Hello my friends.....

I think it all comes down to wanting to use ev mode when you aren't on the highway. Say you are driving from your town to another town an hour away and 80% of that is highway driving where I guess the gas engine works the most efficiently. If you have half your battery remaining when you get on the highway you could switch over to HV mode and the car should maintain that half battery that you have left for as long as the car is in hv mode. That way you can switch hv off when you get off the highway and finish your drive in ev mode. That would utilize both modes at the most opportune times. Or you could keep it in ev mode until you run out of battery and it automatically switches to hv mode somewhere on the highway during your trip. You could then put it in HV Charge mode and charge your battery back up to 58% and again finish your drive in ev mode when you get off the highway. That is how I understand the uses for those modes anyway. Aside from the drive home from the dealer we haven't had an opportunity to take it on a long trip to try it out, so I don't really have experience trying this out yet.

 

Yea this subject has been brought up a number of times. There are those that think we can squeeze more efficiency out of the Clarity PHEV using the Charge feature. Others think that isn't possible. Whatever the truth is is secondary at the moment.

We did a test using Charge on a 300 mile round trip. Drain the battery, switch to HV Charge, then drain the battery, etc. The results were about 42 mpg, pretty close to the promised ICE mpg. I can make a clear case for improved mpg depending on the length of the trip. But my feeling is over time the average mpg won't be any better using Charge.

I forget which car I heard this about (Prime?) but apparently Charge mode was available for a PHEV one year but was eliminated from the feature list the next year. Apparently people didn't use it.

The question that has come up and isn't answered today is will the car live up to the promise of maintaining EV charge when in HV mode or not. At least one owner says the battery drains when in HV mode. Bummer if true. If that is the case, and you do want to drive around on battery power at your destination, then it may be necessary to use Charge mode, not for efficiency but just for the pleasure of using EV mode later. I'm wondering if that magic 58% charge level is part of the equation. In other words you may start out with a 100% charge using HV mode and the car will drain the battery until it is at 58% and then stay there. Just a guess on my part.

 

I can see at least a couple of legitimate reasons to use the engine to charge the battery. If you're going to be drag racing or otherwise stress the engine you may want some charge in the battery. I assume more performance is available that way. Also, just for testing. Say you are at a friends house and want to show off how EV mode works. It's perfectly fine to charge up the battery to show him.

 

If you press the accelerator beyond a certain point, even with a full charge, the ICE will kick in to provide extra power. That’s spelled out in the manual.

 

I kind of remember that at times, my Prius PHEV would go into ICE mode if the battery was completely charged up. Over time, others reported similar events - eventually we figured out that when the battery is full, it can't hold more charge. So the ICE will fire up to put it in HV mode. Most situations involved full batteries and downhill runs that created regenerative charging (that the battery couldn't hold). HV bled off some of the battery charge - apparently. Seems a little counter-intuitive, but there was data to suggest that's what was happening. Not sure if Honda uses the same protocols, but that might explain it.

As far as using HV vs HV Charge, we'll just have to do some data collection and find out. For now, it seems like HV will steadily bleed the battery down to zero over time while using the ICE and electric motor to move the car. HV Charge seems to share ICE power between wheels and battery regeneration, so high RPM. I've used this feature going on a long downhill from about 4500' to about 1000'. Over about 30 miles, the battery was regenerated with "18.4" miles and "17.8" miles (likely a combination of downhill AND HV Charge regeneration). However, I've only done that twice in a little more than a month, so it's definitely small sample size theater…

 

1. The battery does discharge while in HV only mode, but has been inconsistent, sometimes a lot, sometimes less.
2. After only two months I so hate hearing the ICE when driving around town, I use HV Charge to be sure I can switch to EV when I get off the freeway. It's NOT that the ICE is too loud (actually quieter than my Prius) its just that I have come to love the silence of EV driving!

Between my Prius and the Clarity I had a 2015 Highlander - I had to baby it even more so than my Prius to squeeze 16-17 mpg in town and 24-26 on the highway. So my Clarity is a godsend...

Still, at times I really miss the hatch and cargo capacity of my Highlander, so I would kill for a Clarity CR-V with 40 mile EV and 350 mile HV ranges - that would be the best compromise vehicle yet!

 

The engine starts in a couple cases. If you look at the speedometer, around the edge there is a blue bar arc. When you drive there is a white needle that moves along the blue bar. When the white needle reaches the end of the blue bar, you are requesting more power than the battery provide so the engine starts to provide the balance of power. The blue bar might be shorter or longer depending on conditions, like the below photo it is very short due to the extreme cold, in that photo, the engine is just about to start if I press the go pedal more. When it does, the EV text on the left under D will go away.

The other time is when the temperature of the battery is cold. Lithium batteries are damaged by heavy charge/discharge while cold so power is limited when it is very cold. I only notice it starting the engine with temps less than about 10 F and when the battery is cold. Unfortunately, US models don't have heaters in the battery so when temps are less than 10 F the engine will probably run most of the time (if the battery is warm it will often stay on battery for quite a while at those temperatures, but if you stop and leave the car for a bit it will cool off enough to run the engine). It still uses battery as well, but it doesn't draw as much power from it.

 

Yes that's the way it works. But I see you are in Sport mode. If you switch to Econ EV mode that blue line will be much longer and the ICE won't kick in until you push the pedal much further, past the detent on the accelerator pedal that you can easily feel (aside from the cold effect).

 

All the modes work the same way with the bar, if you exceed the bar the engine starts. You are right, the detent is nice for Econ mode.

The bar was short in this case not because of Sport mode, but due to low battery temperature. I just happened to be in sport, it will do the same in Econ.

What happens is it shows the short bar and starts the engine shortly after. This tends to happen when coasting to a stop at a light before accelerating again at very low temps.

I used tgat pic as it was one of the better ones I had of the blue bar with white needle.

 

I noticed a lot of time that blue bar won't change for me when I change modes while driving. I will switch to sport mode and the blue bar will stay just as long as it was in regular econ mode. Also, the one time I pushed past the detent while driving to pull out into traffic I couldn't get it to switch back to ev mode. I know it will let the engine run a bit until it reaches a certain temp but it was around 10 minutes and I had at least two-thirds battery remaining.

 

Same here - in fact, most times I push past the detent it locks in HV mode and will not revert until the car is shut off.

 

yea, I'm totally confused about this engine-off business too. I thought the warm up aspect would explain why the engine stays on so long sometimes, but I also see it stay on for what seems like way too long. I think we have another commonly observed issue for the Honda chat (if it can happen) or Honda feedback.

 

If only there WERE a Honda chat or feedback...

 

This is how the Honda hybrid work. It will answer all your questions.

 

Count me in on this too. I'm still trying to figure out how to consistently get the car to go back to EV only mode after the ICE kicks on.