ICE comes on when car stopped, every day during driving

When my Battery is full and in these kind of circumstances if ICE comes on, I have pulled over car when possible , shut down car altogether and restart.
This has solved problem 70% of the time. reminder 30%, I see that still engine comes on even after restarting car again.
I have also seen that if your tank is full , the engine comes on more often too as compare to 75 to 50% tank level.

 

For two of the times it happened to me when I pressed hard on the accelerator, I was at around 60% charge and less than 60% gas. So not full tank nor full battery.

 

I charged overnight so the battery was full. Drove to Lowes 4 miles away with no issues. I normally drive with none of the modes on. After leaving the store I stayed in the parking lot for about 10 min with the car on and AC on. As I was leaving the parking lot I noticed what Kranberry described. Engine continuously on (mildly), EV icon off, power meter (tach?) all white. I tried the HV mode and engine turned off and some of the blue came back. Turn it off, all white again, and the engine is on again. I took two more short trips afterwards but this didn't happen again.

 

I had this problem because the beginning of my commute is downhill. I have found that do NOT touch the regen paddles at the beginning of the drive. Accelerate normally and do not coast on your brakes long, stop a little harder than usual so it will use your brakes. I only have to do this for my first downhill and I'm fine after.

 

There are a few possible reasons it could start, these are listed in the manual.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Auto Engine Stop/Start
The car will select the appropriate source of power depending on the drive mode you select.
As a result, the engine will automatically start or stop as needed to either charge the battery or provide supplemental power.
Under certain circumstances, the engine may turn on or, if it is already on, it may not turn off.
● You are going uphill or accelerating aggressively.
● The climate control system is in heavy use.
● The Ambient temperature is too hot or too cold.
● The High Voltage Battery state of charge is very low.
● The vehicle is running a system check.
System Check
When the engine initially starts (between the time the POWER button is turned on and turned off), the vehicle conducts a system check.
● While the check is being conducted, the engine may periodically turn on and off. This, however, is normal.
● The curved blue line in the POWER/CHARGE Gauge will not appear during the system check (EV indicator may still turn on).
● Once the engine starts, it will continue to run until the system reaches operating temperature.
The curved blue line in the POWER/CHARGE Gauge will reappear once the system check is completed.
2 POWER/CHARGE Gauge (P122)

 

so i think at any SOC and in any mode, if the accelerator pedal is pressed far enough to engage both the battery and the engine for power, the car automatically goes into a "HV+low battery" mode. Which turns EV icon off, power meter turns all white, and the engine runs at low revs continuously even when stopped and at full charge. Maybe to be ready for further hard acceleration or for some other sensible reasons. If you keep on driving but with a light pedal then things eventually goes back to normal. I've convinced myself that this is a feature and not a bug.

 

I would like to add my experience as being a recent convert from GM BEV/PHEV.

I've owned the car less than a week and the ice coming on while not in HV mode has happened at least 3 times and it's a bit infuriating to me as the reason I bought a PHEV is because my work commute is only 4 miles one way, so burning gas for such a short trip never made sense to me.

The specifics of the trip are leaving the house around 7:50 AM, temp is about 65F, battery has about 20 miles left so it's not full and I'm driving normally, didn't come close to pressing the accelerator past the detent. Also I ran the car on HV mode the day before as I had a longer trip and didn't want to waste my battery and the tank was just recently filled when I bought the car.

IMO, GM's EV mindset is far and beyond superior to Honda's as I could run my Volt hard and the ICE would never come on until I ran out of battery. But the necessity of needing a bigger car with more modern features(ACC for me) I had to look towards the competition.

I don't regret buying the Clarity. It's bigger, has better features, the quality is on another level, and I do trust Honda's reliability a bit more, I just wish some GM engineers could have schooled some of their Japanese counterparts on how to build a better PHEV.

 

You can use ECON Mode to drive your Clarity PHEV the same way you drove your Volt. I always drive in ECON Mode, I drive hard, and my ICE starts up only when the car thinks it's a good idea rather than in response to urgent acceleration. Wait, I forgot that I went on a 100-mile trip last month and enjoyed the novelty of HV and Engine Drive mode.

In ECON Mode, when the Clarity PHEV's accelerator is pressed against the click-point the car delivers its maximum all-electric 121-hp performance without activating the ICE.

The Clarity PHEV's click-point offers a quick-action advantage in ECON Mode: without having to touch any additional controls, you can press through the click-point in an urgent situation to activate the ICE, increasing the motor's output to 181 hp.

The Clarity PHEV's SPORT Mode does not offer any more electric power than ECON Mode, it just delivers it earlier in the travel of the accelerator pedal. Also, SPORT Mode and NORMAL Mode start the ICE before the accelerator reaches mechanical click-point. I would have preferred the click-point to work in all 3 modes, but it doesn't.

 

Thanks for the advice, coming from a GM that didn't really need an "econ" button I've avoided it like the plague. I will try it tomorrow.

But my point still stands that with such a large battery, we shouldn't have to compromise our EV only use to a special setting. It should just be all EV till we want to run ICE or the battery runs out. That's why I stated that I liked GM's EV mindset a lot better. I just wished they put the VOLT powertrain into their Malibu, I would have bought that over the Clarity any day.

That being said, the car in the week I've had it has been tip top except for one random screen freeze.

 

I live on top of a hill, when I leave as going down it, the engine kicks on briefly while slowing down.

 

I never have a problem keeping my Clarity in all-electric mode. It seems to prefer that mode no matter what I select (economy, normal, sport). If I get on the gas peddle then I can force the gas engine start, but not otherwise. So it's easy for me to drive all electric as much as I want.
[Caveat being coming down hill on a full-charge, yep, that can cause the gas engine to start. However, if one uses the break peddle and not the paddle that sometimes prevents the gas engine from coming on.]

On my Clarity, it's prone to what forum folks call angry bees (high revving sounds) if and only if EV range goes to zero. I've learned from experience to never let that happen. i.e. I manually switch to HV mode if I come within 10 miles of estimated EV range depletion, or for a long trip, just start each drive in HV mode to preserve the EV range. HV mode with some EV range left, never presents the angry bees sound.

Anyway, in the back of my head I've always wondered if Honda knew on some level that the car doesn't perform properly if EV range gets too low. In my case, it never turns into a "normal hybrid" when EV=0, it sounds WAY different than the HV mode when EV range is preserved. They also give you an HV charge mode to build back EV range as needed.

I'm sure there's some delicate formula for using electric/gas motors to get hybrid to work seamlessly. I think some terrain (i.e. I live on a steep hill) screws this up. This and certain terrain (repeated hills) causes the need for HV charge mode. It's as if the engineers admitted that for 80% of use cases, they got it covered, but they needed an option for the 20% of cases not covered.

 

Duh - I just posted a thread about this. In my case, I can reproduce it when:

* After fully charge and braking very soon after (only driving a few hundred feet at less than 20-25) with the paddles - engine kicks in
* Driving in EV (Econ) with less than a full battery (even as low as 3 bars left) but flooring it - engine kicks in

What happens next is ICE stays on and the power meter stays white and never ever turns back blue. The car works like HV mode and you eventually see EV mode turn on, but the meter stays white and any slow acceleration will kick in ICE. Select HV mode will bring the blue bar back with proper EV mode working, but switching it off, will make the white meter come back. Unless you power off the car AND wait for the Honda logo to disappear, then power it on, the problem is fixed.

I've driven the car like this for over 20 minutes and it never recovered as it should. In any case, it is not an expected behavior and more like a bug.