 4 years, and actually today my car was showing estimated range of 40, so I really went from new at 43, to 40. Anyway, hope this puts your mind at ease.

-Dan

 

Range can vary a great deal by driver technique, temp, and road conditions. First, I would say that I am a Hyper Miler in my driving style. I had an original Honda Insite and a Gen 3 Prius, and it was very typical for me to easily exceed EPA stated mileage. When I drive around my own town on city roadways I generally register between 52 and 55 miles "Projected" range but my trips are generally 10 miles or less and I charge after every trip. I use the range display and have my settings in the car set to zero the odometer at every charge so when I start my trip it is zero, and I use the actual mileage and subtract it from the estimated range remaining. This is not super accurate, but I think it is pretty close. The key to getting good around town mileage is using a long coast down when you know there are stop signs ahead. For such a heavy car, the Clarity has a good "glide." To a hyper miler, the glide is how well the car maintains momentum when you coast. There are two ways to cost the Clarity. The first is to use Neutral and the second is to watch the power meter and use light pressure on the throttle so that the car is not using energy but not in regen. As you get closer to the stop, let your foot off for light regen. The trick is to glide as much as possible. Likewise, I watch my traffic signals and the moment I see that the signal is going to change red, I go into glide. I use the paddles only if I started my glide too late to get to a crawl before the light changes.

On the highway, tire pressure, temp, and SPEED are what you need to watch to get decent range. Tires should always be kept at recommended or higher pressures. Do not depend on the tire pressure monitor in the car to tell you that your pressures are low. The tire monitor does not actually check the pressure, it uses the differential between the anit-lock sensors. If a tire is low, it will actually turn at a slightly different speed than the tire on the opposite side of the car. All of your tires can be low and this will not trigger the low tire warning. One has to be off by several pounds from the others. If your temps are not super high, you can run a couple of extra pounds. This will by the way, extend your glide. When it is cold, the air is more dense, so drag is higher, and you are going to use some electricity to heat the car. Best to use the heated seats and avoid turning the heather up to high. Last is speed. At 60 to 65 MPH on average terrain, you should about 45-47. At 70, this is going to drop to about 41 miles, and at 75, you are looking at 38 to 40, depending on temp mostly.

Interestingly, using Hybrid mode, again from my hyper miler days, I can get 85 MPG around town. Driving 60- 65, I can get about 48-52 mpg. Driving 70 will lower this to about 44-46, and driving 75 brings me down to about 38-42.

All cars will take much more power to move at high speed. As with any car made, the best ways to improve highway mileage are to reduce speed, draft if you can do so safely, drive so that touch the brake as seldom as possible. Set the radar cruise to 2 to 3 bars depending on traffic. On interstates between cities, use 4 bars. This will let you modulate your speed to traffic using the buttons on the cruise. The idea is that if you are gaining on the car in front of you, the cruise will brake, and you lose the regen. If you are gaining fast, click on the regen paddle to reduce speed.

Getting better than EPA on the Clarity around town is pretty easy. Getting better than EPA on the highway mostly involves staying around 65 (if traffic permits).