Fuel Economy Calculation Ignores Electricity Use

I haven't noticed anything that reports this but if you ever find it please post and let us know.

 

Yup, you're right, it's completely ignoring electric consumption and treating it as infinite ICE mileage. I wish they would account for it as MPGe or something.

 

The Volt did that originally as well (and still does, but offers both now). The Gen 1 Volt had a giant "250 MPG" printed on the display when running on mostly electricity, and also tracked "Lifetime MPG" without considering electric usage. Marketing garbage as it doesn't really mean anything other than maybe how much gas you are not using. MPGe is more meaningful as it is total energy used, including charging inefficiencies.

Tracking efficiency with only half the picture is like saying I can walk to work in 20 steps (from my house to the car, and the car to work door), ignoring the fact that I drove 5 miles. Although technically true, if I tell someone that without mentioning the drive it is very misleading.

 

Headaches Honda is avoiding:
Clarity owner A: My Clarity gets 3.3 m/kWh.
Clarity owner B: WTF, my Clarity gets only 3.1 m/kWh; I'm taking it to the dealer to be checked out.
Clarity owner C: my Clarity used to get 3.3 m/kWh but after a year, just 2.9; I'm starting a class-action lawsuit.

Interestingly, my gen 1 Insight is the only Honda to offer a lifetime MPG read-out. Now you get "Lifetime Points" and trees that grow green leaves. Precise metering of efficiency would be nice, but it isn't in Honda's best interest. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to call up the info screens the Clarity PHEV's developers certainly used as they fine-tuned the car's performance?

 

It is one of my complaints with the Clarity vs the Volt, but honestly it will confuse most people and Honda wanted to make it a normal of car as possible. I would still like to see it on infotainment display though, I am sure the car already calculates it.

 

I don’t think this is indemnity issue, as we all get different actual mileage than EPA label (which is independently tested).

I suspect this is a complex calculation as the software needs to track battery charged by electricity vs the engine vs traction. Thats only one side of the equation, then it needs to track consumption and which one to be debited against (electricity charging vs engine charging). Very likely the charging differentiation is not recorded hence there is no way to accurately calculate consumption. With some assumptions the software can report calculate miles driven on electric use between each plugin intervals and log it somewhere like say last 10 records.

But MPGe calculation should be done, which it seems to report but it’s way off from actual

 

I kinda see you point here. I would be happy(er) if it displayed how many kWh of electricity was used to charge it from the charge port. I guess I could keep my Kill-a-watt always monitoring.