High speed, high elevation, mountain mpg

Had to look this one up and you’re right. Blurb from an online article below, and seriously how confusing.

“That's where the couplet of electric motors (so named because of their tight packaging) comes in. One motor--the propulsion motor--is used to drive the wheels, while the other is connected directly to the engine and is used primarily as a generator.

Under most driving conditions, the gasoline engine is used to used to generate electricity, which is fed to the propulsion motor by the generator. Weirdly, Honda calls this mode eCVT, implying that there is a continuously-variable transmission at work.

In this mode, the engine will either be off or revving in a way that doesn't correspond to road speed; surely a strange sensation for those who haven't driven a Volt (or, to some degree a conventional CVT powertrain).”

 

If you really want to understand how the Clarity "transmission" works, this video is excellent:


It has been referenced here before...

 

Still on my to-do list is trying to climb hills in "HV charge" mode to see if that'll be quieter than HV. The theory is that the goal of charge mode is to achieve ~55% state of charge by running the engine a bit more than needed for as long as it takes; but current state of charge doesn't influence engine rpm much. As opposed to HV, where the goal is to maintain some specific point of charge (set whenever HV button was pushed), and the engine gets angry when current state of charge moves too far away from that set point.