Honda Clarity, the Volt Challenger

I watched this the day it came out when I was trying to find as much info on the Clarity as I could. Since then I have watched most of their videos and subscribed to their channel. They do a good job.

 

Obviously looks are subjective, but I just can't see how somebody could think this car is 'ugly'. I really like the looks.

 

It seems like most actual buyers either like the looks, or don't care so much. I am curious to see how January and February sales go. Naysayers may be surprised if Clarity sales take off.

I think it looks a little "funny", but I'm also getting used to it. I have the silver one and like to think what it would be like if it were DeLorean aluminum.

The best one I read somewhere (Volt group? or, here?) was that the Clarity looks like what folks in the 1980s thought a scifi car of the 2000s would look like.

 

I have yet to have a person I met even suggest it looks “weird” or “futuristic” even. And my circle of friends pull no punches.

 

Parked next to a Crossfire the other day. That was interesting.

Also had someone plug in next to me recently. They couldn't see the back of the car, and they couldn't tell whether it was an Accord or a Civic. They were pretty flabbergasted when I said, "Neither". I gave them a quick primer on the Clarity family - Fuel Cell / EV / PHEV - not sure they were impressed, but they remained flabberbgasted that the car was neither an Accord nor a Civic. Pretty funny.

 

The more I see the Clarity the more I like the looks. It's just great to exit the house and see the car parked in the garage. No ugly here.

 

I’ve had exactly the same experience. The worst comment I got was someone saying, that although they thought the car was good looking, they didn’t like the partially covered rear wheels. That I can understand. But everyone else seems to genuinely like the looks.

I had scuffed up a rear wheel several weeks ago and took it to a shop that refinishes wheels. The guy had never seen a Clarity, and after doing a slow walk-around, he proclaimed, “I like it, it looks like an Accord on steroids, very aggressive”. I construed that as a positive comment.

 

To me the Clarity looks much better in person than in pictures. When I first started researching the car online, I thought the rear was "livable" but seeing it in person for the first time I actually thought it was decent, and more than made up for by the striking front end.

If any of you are Redditors someone has asked whether the ICE kicks in at highway speeds. His dealer apparently gave him inaccurate information about that, and others are chiming in and poo-pooing the Clarity in comparison to the Volt. I've tried providing some 'clarification' myself but if any of you would like to offer your experiences or just upvote the accurate posts, here's the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/7tij4m/phev_speed_range_in_batteryonly_mode/

 

My only complaints about the looks are too many body panel lines on the sides, especially the rear 1/3 of the car, and the bumpers have too many unnecessary angles in weird places. Oh, and there is a weird angle jutting out on the front headlights that if looked at from a certain angle makes it look like your headlight is cracked. It freaked me out one time. But those are minor quibbles.

 

This is definitely the most troublesome car to handwash that I've ever had!

 

It's also tough to dry coming out of a commercial carwash. After the carwash guys dry it, water keeps dripping from all different panels as I'm driving. Much of this seems to come from the trunk lid. I invariably pull over to a parking lot and dry it myself for another 10 minutes.

 

This is probably more of a Clarity Issue, but what the heck: yesterday I was putting grocery bags in the trunk and when I was done I cracked my head on the stupid latch hanging from the inside of the trunk lid, so be careful! (At least there was plenty of space in the trunk for more groceries if I needed it...and my unconscious body)

 

I've banged my head into that thing too! Awful!

 

Obviously Tiralc's head and yours are too big!

 

I think Honda went conservative with the battery pack. They didn't want to allow high current draws at full power any time. Since there have been issues in the past with batteries in vehicles (Leaf notably), wishing to have this car last 15 years or so, it makes some sense to limit current draw.

However, the design also allows full acceleration at any time regardless of mode or battery SOC by running in series hybrid mode.

My understating is the current Volt cannot do that since a low SOC wouldn't have any battery power to provide, and the max acceleration mode uses both EV motors to drive the vehicle. Meaning you can't get any energy generation from the EV motor while both motors are driving the car. So in series hybrid mode you would only drive the car with one small EV motor while the other motor is generating electricity.

Not to mention the size and weight difference of the vehicles, and price point.

I realized that this is probably the reason Volt has a mountain mode. This wouldn't be needed on the Clarity, it would run in series hybrid mode alone.

 

How about the latch that sticks up when the rear seats are folded down. It won't hurt your head, but it really limits what can be carried there.

 

The Volt has nearly the same performance whether the engine is running or not. It's just not an issue. The bigger issue is only having four real seats, and the back ones are small.

 

Altho it's possible what you're saying is true, I hope not because that would indicate some pretty bad engineering of this PHEV.

The Chevy Volt is engineered to operate with the best energy efficiency in both its EV mode and its gas-powered mode. In the gas-powered mode it's still using the gas motor mostly to power the electric generator, which bypasses the battery pack to directly power the electric motors. In other words, in gas-powered mode the Volt usually functions as a serial hybrid, rather than either charging the battery pack or directly engaging the gas engine into the powertrain. While it does sometimes directly engage the gas engine, when the battery pack is depleted and extra power is needed, that's pretty rare. And when the Volt does need to recharge the battery pack, to maintain a ~30% charge level, its efficiency is lower than when it's in gas-powered mode but not charging the pack.

What you seem to be suggesting, West1, is that the Clarity PHEV isn't engineered to run at its most efficient whenever the gas engine is running, and that in fact it's so inefficient that it's more efficient to use that to charge up the battery pack, despite the charging inefficiencies and the round-trip inefficiency in charging and discharging the battery pack.

I realize the Honda Clarity PHEV isn't the Chevy Volt, but I hope Honda's engineering isn't that bad.

I would prefer to guess, West1, that your car isn't properly keeping gas-powered miles vs EV powered miles separate when reporting those, which would result in your figures being off.

Of course, my armchair-engineer assumptions here could be wrong.

ICEVs work most efficiently when they are run with "wide open throttle" (WOT), which again is how the Volt's gas motor is designed to run. In a car with a carburetor, that means both the air intake and the fuel intake are wide open. But it seems rather improbable that a PHEV is engineered that way. (Well obviously not, since all modern gasmobiles use fuel injection rather than a carburetor.) Since we know it is possible to use the accelerator to speed up and slow down, the engine cannot be fed with wide-open fuel intake at all times. Logically, therefore, a PHEV running WOT must merely mean the air intake isn't being choked, but that the amount of fuel is still being regulated to control speed.

Again, I'm not seeing how the Clarity PHEV can be more fuel-efficient by using the gas engine to propel the car and charge the battery at the same time. From a thermodynamics analysis, that sounds impossible; it would be perpetual motion. That's not to say it actually is impossible in the real world, because no engine can possibly be built to attain the theoretical maximum efficiency, so the actual energy efficiency will depend on the engineering of that particular engine. But if it really is true that the Clarity PHEV's efficiency in normal gas-powered mode is so poor that it's actually improved by using the engine to simultaneously propel the car and charge the battery pack, then something appears to be very wrong with the engineering.
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I don't get all the hand-wringing over EV vs HV on the Clarity and Volt - my experience is purely anecdotal - but I just got 37 mpg on the first 180 miles and 41 on the last 120 miles of a 300 mile HV jaunt (average 75 mph on the highway). I plan to keep a close track on the KWh this week but I still think I'm in the 65-70 mpg range based on $0.12/KWh and $2.49/gal gasoline. I don't get the "superiority" of the Volt - similar EV, similar HV, and the Clarity is bigger, roomier, and better appointed inside.

But it's also not all about economics - its great to drive, quiet, smooth ride, large enough for 5 adults, and DOES reduce your carbon footprint. In fact, I love going weeks without running the ICE.

So I am going to just duck now, dodge the barbs (and corrections), and enjoy my ride.

 

I think I missed the original point when this started, now I'm kind of curious too. The issue may be: Is it correct that in HV charge mode, one gallon translates to 30 miles traveled on ICE as well as 25 miles of EV charge equivalent? (would need to assume some mph, temperature, and maybe level ground).

If HV charge can go to 12 segments (there are 20, but 12 of 18? because zero is the lowest 2?) it sounds like HV charge can do about ~9.5 kWh of ~14 kWh. There is probably some back of the envelope value of gallons of gas to kWh for the car (e.g. weight and aerodynamics, ICE, EV characteristics) as well as a mpg for some given conditions (the car, temperature mph, road grade).

In other words, there is only so much energy available from a gallon of gas. The energy for the miles traveled by ICE, plus the additional energy converted and transferred into the battery has to add up to a total energy that is available from a gallon of gas (including the various losses and efficiencies).

I agree that it would be highly unlikely that one could improve a total trip mpg by using HV charge mode. By definition (at least because of conversion losses), I should think HV charge has to be less efficient than the combination of EV + ICE following EV depletion. It is certainly more expensive, but that might be a different question.

For the moment, some of the range numbers are nearly worthless. It would almost take (even under controlled conditions, temp, road, mph, etc) careful measurement of fuel use (e.g. fill up, then immediately refill after some predetermined time, or miles, or recharge level) and kWh use, (e.g. full charge, then see how many kWh to recharge, factoring in a guess of recharge losses) to get reliable numbers.

I think a lot of the YouTube videos have nonsense numbers, because the test drivers seem to have no understanding (somewhat reasonable) of the problems with the Clarity displayed range numbers (which in some cases have no bearing on reality).

Ah, I think I even understand the earlier comment better now too, yes, what would be the point, if ICE alone, or ICE with HV charge, beats EV plus ICE?