Possible to drive with no gas?

In new cars, legally the rated capacity is the usable capacity, so the usable in the Clarity is 7 gallons +/- 3%. Sometimes you can fill the vapor head with fuel and get a bit additional in.

Edit: maybe it can include unused portion as well, don't know for sure, but Clarity can use 7 gallons.

 

Someone already ran theirs out of gas and posted some results on the forum but I don't remember which thread it was.

You might be able to find it with the right search terms.

geo

 

Found it. The running out of fuel starts on page 6 and was posted by LegoZ...

https://insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/ev-range.952/page-6

geo

 

It took 7.141g to refill until the pump auto clicked off after I ran out. Yes the car will run but will yell a lot and tell you to pull over and stop as soon as safe. If you pull over and "reboot" the car and keep it in Econ mode it appears to work fine (no message on the iMid anymore) but a warning light remained lit.

 

As an experiment it's good to know what the car will do if the gas tank runs empty. But I always want a reserve in both the battery and the gas tank.

 

100% agree with you here. The HV range estimate almost burned me going from Little Rock to Dallas the other day and I came close to the end of my gas range and almost had to switch back to my last 10 miles of EV (set aside for emergency reserve). I am really ticked at Honda for failing so hardcore on such a simple idea. The indicated range should show an estimate based on if I hopped in the car and tool off how car could I go without refueling in one shot. It should not be an estimate on how many miles it thinks I can go with EV charges in between...

 

Oh, is that why Clarity drivers have been reporting that the range estimate the car displays varies wildly and shows completely unrealistic ranges? Is the car taking notice of your charging history, and estimating how many miles you'll be driving (including recharges) before you need to fill up the tank again?

If so, then as you say, that's not a very useful number!

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It's particularly bad because the EV range will visibly adjust constantly to your current driving style. This does make it twitchy if you drive up a short hill or something, but overall it does pretty well at keeping range estimates ballpark correct.

I haven't put any gas in mine yet, but I genuinely can't figure out how they didn't realize this was an egregious design flaw in early road testing.

 

That the problem I don’t think anyone even questioned it or cares. The whole car is blissfully ignorant of its electric side in all computations regarding economy. In EV mode you rarely get anything other than green for the Econ coaching, every drive racks up the highest score. The car just acts it’s a regular hybrid. I would bet if we towed it with another car four wheels down we could replicate this with no energy used whatsoever as my hypothesis is that part of the car has no idea of the energy used on the EV side.

 

I don't have a feel for Honda's corporate attitude so I have no idea whether they or their engineers care, but there's absolutely no way testers wouldn't have noticed this as soon as they put gas in the car for the first time they tried to do a longer drive. "Oh, wait, it sort of made sense while I was commuting, but I can't tell how many miles of gas I have left. This is no good at all."

It's just a matter of what interval they set it to average over, which by indications is "a really, really long time" instead of say the last ten miles of driving.

 

Yup, just did it this weekend. Was on a 250 mile trip. Was in HV mode most of the way. Was getting low on gas and I let it go to 0 when I was about 10-20 miles from my destination. Had plenty of charge to make it all the way. It was totally seamless. Didn't notice any difference when the gas range went to 0. When I filled up it was 6.9 gallons. Not quite 7, but that's because there is probably always a little left. Why do you say that the capacity is less than the advertised capacity?

 

That's one way to quiet the "angry bees!" You essentially inverted the Volt's engine-powered range-extender model by using your battery and traction motor as the range extender.

What warnings did your Clarity display when you first were running low and then when you used up all your gas? Did it advise you to pull over? Do the warnings go away or do they continue to nag?

 

You get the typical Low Fuel warning light that you get in any car. And you also get a warning that flashes on the dashboard screen. You can clear it but it comes back once in a while. You get absolutely no additional warnings when the gas is out. If I hadn't had my eyes glued to the display, I wouldn't have even known.
I think it just continues to display the Low Fuel warning. So if I actually kept driving until the Electric battery was discharged, I'd just be SOL

 

When you actually run fully out of fuel additional messages are displayed as it cannot restart the gasoline engine. I ran for ABOUT 30 miles AFTER it went to 0 BUT YMMV!
Fill up after this until pump auto stopped

 

I went 41 miles from indicated range of 27 and one bar on the fuel guage and running completely out. This was at 55 mpg on flat roads.

Here is after I filled up notice 380 on trip and it still insists I can go 502 in hv mode :facepalm

 

Hmm, I never saw that message at all. And as I said, when I filled up, it was only 6.9 gallons. That makes me think that even when there HV range shows 0, it can still go another 20-30 miles. So you really ran it down to the metal.

 

The car was unable to restart the gasoline engine and threw the warning. Btw 380 was with more than one charge, don’t remember if it was a full second charge up or not.