Storing Clarity Plug-In Hybrid over winter

Thanks to all for your advice and experience. I really appreciate it. After your comments and additional searching, I will leave my 17kw battery at a 60% SOC, keep the car plugged in (L1), have the car in the garage (rarely gets below 10F), and have the battery tender hooked up to the 12V battery. I will be obsessively checking the HL for the SOC. Once the battery gets below 40% SOC, I will tell the HL to charge the car back up to 60%. Once I get back home, I'll fully charge to ballance the cells.
Will let you know in the spring how it works out.

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I assume you mean you'll start charging and then keep checking Honda Link over and over until it says the battery SOC is at 60% and then tell it to stop charging. It would be nice if Honda Link would let you set a limit on the SOC--especially for those who live atop hills and experience premature enginulation after leaving home with a fully charged battery.

 

Yes, that is my intention. Knowing that the app doesn't show charge level in real time and the L1 charge rate is around 8-9%/hr, I'll let the car charge for about 2.5-3 hours. Fortunately my home location has good cell coverage for the car. It would be nice to be able preset the SOC. Maybe in the next app update? Yeah, right.

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Actually, the Clarity itself should include the ability to limit the charge the same way it allows the owner to set when charging begins. HL could then just tell the Clarity the selected SOC limit instead of having to repeatedly check the SOC.

 

Thanks @ insightman for the info. the When I received with the car the literature said there was a 3 month trial for HL so I assumed there would be a charge after that. I also though it would need to be close to a wifi connection.

 

I know it's an older thread but this subject is timely for me since I'll be on vacation soon.
From the manual:
High Voltage Battery
The High Voltage battery gradually discharges even if the vehicle is not in use. As a
result, if your vehicle is parked for an extended period of time, the battery level may
get low. Keeping your vehicle’s battery level low can shorten the battery life. To
maintain the battery while the vehicle is not in use, recharge the battery at least
once every three months.
The High Voltage battery life can also be affected by ambient temperature. In
particular, when it is cold outside, the vehicle’s driving range on electric power can
be reduced, and a longer battery charging time is required. In addition, parking in
extremely hot or cold environments can accelerate battery drain.
To help extend the lifespan of the battery, it is recommended that you fully charge
the battery each time prior to driving.
Store the vehicle in a garage to insure that the temperature of the High Voltage
battery does not drop too low.
High Voltage Battery
The High Voltage battery drains over time, and under
some conditions, drains faster. When the battery life
is shortened, this changes the vehicle’s driving
distance.
Be careful not to let the High Voltage battery drain
too much. If the battery level becomes close to zero,
it will make it impossible to start the engine.
NOTICE
Do not charge the vehicle with a vehicle cover on. It
can cause a malfunction and damage the vehicle or
charging components.
Canadian cars
■ Battery Warming System
Designed to prevent the temperature of the battery from dropping when outside
temperatures drop, thereby maintaining starting and running efficiency.
If the vehicle is plugged in when outside temperatures are low, the battery warming
system will use the power from the charging equipment to maintain the
temperature of the battery until the next time the vehicle is driven.

 

A couple of items to add:
Depending on your climate and length of vacation, have your 12v battery on a smart trickle charger or battery tender (if the 12v goes dead you won't be able to remotely charge your car).
And, keep your EVSE plugged in to the car so you can remotely charge through your HL app.
It has been the consensus of opinion on the forum that you should have your SOC some where between 50-70% when you leave and garage your car.
Hopefully your HL app won't fritz out like mine did after being gone for only 6 days (have a back up plan for someone to help you out with your car while on vacation).

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Too bad that's not standard equipment on all plug-in EVs.

​

 

Here are some data points -

I had mine parked for about a month in the garage (temps ranging from 60-30F).
Left it at 100% charged and not plugged in and not on trickle charger for 12V.
When I came back, the HV charge was around 97%.
The car started up fine so I am assuming the 12V battery was good as well.

As Richard mentioned above, the Hondalink app stopped updating after about 7 days
and until I came back and restarted/used the car.
My theory is that the cellular connection in the vehicle turns off after 7 days of inactivity.
Looking for data points on this from others to confirm.

 

Speaking theoretically rather than from personal experience, it certainly does make sense that the car would be designed to shut off everything that would cause a trickle drain after 7 days of non-use. That would be the way to avoid bricking the battery from long-term storage.

Tesla could learn something from this!

​

 

I've certainly given the Honda in car tech people an opportunity to tell me that's the case (telemetry stops after a week of inactivity of the car).
Honda has been trying to figure out why my HL hasn't been pinging the car for about 2 weeks.
I should have an answer in the next hour as my neighbor will start the car at home and see if the telemetry starts again. If I regain use of the HL after startup that tells me that the car's inactivity stops the telemetry. Then we will see if telemetry stops again in another week or so. That will give me enough data to come to a conclusion.

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My experience is that I always get timely updates when I drive my car daily but if it sits for a couple of days, it doesn’t update and just gives me the info from the last shut down. It seems like starts, shutdowns, charging, and preconditioning can trigger an update when called on by HL. Also many have said using find my car in HL can trigger an update. So far mine gives me milage updates from the last shutdown and whenever I use HL to charge or precondition it gives me the rest.

This makes sense to me because Honda is paying for the cellular bandwidth (thank you Honda for one less service to subscribe to) and naturally would want to keep costs down by not sending data If there is nothing new to report. I think we’ll have to reverse engineer by observation exactly what the parameters are for updating.
And remember that if the car isn’t getting a strong enough cell signal or if Honda’S server is down, it can’t update. That happened to me once in a deep underground parking spot.

 

When you restart the car, HL may still show "cannot retrieve info" until you logout and login back again in the app.
This I believe is a bug in the app and separate from the telemetry shutting off.

 

I have tried multiple times to log out and re-sign in as well "locating car" to no avail. Thanks for reminding me that if I don't get the HL to update after the car starts, using "locate car", to log out and re-sign in to see if it makes a difference.

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Update on HL working, for first time in 16 days, after car was started:
Once the car was started the HL app updated immediately.
BTW, the car was started with the EVSE plugged into the car. The car started charging, which I didn't want it to do, so I "stopped charging" on the HL app. It stopped charging within a few seconds.
So now I wait a week and see if the telemetry stops working again.
BTW, the SOC in the car was the same as 3 weeks ago (ave of 30°F in garage the entire time).

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Good to know. I think we can be fairly certain now that the cellular connection in the vehicle turns off after 7 days of inactivity.
If you are able to reproduce this after a week, it will be the definitive conclusion.