Accident in 2019 Clarity.. only 3 months old

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Hoping to find some insight and recommendations here. I'm in a similar boat. I rear ended a car yesterday and my knee airbag deployed. The collision damaged the right bumper (detached a bit), the grill and half of the Honda logo, and driver seat built which no longer retract to its place. It's still driveable and the officer let me drive my 4-mo old 2019 Clarity after giving me a duck tape to roll the deployed knee airbag underneath the steering wheel. I also saw my charge diminished from literally 3 quarters full to 0 on a 16 mi. drive. It seems better this morning. Right now I'm scheduled to bring the car to GEICO's accredited body shop on Friday (12/13/19) but I'm apprehensive and wondering if I should bring the car instead to a Honda accredited body. Now my question is, should I opt to bring it to Caliber Collision which is what I found when searching from Honda Owners forum or to stick with GEICO Auto Repair Xpress? Does it really matter?

I'm in Maryland and seems to be the only Clarity driving around in the Prince George's County. Would appreciate any input. Thanks.
 
LeCapri said:
Now my question is, should I opt to bring it to Caliber Collision which is what I found when searching from Honda Owners forum or to stick with GEICO Auto Repair Xpress? Does it really matter?
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From past personal experiences, I'd avoid any body shop working "directly with" the insurance co and also set up to pay the body shop directly (still get ins to approve repairs first) and insurance co to reimburse me. Otherwise the body shop is not accountable to you and they may not have motivation to do all the repairs or to do them in a timely manner since the ins. co will pay them before the work is even started or complete. When you're paying you have to approve the completed repairs before you sign off on the payment.
 
Does the shop GEICO is sending you to get overwhelmingly positive reviews? If yes, you’ll be fine. If no, go elsewhere and choose your own shop that you’re comfortable with.

If for some reason you feel Caliber is the best choice, have the car taken to Caliber and tell GEICO that’s where you want it fixed. Give Caliber your GEICO claim number and an adjuster name if you have it. They’ll handle the rest. It’s that simple.

FWIW with a deployed airbag and seatbelt, your car is not safe nor smart to drive until repairs are done. I recommend calling the shop of your choice and asking them to send a flat bed tow truck to come get it. Body shop will just bill the insurance company for this, no cost to you. And no need to wait until Friday.
 
Finally back from a long break. Sorry for the long absence. Just a quick update, I brought my Clarity to Caliber Collision as it is listed in the Honda Owners forum list of Honda "Certified" Collision centers. Fast forward to yesterday, Caliber called to tell me my car is ready. I went and when I drove it out, something was wrong. The car wouldn't shift gear and seems to just stay in first gear. Went back to tell Caliber the car does not run right. Also told them that there was nothing wrong with the transmission nor driving it when I brought it in. Here's the interesting part: Caliber tech who worked on the car said, there was already a problem with it so when they drove it to the dealership to get the sensors calibrated, he was only driving it in low gear. I was shocked to hear what he said so I argued and told him they got to fix it. It would be foolish for me not to report it when I have driven the car for over a week before I brought it in without any transmission/shift issue. Adding insult to injury, my insurance called me to say I have to return the rental car because the car repair was already done. Caliber called them to say the car is ready before I got there to test drive it. Now I'm in a bind and just don't know what to do.

My question to you guys is: has anybody experienced anything similar where the car does not shift gear? If so, any suggestions or ideas what must be done so I could relay it to Caliber? Technician insinuated that it seems to be a transmission issue which is still under warranty but I can't accept that. Would appreciate any insights you could all share. Thank you.
 
Well sorry to hear about your troubles. I hope they get better.

The first mystery is the fact that there is no historical transmission in the Clarity. There is no 1st or 2nd gear. The electric motor simply spins faster and faster all the way up to freeway speeds without changing "gears". So we need a more detailed description of what the car is doing, what you hear, and what it feels like to drive. What do you see on the display that shows if the engine and/or electric motor is in use?

There is a single clutch that connects the gas engine to the wheels through some gears. I suppose it is possible that the clutch is always engaged when normally it should only be engaged at higher speeds under light load. This is just a wild guess though. I can't think of anything else that would act like a 1st gear than that clutch.

If you have Econ turned On and don't press past the detent on the accelerator the gas engine should not turn on. Do you hear the engine?
 
Thanks, jdonalds. Sorry about my terminologies. So when I turn on the car the engine starts, it's already set to EV mode which is my default (and the car does not have any battery charge anymore being in the collision shop for so long) and when I try to accelerate, the engine just revs up but the speed does not increase while the RPM needle goes up as I stepped on the pedal. Does this make sense?
 
With that further clarification from your answers to @jdonalds good questions, I’ll guess that it’s just your car has a discharged battery. Charge it it and see if that fixes the issue. What you’ve described sounds like normal behavior (unless you mean the car does not accelerate at all).
 
Hi Sandroad, hopefully just the charge. I have yet to hear from Caliber of any update from the Honda dealership. As I drove it yesterday, it does not accelerate beyond 30-40 mph but the engine was revving like crazy as I stepped on the pedal.
 
LeCapri said:
Hoping to find some insight and recommendations here. I'm in a similar boat. I rear ended a car yesterday and my knee airbag deployed. The collision damaged the right bumper (detached a bit), the grill and half of the Honda logo, and driver seat built which no longer retract to its place. It's still driveable and the officer let me drive my 4-mo old 2019 Clarity after giving me a duck tape to roll the deployed knee airbag underneath the steering wheel. I also saw my charge diminished from literally 3 quarters full to 0 on a 16 mi. drive. It seems better this morning. Right now I'm scheduled to bring the car to GEICO's accredited body shop on Friday (12/13/19) but I'm apprehensive and wondering if I should bring the car instead to a Honda accredited body. Now my question is, should I opt to bring it to Caliber Collision which is what I found when searching from Honda Owners forum or to stick with GEICO Auto Repair Xpress? Does it really matter?

I'm in Maryland and seems to be the only Clarity driving around in the Prince George's County. Would appreciate any input. Thanks.
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Sorry about your accident. If you don't mind, can you share your experience with Honda emergency braking? Did it engage at all to reduce accident intensity? I am trying to find out how reliable the system is.
 
This also sounds like a fully depleted HV battery to me. I try not to drive for long periods with a fully discharged battery. I discharge it fully or nearly fully just before I can charge at a destination. If I get to that destination and for some reason I cannot charge, I will use HV Charge to put some miles back into the battery, so that I don't have prolonged driving with 0 EV miles. So far I have been able to use HV Charge in those instances while driving no more than 55 MPH and flat terrain with no heat load, so no high engine revving.
 
LeCapri said:
Hi Sandroad, hopefully just the charge. I have yet to hear from Caliber of any update from the Honda dealership. As I drove it yesterday, it does not accelerate beyond 30-40 mph but the engine was revving like crazy as I stepped on the pedal.
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The engine revving is normal when there is no remaining power in the battery because, as others have noted, there is no transmission connecting the engine to the wheels. However, if the car will not go faster than 40 mph, there is obviously something wrong because even with a discharged battery you can easily run at highway speeds.
 
I'm a little phobic about the operation of the Clarity with a "fully discharged" HV battery. Mine usually shows 2 bars on the gauge when it goes to zero miles, so I don't think that it should ever in normal operation be "fully discharged". I had a generation 1 Volt (2012) that as it aged (6 years) would throw a "Propulsion power is reduced" message on the dash whenever the battery was completely depleted and the car was then restarted without charging. At this time the engine would rev pretty high and it was tough to get the car above 55 mph for a few minutes until the car had recharged the battery some. This was due to the battery being at a charge level that the software believed was too low (due to degradation over the 6 years cutting into the low buffer). There was a fix to "reset" the low battery operating point (restrict the amount of battery usage so that 0 miles occurred at a higher battery charge level), but I never took the car in to the dealer to do that (I didn't want to cut the range for the times that I wanted it). I just tried really hard to never push the miles to zero on the battery unless I was pretty sure I was about to charge it (Mountain mode on that car would allow for that). I've always wondered if some of the "loss of power" posts I've seen here were related to similar behavior of the Clarity.
 
I’m willing to bet a considerable sum of someone else’s money that once you charge your Clarity fully and drive a few cycles that all your problems will disappear quicker than SOC when going up a steep hill at 90 mph in EV, fully loaded with 5 passengers, and the heat on max with a bicycle rack!
 
Thank you all for the helpful take. I'm out of my rental car policy today and Enterprise already called me to return the car since GEICO would no longer extend the rental because Caliber said the job was done. Anyways, I'll just ask Caliber to get my car back from Honda and will fully charge it. I remembered that there was only one bar on my Clarity when I drove it.
 
Agzand, based on what I've seen, emergency braking for Clarity should work although in my case, I slammed the brakes hard but still hit the bumper of the Honda HRV in front of me and I don't remember it "mitigating" the collision. The police said I was just too close. Lesson learned for me as I go through this ordeal.
 
LeCapri said:
Agzand, based on what I've seen, emergency braking for Clarity should work although in my case, I slammed the brakes hard but still hit the bumper of the Honda HRV in front of me and I don't remember it "mitigating" the collision. The police said I was just too close. Lesson learned for me as I go through this ordeal.
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Thanks for the info, don't feel too bad about it. It can happen to everyone. I had no accident in 25 years of driving, then a year ago I was trying to safely pass a parked police car and motorcycle and BAM, the car in front of me hit the brakes and I rear ended him. It takes a fraction of a second and you could be doing something legitimate, like checking the rear view mirror or some other road hazard.
 
Agzand said:
Thanks for the info, don't feel too bad about it. It can happen to everyone. I had no accident in 25 years of driving, then a year ago I was trying to safely pass a parked police car and motorcycle and BAM, the car in front of me hit the brakes and I rear ended him. It takes a fraction of a second and you could be doing something legitimate, like checking the rear view mirror or some other road hazard.
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Thanks. That's exactly what happened to me, checking the left lane as I turned and the HRV in front of me slammed her brake because the Accord driver in front of her also slammed her brake in front of her.
 
Classic. After 25 years in the insurance and collision repair industry I will observe that this is a poster example of why the whole concept of “Honda certified” (or any other mfr) collision centers is a colossal farce.

People choose these shops under the guise of having special training or equipment or direct lines to Honda tech experts or whatever. Yet this particular one has a mechanic that doesn’t even have the foggiest clue that Clarities don’t even have transmissions, and that they need to be at least minimally charged in order to fully function correctly.

I have no option but to just shake my head again. Folks, choosing a “Honda Certified” collision center means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. There is no benefit. Some are good, and some are not. You’re still rolling the dice if this is your only research.

If you get in a wreck, do your own research, check reviews, and pick ANY highly reviewed body shop/collision center to fix your car. Overwhelmingly positive reviews from actual customers (NOT Internet random people from all over the world who have no first hand experience with that local shop) should ALWAYS trump any “certification” from any source. Use typical Google, Yelp, etc, along with your local insurance agent who see local wrecks repaired daily and deals with the fallout of bad repairs, coworkers and friends with first hand experience etc. Then ignore most certifications...they just usually mean some money changed hands, a handful of employees who may no longer work there took an online class once, and the shop filled out a questionnaire stating they have modern equipment.

I have a short list of Indianapolis area body shops that I have vetted in advance and I keep it in the glovebox of my wife’s car. If she wrecks, she can refer to the list and ask the police or tow driver to drop it at the nearest shop on that list. Preparation before the wreck is smart. 90% of wrecks occur in your hometown. So everyone do some research now and write down some good shops and stuff the list in your glovebox. Now you’re prepared to make a quick smart decision even with accident adrenaline flowing...

As for this car I agree with others. With one bar the battery is deeply discharged. The engine was revving as much as possible in an effort to charge it, as designed. Charge the car up and drive it. Should cure itself.
 
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Good advise, but we’re talking about a body shop. Most Honda Dealers and their service departments don’t know squat about the Clarity.
 
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