Questions from a Brand New owner.

If you accelerate past the end of the [variable] white arc on the speedometer. I usually have it in Eco, so it's pretty hard to do that and there's a click you can feel before you do it.

Yes, or if you anticipate needing the battery later (more below)

Yes. This is most useful if you anticipate you'll need battery for later. For example, if you're going to be in a mountainous area later and the battery is dead, the 1.5L will struggle to carry 4 tons up those hills. HV Charge allows you to get the battery partially full while you're in a flat area (e.g., an interstate) so you have the extra power of the electric motor when you get to the mountain.

The atkinson gas engine is only efficient in a narrow rpm band, and without a transmission, there's no way to convert from that RPM band to the speed at which the wheels need to go. Between about 45mph and 75mph, when driving more-or-less a steady speed (not accelerating fast) the engine can be efficiently coupled with the wheels to provide extra power. The system does this automatically and shows the icon to let you know.

No idea, but why? Let the downhill charge your battery (or just use adaptive cruise control).

Yes, or when your speed is in the white zone on the speedometer.

Is that the info display or the speedometer?

 

The Clarity chooses what speed the engine runs and also chooses when it's most advantageous to connect the engine to the wheels through the 1-speed transmission. There is no reason why the Clarity couldn't have the engine running at the same speed with or without activating the Engine drive clutch. Of course in HV, when the Engine drive clutch is not engaged, the Clarity chooses the most efficient speed to run the engine and it is generally not the same speed the engine would be running if it was tethered to the road speed.

I don't believe the transmission is required to regulate the engine speed to keep it in its most efficient power band. The Clarity selects Engine drive mode when it is more efficient to connect the engine directly to the transmission than to have the engine generating power to drive the traction motor. Then, to complicate matters, the traction motor can still be assisting the engine (or even charging the battery) when the Engine drive clutch is engaged.

 

The gear icon means that the Clarity has decided that at a speed higher than 45 mph, it is more efficient to drive the wheels through a mechanical transmission than having the engine generate electricity to drive the traction motor. The Chevy Volt has a similar mode, but not the same 1-speed transmission. The Engine drive mode happens only when you've activated HV (Hybrid Vehicle). It's clearly the most efficient way to propel the Clarity or Honda would not have included the clutch and the 1-speed transmission, which add both cost and weight.

I created a chart to illustrate the various modes the Clarity can use in HV. I hope it doesn't make things more confusing.

 

For coasting, you can put it in "N"eutral. Just press the N button for about 1 second. You get NO regenerative braking while in N.

For me, when I work in-town, a few miles from my house, I pass through a light, up and over a set of railroad tracks (a bridge that goes up and over them, if you will.) On the downhill side over the tracks, I put it in N, and coast to just before I turn right into the parking lot. Leaving it in D produces too much regenerative braking, and slows the car too much.

 

You've gotten great answers to your questions.

As I like to say, never say never. You won't hurt the car by using HV+ mode but it's just easiest to say never as that will cover most scenarios. But.... there could be cases where it's not that bad. For example, I used it during a power outage at home so I could sleep in the car with air conditioning. And it was great! If the car is mainly traveling at highway speeds on level grounds, that is best case for this least efficient mode.

Charging from the wall is always WAY more efficient.

 

The blue and white lines everyone refers to are around the big ARC on the circumference of the driver information screen. It is not a speedometer, but a power demand gauge. As you press harder on the accelerator, you see the little indicator move right around the arc. (if you "coast", use the regen paddle, or brake, you see the indicator fall into the green area of the arc).

There is more than one line on the arc. When you are running in EV the inside e line is blue, but you can see at the end of the power demand there is a white area. If you are in ECON and push past the click point into this area the ICE will come on. Generally when the ICE is on the blue line will turn white.

If you are in HV, the blue line will Will be white.

There are a number of variations on the line thingy, dashes etc. As you have notice there are numerous threads referencing the line color. That's what they are talking about.

To change what you see in the center portion of the screen, press on the "I" button on the steering wheel, each press will bring up a different icon. Each icon has a submenu of multiple choices of what can be displayed. It mkes my head ache.

I suggest that you take the manual out and futz around with the choices try them out and keep the one you like for normal use.

 

You've got it.

Now I'll drag you kicking and screaming into one of my pet questions about the Clarity: How can it generate the 212 hp Honda claims? If you select ECON Mode, you can press the accelerator to the click point and the car will accelerate as fast as it can on battery power alone. Honda says that the battery can supply the traction motor with enough power to generate 121 hp (this is one of the three basic modes, EV drive). If you press through the click point and start the engine, Honda says that the combination of battery and engine-generated power can drive the traction motor to generate 181 hp (this is Hybrid drive mode). So that appears to leave only the third mode, Engine drive mode, to produce 212 hp (as shown on my chart--but it might be wrong). However, if you press the accelerator pedal hard while the gear icon is active, the Clarity leaves Engine drive mode and switches to Hybrid drive to produce the acceleration you're asking for. So when does the Clarity generate 212 hp? Some members of this forum believe that Hybrid drive mode can briefly produce 212 hp, but I've seen no verification from Honda. The same question holds for maximum horsepower quoted for Honda's lesser i-MMD hybrids, the Accord Hybrid and the Insight.

 

Contrary to popular belief it is not illegal to coast in neutral, although some states have laws against being in neutral on a downgrade. But even if it's not illegal it is not a good idea because it reduces control over your speed, if you need to quickly speed up or slow down you have to shift back into drive, something that can easily be fumbled in a panic situation.

But there is still a way to coast - looking at the power needle you will notice that it shows whether you are applying power to the wheels or in regen. Don't take your foot completely of the pedal, instead hold the needle in between those two and you are coasting.

On trips where you know in advance that you will be exceeding EV range, you have two choices. You can start out in EV and use it all up then do the rest of the trip in HV. This is the simplest and requires no button pushing or thinking on your part. However as you gain some experience with the car you will find that you will normally want to control which portion of your trip will use EV. A simple strategy on a long trip is to reverse things, start the trip with a full charge, and start off in HV mode and remain in HV mode the entire trip, then use up the EV range on the return trip as you are getting closer to home. You just monitor the miles remaining to home on the Nav screen and when the EV range and miles remaining to home are the same then switch to EV.

Keep in mind that each time you stop somewhere (rest stop, gas station etc) it will default back to EV and you have to remember to switch back to HV. It's easy to forget and pull out of a rest stop back onto the 70 mph interstate, then thirty minutes later realize that you just burned up all of your EV range.

Yes and because of this the gas engine can at times do all kinds of disconcerting things like racing at a higher rpm than you would expect, something that wouldn't happen in a normal car where the engine RPM has to match driving speed. So don't be alarmed when you are in HV mode and apply what seems to be moderate pressure on the accelerator pedal and suddenly the engine starts racing.

In other words at those times the engine is powering the wheels directly, but also generating electricity which is sent to the traction motor, which is also powering the wheels. This seems counterintuitive, you would think that sending all of the engine power directly to the wheels would be more efficient, as there are power losses when using engine power to generate electricity. But apparently for reasons that are above our pay grade there are times when this is the most efficient way to do it. Maybe it is more efficient to run the generator at a higher output than is needed for battery charging and then send the surplus power to the drive wheels.

Each press moves the menu to the right, or you can also use the arrows to move left and right. Also you can turn off menu items that you don't use, and also rearrange the order. I placed the two menu items that I use most often next to each other so that I can quickly go back and forth between the two. This is done via the settings on the touchscreen. And you can also rearrage the touchscreen icons, in case you haven't noticed there are actually several pages, just iike on a phone, and you can move less used icons onto a different page, keeping your home page less cluttered. In fact you don't even have to use the settings menu to do this, just press and hold an icon for a few seconds and then you can move it.

If you are using Nav or Google Maps the info screen displays turn directions, however while the turn direction is on the screen it blocks whatever information screen you are on. But you can just press the "I" button once and the turn direction will go away.

On a similar note, many people get upset when they signal right and the center display information is replaced with the camera view, blocking their view of the Nav screen at a moment when they need it. But all you have to do is press the button on the end of the turn signal stalk and the camera view goes away. Or you can go into settings and turn off camera view, and just press the button on the stalk when you want to view the camera.

 

Charge mode is good if you wont be able to plug in for a while. It gets your battery to 58% which is ideal for storage. In addition hybrid perfomance may suffer when your battey is depleted. The charge mode doesn't hurt performance but it can actually prevent you from going into that reduced power mode. Charge mode gives you more control over the charge level of your battery.
Every time i cycle through modes the battery range seems to drop 2-3 miles so if you have been driving a lot for 2 days without plugging in, then your battery could get close to 0%.
It is also useful in cold weather when you need to run heat. I use it much more in the winter for the heat and because battery performance and range suffer in the cold.

 

I haven't had an issue with this. I haven't had with any other car I've owned, hybrid or not. Granted this drivetrain is completely different.

No issues switching back to drive for me.

If you are in drive and accidentally hit P or R, it will automatically switch to N, too. Based on this, I don't think there is an issue switching to N.

Of course I'm not a Honda engineer so nothing is guaranteed, just my experience so far. I'm approaching 8k miles in 6 months.

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This evening I am going about 95 miles.

I will stay in EV until I get through town. About 3 miles and 10 traffic lights.

I will switch to HV for 15 miles until I hit the next town.

Back to EV through this.
When out if town, I will return to HV and will go across a mountain.
When I start down the mountain, I will do EV and charge as I descend.
Back to HV until my destination town, where I will switch back to EV.

The return trip will be the same, except I will judge -- based on EV miles remaining and Google maps -- at what point I will switch to EV to arrive home nearly depleted of electrons.

For me and my local electric company, I can fully charge my car for about $1.12. My current local gasoline is $2.29.

The last time I did this trip, I showed approximately 110mpg.

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Instead of constantly switching between neutral and drive, just push the go pedal just enough to move the power meter indicator up from the green regen area to as close to the line where power is added as needed to maintain the desired speed.

 

The car doesn’t shift into drive. The traction motor just spins when in neutral. There are no reciprocating parts so it has the same effect. Neutral is more like a mode than a gear with this car.

 

I found that jabbing the gas pedal while driving up to 45mph will get the engine to lock. You can tell from the immediate reduction of noise coming from the ICE. Car seems to have a little more pep in that mode, but could just be me..

 

There is. To coast with no regen press the accelerator lightly. Hard enough to get out of the regen portion of the power indicator but not so hard to use electricity. By learning to feather the accelerator like this you can be very efficient.