When will the Clarity be tested, and results released? Why the delay? I have confidence that Honda would not release an unsafe vehicle, but why the delay?
As I understand it, these agencies purchase the cars themselves, rather than having them donated by the manufacturer, in order to make sure that they are getting a representative example of the vehicle rather than some special car that's been tweaked for testing. Therefore, they need to make the best possible use of their limited budgets, and only test around 60-80 cars per year. They can't afford to test every vehicle from every manufacturer, so they have to pick the ones that will give the most benefit. Since the Clarity is not selling in huge numbers, it's probably not a very high priority for testing, unfortunately.
Also, they tend to test groups of similar vehicles from different manufacturers together for comparison purposes. The Clarity PHEV is essentially in a group of 1. Remember, the Clarity was designed to protect two high-pressure tanks of hydrogen as well as its passengers. It's not a get-it-out-the-door-quickly design.
