So that's what the Angry Bees sound like!!

I wish someone could get a decent audio recording of this angry bees sound. My motor has revved up before but it definitely wasn't alarming. It sounded to me like that motor was doing a double duty like charging the battery at the same time it was providing power to the wheels. Kinda sounded like I was "slipping the clutch" a little, if you know what I mean?

 

Higher altitude will increase the reving as you will lose a good 30 percent of HP and the engine will have to work harder to keep the charge. I visited Denver for a week and my Subaru rental was going nuts trying to do anything . Very loud, buzzy and reving much more . Its normal .

 

The engine is not necessarily charging the battery in this mode, it is in eCVT mode where the engine is revving to provide voltage for the traction motor directly. The traction motor varies its speed relative to the engine (the CVT part). Any surplus or deficit of power is put in or taken from the battery. Charging/Discharging the battery is not efficient so it avoids doing so if possible.

 

I think people don't know how CVTs behave (even though Clarity is eCVT it behaves the same as a belt CVT for engine RPM vs wheel RPM) and I think they are not used to economy small displacement 4 cylinder engines revving. A CVT revs the engine based on load, not vehicle speed. The Clarity can have substantial load on the ICE even at a stop if it decides it wants to charge the battery.

If you do a full throttle 0-100 mph acceleration it will behave just like a belt CVT. It will rev the heck out of the engine immediately and stay the same engine RPM from about 0 to 100 mph. It is weird sounding. People don't like that it doesn't sound like their automatic. As people get more used to CVTs they won't care. However, some companies hurt the performance of their belt driven CVTs by programming it to behave like an automatic (totally defeat the point of using a CVT at all).

 

A small gear icon appears in the center of the energy flow diagram to indicate Engine Drive mode. When that happens, if you can hear the engine, you'll note that the RPMs now vary according to the road speed, instead of revving at whatever speed it deems necessary to generate electricity for propulsion and/or recharging the battery.

 

If you want to hear some really angry bees (mosquitoes?) Listen to the CVT on our little 2010 Jeep Compass as we go up a hill. I have to remind myself that the car was free...

 

I actually was forced into ICE while on 100% EV charge! I had just charged my car, drove out of my driveway and down the hill with full regenerative paddles selected. By the time I had reached the bottom of the hill the ICE had kicked in because you can't regenerate too aggressively at 100% EV charge (ie: the electrons have nowhere to go and the car defensively kicks you into ICE mode). So, I would say that even in Eco you're never 100% in charge of the mode.

 

True. It depends on each person't situation. In our case we have a one mile flat section before a 1/2 mile 14% downgrade. Apparently that mile before the hill is enough to make a bit of room in the battery. The ICE doesn't come on. The penalty we pay is we have to go back up that hill on the way home which is often the worst part of our daily drive in terms of KW/mile.

 

I think this is a software issue. Somehow the car thinks there is not enough power and revs the engine. Is there some sort of battery cycle that requires high charging demand? For example load balancing between different modules. I don't know, it is just a guess.

Other than that the only thing that I can think of is if the engine is designed to operate in various rpms as a maintenance measure. If you run an ICE engine in a narrow rev range for long periods, it could be damaging to suddenly run it outside of that range. That is why the user manual in ICE cars encourages driving the car at various speeds and rpms during break in period. So it is conceivable to me that the engineers programmed the engine to run at high rpm once in a while as an exercise to keep it in tip top shape. But it seems to be too random and I haven't seen anything to confirm this.

 

What do you mean by racing? 3500 rpm or 5000 rpm? For a small engine in high altitude, it is normal to run 3000-4000 rpm to maintain 75-80 mph in a 4050 lb car. You can also try running premium, even thou in altitude you generally need lower octanes, this engine has a high compression ratio, so it might generate more power using premium.

 

My Clarity has been great overall, and never loses power, but does do Angry bees (quite loud, and full-boar) anytime EV range hits zero. To avoid this, I long-press HV to get 10 or more miles of EV charge, then go back to HV mode and all is quiet again. I used to get this condition frequently because my Clarity would drain (down to zero) the EV range while driving in HV mode (even on flat highway). Anyway, it didn't do it fast, but predictably. I'd get a full EV charge to go to zero in about 100 miles of HV driving.

Very recently (this past weekend), KentuckyKen suggested I reboot my car (by pulling a 12v battery terminal, i.e. negative). Anyway, despite some alarms that cleared shortly after driving around the neighborhood, my car permitted a 260mi trip without depleting the EV range. This is the first time since I bought the car that HV preserved my state of charge (SoC), which it is supposed to do (well say 50 some odd percent, or at least not go to zero).

I haven't done enough trips yet to say my Clarity is all better now, but definitely improved. For one thing (current temps freezing at night, and 50 by day) I was getting between 26 and maybe 32 EV range. After the reboot, same temps, my car is getting high 30's (i.e. 39 miles of EV range last night). Now maybe it will learn how I drive and reduce this with time but so far so good.

So- here are my notes:
- Some of us really do experience (or have routinely experienced angry bees). It is not a normal sound at all to my ears -- it sounds precisely like a 80's model honda civic manual transmission stuck in 1st gear, and traveling 40-50MPH. It's literally a winding out sound. It's noticible enough in my Clarity that passengers ask if my car is ok?
- In my case it doesn't rev down, then up again. It goes to high RPM sound (loud) and stays there non-stop until I turn off the vehicle to get a charge, or if I use long press HV to get a charge.
- I'm hoping since rebooting my clarity I'm done with all this angry bee nonsense.
- My experience *is not* the same as everyone else. And frankly I wouldn't assume others in the forum all see what you do. It all depends.
- So in my case angry bees is completely predicable, only happens with EV range = 0.

-Dan

 

When the battery is fully charged, the regen energy from the traction motor is dispensed by making the starter motor/generator try to slow down the running engine. See this thread.

 

I think the distinction is important. Since the car can turn the gas engine on in some circumstances, it's not a pure EV mode. The term "Econ" is what we should be using.

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Also, it's good to make the distinction because there actually is an EV Drive mode, which only the Clarity's computer can select. EV Drive mode (battery-only), along with Hybrid Drive mode (battery + ICE) and Engine Drive mode (battery + ICE connected to transmission), are the underlying basic i-MMD modes the Clarity uses to implement the modes drivers can select.

 

All the above posts are true and I agree with them.
But I can select ECON and the car will keep itself in EV except for the infrequent and short System Checks and the no regen-full battery-calls for ICE (which I have learned to avoid by using pedal and not paddle). Thus I have driven over 6 months and 4,000 miles locally with only a loss of 8 miles of HV range and no loss of gas gauge bars or need to refuel. That’s at least 99.8% EV. So technically it’s not “pure” EV but it’s close enough not to make a meaningful difference.
So I tell my friends that the Clarity drives on electricity like a Tesla in town but with unlimited range on the highway due to its gas engine.
Best of both worlds!

 

Yeah, when talking to members of the general public, it's probably best not to use Clarity-specific terms like "Econ mode", but rather just mention all-electric (or "EV") mode vs. gas-powered mode.

The only reason I commented about this point was because when I first started reading about the Clarity PHEV here on the forum, I found it rather confusing because some people were complaining the gas motor starting up when they were in what they called "EV mode". It was only later that I read comments specifying that the driver can't actually select "EV mode", but only "Econ mode". As Insightman said just above, "EV drive mode" is something only the car can select for itself... not the driver.

BTW -- Congratulations, KentuckyKen, on your exemplary avoidance of burning gasoline!

 

Ken, just want to point this out as I see a golden opportunity. You've asked more than once in other threads why certain people, such as yourself, have never once heard the angry bees...and I have speculated it's largely due to differing individual driving practices. This statement from you explains to me with great clarity (I find that punny...sorry) why you've never heard them. Your driving habits simply don't require the bees to ever go to work. It most certainly is commendable, especially since you're doing this largely on solar as well. Kudos on your carbon footprint, you're making the world a better place.

To illustrate the contrast between your driving and mine, I'd say most every day our car leaves the home it is going 60 miles minimum (many days much farther, including many many 200 mile days and a dozen or so 800 mile days.) And 60% of even our daily local driving is on the interstate with 70mph speed limit and steady traffic flow near 80mph. Our Clarity has over 12,000 miles on it now, since buying new barely over 4 months ago. If this continues my wife and I will be 30,000/mile a year drivers in this car. (Side note I sold a 2016 Honda Civic with 74,000 miles recently, which I bought new, after 1.5 years of ownership...97% self-employed business use...but we are not using the Clarity much for business so this car will see less.) But our Clarity's ICE starts up at some point, almost every single day we drive it, especially in winter, because it needs to in order to support our driving style and distances. Bear in mind this does NOT mean wife and I get high revving angry bees every day. Frankly they're rare. But we give them plenty of opportunities to awaken, and we do very occasionally experience them, during certain times where we're pushing the car pretty far or hard in a day. I can assure you that if you and I traded cars for a week, you'd certainly never hear them from my machine with your driving habits, and I would likely summon them out of yours on occasion, without even trying. And I'd use up your old gasoline LOL. We fill our tank at least once every two weeks or so -- getting usually between 400 and 1500 mile range per tank, depending on how local we stay or how many long-day roadtrips are taken. We use electric at every chance we can, but we run plenty of gas thru the car also cuz we don't own a 75 mile long extension cord that stays attached to a moving car...

I do believe anyone who has driving patterns such as yours, and who does not follow and understand these threads as closely as you do, and suddenly changes driving patterns (like a vacation or very long road trip or change in workplace or whatever), could easily be caught off guard the first time the ICE is asked to truly go to work. I don't mean just turning on and running for a little while at low rpms and shutting off, like yours rarely does, but actually PUT IT TO WORK...hard. Cuz I admit it's really pretty weird if you're used to a normal ICE car, or used to an electric car, or used to another Hybrid car. The way this engine is programmed to function is like nothing else 99.9% of the general public has ever experienced. Maybe a former Volt owner has a concept, but that's about the only type of person off the street who might understand. I believe EVERYONE else will be a bit surprised the first time it happens...and I can see this actually inciting concern, complaints, dealer visits, Consumer Report complaints, internet searches and posts to this site, and even a certain amount of dislike for the car, all of which we occasionally see mentioned here on the forum.

Let's also remember we have maybe 200 or less Clarity PHEV owners represented on this forum with any regularity at all, and how many tens of thousands are out on the road now? We may think we know what kind of things are going down in Clarity world here, but we only know the perspectives of less than 1% of them who take the time to write here. We here do NOT have a true big picture from the general public of the ownership experience perspective of the vast majority of Clarity owners. This forum has a few enthusiasts, and a few who love their car, a few who hate their car, a few in-between, a few complainers, a few who own the car and just enjoy internet forums, a few who don't even own the car, a few with serious problems with their car, and a few who frankly don't understand certain things...but it's a very very small cross-section of each category, and I frankly drift between a couple of those categories myself depending on the day.

And again my comments have nothing to do with loss of power in conjunction with the high revs. This I still maintain is a defect and/or programming glitch, which I have fortunately not yet experienced a single time with my car, and wife has never complained of such a thing happening either. I wish it on nobody and I will be first to jump down Honda's throat privately and publicly, should I ever experience it on ours.

That's an awful long way of saying "your experiences may vary." But heck it's pretty dang cold out and I'm not goin' anywhere today so I chose to listen to myself talk this mornin'. To everyone in the polar vortex zone...be safe and keep warm!!

 

I agree, YMMV may be the Clarity theme song.
However I have had a 500 mile HV trip in the summer with AC on and no passengers and 90% SOC that had a significant climb and I still didn’t get the angry bees (and it kept the SOC within in 1 bar over the whole trip). Just in the climb, I got a not unpleasant lower midrange rev that sounded similar to a gasmobile downshifting out of high gear or over drive.
Also, I bit the bullet and purposefully let the SOC run down to 2 bars and 0 EV range and auto enter HV. On rolling hills at up to 60 mph, I still did not summon the angry bees. So in my car I think the only way I can get the angry bees would be to try a mountain climb on a depleted battery which of course is easy to avoid. Or maybe very high speed driving on a depleted battery also?

But during the Polar Vortex (only predicted to be -5 on Th night here) I will welcome the Clarity’s ICE for warmth, range and drive ability. And then maybe I’ll see if the gas gauge is working!

 

Thought-provoking posts from the two of you regarding how differently we use our vehicles.

The Clarity is a very complex device. When you take all that complexity and mix it with different driving styles, ECON vs. SPORT, hilly vs. flat, and huge temperature differences . . . no wonder YMMV is our theme song. But I continue to enjoy the never-ending game of trying to reverse-engineer the whole system.

 

Comparing Clarity with Honda's regular hybrids (Insight, Accord), should give us some clues. Clarity has the same engine as Insight (1.5l 105 hp), but weighs 1,100 lbs more. For the Accord, which weighs about 3,350 lbs (700 lbs less than Clarity), Honda used a 147 hp 2L engine, which means the 1.5L engine didn't meet their NVH or performance goals. Therefore in Clarity, with massive increase in weight, I think it is normal to have periods of very high rpms. If your normal commute is more than 60-80 miles, maybe this is not the right car for you, a regular hybrid is a better option. If you are going over a mountain pass, maybe you should plan ahead to have a fully charged battery before you start climbing. With all that said, you should expect to experience some periods of very high rpms when for whatever reason the car needs the power. Honda could have avoided this by using a 2.4L 180hp engine, but that would drop hybrid consumption to low 30s, vs low 40s in current car.