Angry bees gone?

T

tom kirshbaum

New Member
I’m confused. A while back this forum was chock-full of posts about angry bees, Claritys dangerously losing power and slowing to a crawl and similar serious complaints. Now, suddenly, the discussions have stopped as though someone turned off a spigot. What has happened? Has Honda fixed the problem? Has the discussion moved? Have the owners changed their minds about the problem? The same thing has happened in the Clarity Forum. Can someone please explain what’s going on?
 
I've only experienced angry bees once in 27K miles. I considered it noisy but as designed. Going uphill the Clarity can make a lot of noise short of angry bees. Again I consider this noisy but not broken. I keep in mind that the motor is basically a generator rather than a propulsion engine when going up hill. All it is doing is trying to pump power to the motor driving the wheels, and feed the battery. If it was a much bigger engine it would be able to drive a more powerful generator at a lower RPM. But I believe Honda sized the engine for efficiency, not noise.
 
tom kirshbaum said:
I’m confused. A while back this forum was chock-full of posts about angry bees, Claritys dangerously losing power and slowing to a crawl and similar serious complaints. Now, suddenly, the discussions have stopped as though someone turned off a spigot. What has happened? Has Honda fixed the problem? Has the discussion moved? Have the owners changed their minds about the problem? The same thing has happened in the Clarity Forum. Can someone please explain what’s going on?
Click to expand...

Tom Kirshbaum

Could be that after all the ad nauseum posts, including several by me, about RPM's vs speed, vs terrain etc, etc, etc...folks figured it's normal for the Clarity...at least to certain levels.

This car does sound different to those who drove ICE vehicles as noise doesn't always correspond to what "we" think it should. Car revving with no speed increase for example.

For me at least and multiple others who I've PM'd with, the Clarity runs as designed and folks understood this once RPM data was collected on their respective vehicles.

The power loss remains a mystery as far as I know. From what I've read, only a few cars experienced this issue...still makes it very dangerous though and I hope Honda USA steps up to the plate.

Warmer weather? Perhaps to some degree.

My two cents.

Hope this helps.
 
Last edited:
The chatter is minimal because the majority of us who frequent this site know to keep more than 2 bars of battery charge at all times, avoiding the engine revving issue. My last vehicle was a Subaru Outback, so I was used to a very noisy engine. The flat four sounded like nails rattling around in a tin can at cold startup. Compared to that, I doubt I'd even notice the engine holding revs in the 1.5L engine of the Clarity.
 
Short Answer: KentuckyKen suggested I reboot my car (by disconnecting 12V battery) after I described unusual behaviors. My car seems to have greatly improved after "reboot." I no longer get angry bee events at all.

Long Answer:
So I was one that mentioned angry bees a bunch and then became quiet. I have a theory of what happened to my car:
1) I did not have service bulletin updates related to charging (i.e. 18-079 or 18-097). One of my first trips I drove a few hundred miles in the new car (to Crater Lake NP as it happens). They have a free level2 charger there. I tried to charge. I got the system power warning. It did not clear on this trip at all. I may of drove home in 100% gas-only mode and man did that drive suck. Regen didn't work, a message indicated the electric system was locked out. i.e. see the dealer. I drove home anyway. I don't know if this whole backdrop is related to problems I saw.
2) After the errors cleared, car worked mostly normally. My weekday commute is all electric, and that part didn't seem affected. Riding in HV mode, I'd lose 1 mile of EV range for every 3.5 miles driven. i.e. My 109 mile trip to Portland would exhaust EV range to 0 even driving in one-trip in HV mode.
3) My car *used* to get angry bees every time I hit 0 EV range, which due to 2), happened on every longer trip.

What I've noticed and why it took so long to learn:
- My car now performs great. Since the reboot, my HV range may drop a few miles, but nothing like before. i.e. i can now drive 109 miles and yeah, I'll lose 3 EV miles or so, but I now retain EV range in HV mode.
- I was paranoid for a long time not to allow EV range to go to zero because of the angry bees problem I once routinely experienced. I now occasionally hit 0 EV and there's no angry bees. The engine does sound (normal) but like its working harder than when I have 0 EV range left. So I still try to avoid 0 EV range, but I have not had any angry bees events since reboot.

I would not recommend everyone reboot their car (the disconnect 12v), but I would tell folks who have odd problems others don't see to try it.

Other complicating factors: When my car was behaving oddly, I didn't know what is odd and what isn't. The car was new to me. I just knew my experience didn't match folks in these forums. I am very grateful to all the help received in these forums. -Dan
 
Excellent timing as I was thinking of providing an update as I believe i understand exactly how my angry bees were resolved. For the short answer, my car never had angry bees for the first 12,000 or so miles and then I had the update campaigns installed on my car and immediately leaving the Honda dealer, my car had the angry bees. I was super upset and wanted the dealer to undo what they installed but that wasn't possible.

Here is what I believe caused and solved my angry bees. The cause; the various fix campaigns wiped away all of the cars drivetrain memory from my previous 12,000 miles of driving and in effect clearing out all the learned data the car had stored and thus became brand new again. With its memory wiped clean, the angry bee operation became more pronounced than with a mature car with miles in the memory. The fix for me, drive the car on long highway trips and let the computer learn again and build up memory full of my driving techniques and habits. I made 3 trips from Boston to NY and several other long drives. I now have 16,000 miles on my car and guess what, zero angree bees even driving 85 to 90 mph.

Going up hills or what have you my Clarity is back to driving like a dream. However, I know this is not scientific and I also know people will ask did I have angry bees when I first purchased the car when the memory wasn't mature. To be honest, I don't remember if I had angry bees when i bought the car but i do know after having a smooth driving car at 12,000 miles, then hearing my engine screem after the campaigns were installed was very clear. Sorry for the long message and I an super happy my car is very smooth again with almost no engine noise at varying highway speeds.
 
For those who live to the north it must also have something to do with the warm weather. When I'm on the highway now my car is in gear mode way more than it was in the winter, and I don't think its possible to have the bees while in gear mode. I only had 1 mild incident anyway early in the winter.
 
I'm not as savvy or as involved in understanding how the Clarity works in all circumstances as some ( I am completely in the dark about the car "learning" my behavior). In my case the "angry bees" have always occurred in a situation where they make sense- either a steep climb at speed or another kind of agressive acceleration (think interstate on-ramp with people crowding on all sides). The bees always seem angriest when the battery is low or I'm in HV mode trying to conserve the battery. Those little bees just get cranky when they're trying to both charge the battery and add a horsepower boost. For me, it's still not as loud as a half-ton pickup pulling a 10,000 lb camping trailer up a hill on the interstate, so I guess I never saw it as something unusual. I guess if you had hopes that the Clarity could be a pure EV it must seem jarring, but really it's a hybrid with serious cost benefits close-to-home.
 
ralfalfa said:
I am completely in the dark about the car "learning" my behavior
Click to expand...
Check out the Trip Computer in the Info section of your center display. There you can see History of Trip A, which displays information for the three previous drives. Your Clarity looks at how you've been driving and uses that information to predict your EV and HV range on the Energy Flow Screen (and on the Driver Information Interface, too). I'm not sure if it looks further back than your three previous drives, but that's the most the Clarity will show you.

On the other hand, the High Voltage Battery Charge Level Gauge and the Fuel Gauge are not estimates. They do their best to display the amount of battery charge remaining and gasoline remaining, respectively. Well, at least the Fuel Gauge does. The silly High Voltage Battery Charge Level Gauge displays 2 bars when you have 0 EV miles left. Honda wants you to know that they're protecting your expensive high-voltage battery by never letting it discharge completely. I often complain that the High Voltage Battery Charge Level Gauge should act like every fuel gauge ever. When there are no EV miles left, the gauge should display no bars.
 
I was being a bit facetious about the Clarity learning driving habits- it clearly does, as you show, and I wouldn't be surprised if it remembers a longer baseline based on how the early versions of the software would calculate HV range (erroneously) from one fuel fill-up to the next (which might be many many trips).
I've never set my trip monitor even once (been meaning to learn how to do that for some time) because I'm worried if I start keeping score that way my pickup truck will leave me. She's already noticed how much time I spend in the Clarity. ;->
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top