"Angry Bees"

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David Towle said:
Have you compared highway versus around town EV mileage? I have been getting 55 range around town versus 30 on the highway. Therefore for me in CT with similar over 20 cent rate its slightly cheaper to run EV around town so that's the only time I use it. On the highway the ICE/HV is significantly cheaper.
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I’m glad you brought up the highway MPG. I too am getting in the low 30’s, which is contrary to what others are reporting in this forum. This is comparable with my 2009 Altima-perhaps even a bit lower.

I can charge at work for $1 per hour, which is about 30% cheaper than charging at home, but I have to move the car after an hour or two. Not convenient, but an option nevertheless.
 
228ra said:
Spot on. I paid $18K plus TTL after rebates for this car. Don’t get me wrong, I love the car, just wish the economics of running EV were better at the moment.
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Do you mind telling your rate and provider? Just curious...
 
I did another 100+ mile drive last week, and logged the trip. I brought earplugs, because I was expecting the car to be loud. I wore the earplugs for the first half of the trip, while the engine was around 4000 rpm. The road continued to be hilly, but I ran on EV for a little while and let the battery get down around 30%. For the second half of the trip, the car was comfortably quiet, and I was able to take the earplugs out. Seems like the engine has to rev higher to keep the battery at 70% (possibly because of higher voltage in battery).

The flat sections on the RPM curve are gear drive mode. I saw the gear during the flat sections. I wrote down 2643 RPM at 73 mph, This morning I saw the gear and recorded 2256 RPM at 63 mph. These two points give a fairly consistent 36.3 RPM per mph ratio. At 45 mph the calculation would be 1633 rpm, which seems like a reasonable low-end target.

Also interesting that 73 mph at 2643 would appear to be the high-end of Honda's cruising RPM (I am under the impression Honda does not engage the gear drive at much higher speeds). This would be in contrast to recommendation of running 4K regularly.

The first half of the trip includes the same section of road (travelling same direction) that I had logged previously as 'angry bees 2'. 'Angry bees 2' shows driving the same section of road at reasonable noise level: I had not previously noticed that AB2 had the battery at less than 40% capacity. ( I have included AB2 again for this discussion)

Note: I previously did not think the flat sections of the RPM curve were gear drive, but I specifically looked at the energy diagram during 'Bee Control', and confirmed they were in gear drive. I did not see the gear drive during the first half of 'Bee Control'.

Note 2: My complaint with 4K RPM's has been the noise in the cabin. This weekend, I rode in a Honda CRV, and turned on the sound analyzer... It is as loud as the Clarity with angry bees (75-80 dBa): I guess my own desire for a quiet cabin may be unrealistic.
 

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ClarityBill said:
I saw the gear during the flat sections. I wrote down 2643 RPM at 73 mph
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Just for fun, I went to the garage and measured the wheel radius (~12.75"). So if you are travelling at 73 MPH, the wheel is rotating at 962.3 RPM. Given ClarityBill's measured 2643 for engine RPM's. that means the gear ratio in direct drive is 2.746. I would venture a guess that the actual gear ratio is 2.75:1.
 
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MrFixit said:
Dan:

If you truly have a victory with this one, perhaps the 'hard battery reboot' should be captured in the FAQ so others can be aware of this as a tool to possibly solve unusual behavior that is not widely reported. Documentation of this procedure in the FAQ, along with some description of the ominous-sounding messages that occur, and the fact that they clear up would make it easier for others to find.

Of course, it is probably unwise for people to do this 'willy-nilly'... More of a last resort measure.
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Just as a followup- After car re-learned my behavior my estimated EV range is down to 32 (again). But something substantial did happen. While I continue to lose EV range when in HV, it does so slowly. It used to be that I'd be at 0 EV if HV of 100 miles traveled or more. I've since done a 260 mile trip where EV dropped some, but retained high 20's. So still very pleased with this outcome.

It's a game changer not to have 'angry bees' on every long trip. I fairly routinely drive a couple hundred miles or so on the weekends.

And I also agree with your comment as being more last resort than first thing to do. It honestly scared me when all the alarms came up. I presumed I'd have some explaining to do at the dealer... Never happened. Driving the car cleared all the messages but it didn't feel like something I would do, or recommend, arbitrarily.

-Dan
 
Quick question. In all the discussions of "rebooting" the car, everyone has been very specific about disconnecting the negative pole of the battery. Does it matter whether you pull the positive or negative? I haven't looked at the actual battery to see if one or the other is easier to disconnect. And no, I'm not going to just give it a try to enjoy the experience; just curious.
 
ClarityBill said:
I did another 100+ mile drive last week, and logged the trip. I brought earplugs, because I was expecting the car to be loud. I wore the earplugs for the first half of the trip, while the engine was around 4000 rpm. The road continued to be hilly, but I ran on EV for a little while and let the battery get down around 30%. For the second half of the trip, the car was comfortably quiet, and I was able to take the earplugs out. Seems like the engine has to rev higher to keep the battery at 70% (possibly because of higher voltage in battery).
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Was that too loud as you need to put ear plug in? I am just curious ;)
 
MNSteve said:
Does it matter whether you pull the positive or negative?
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Functionally, it doesn't matter which one you disconnect. Disconnecting the negative end is "best practice" for safety reasons. You are safe if you accidentally touch something metal with your wrench while disconnecting the negative. If you are disconnecting the positive, you will get a BIG spark if you accidentally bridge to ground.

Both terminals are equally accessible in this case so use the negative. If for some reason, you must disconnect the positive first, be VERY careful !

Note - if you are installing a disconnected battery, connect the positive terminal first, then the negative (same rationale - not possible to accidentally short out the battery by touching ground).
 
smith ho said:
Was that too loud as you need to put ear plug in? I am just curious ;)
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The sound meter showed 80 dBa, and I spend hours in the car. I am used to OSHA regulations that 'suggest' ear protection for anything over 80 dBa. I guess a 'real' man wouldn't use ear protection...
 
Dan Albrich said:
. I've since done a 260 mile trip where EV dropped some, but retained high 20's. So still very pleased with this outcome.
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This was my experience on my 1500 mile trip. As long as I remembered to press HV every time I started up it would pretty well hold the charge in the 20s. But on my recent trip with 3 adults in the car throught the mountains with the heater blasting, the charge did tend to get depleted.
 
I see. Good to know the OSHA regulation.
ClarityBill said:
The sound meter showed 80 dBa, and I spend hours in the car. I am used to OSHA regulations that 'suggest' ear protection for anything over 80 dBa. I guess a 'real' man wouldn't use ear protection...
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I see. Good to know the OSHA regulation.:)
 
I am finding the cabin noise with the engine below 3000 RPM to be comfortable. Occasional 3K+ RPM's are not bad.

My theory is highway driving with 25% battery allows the engine to easily recharge the battery, and does not go to high RPM's. I start out my drive in EV mode, till I get down to 25% of EV range (6-8 bars), then go to HV. Drive HV until EV range is the amount of miles left to drive, and finish in EV to use all the battery.

The sound level for my morning drive today was very comfortable. I started in EV, and switched to HV with a little higher battery charge (30% range), but then used EV for a stretch of uphill, then back to HV for the rest of my highway drive. When the car is running this quiet, the 3400 RPM's does sound like annoyed bees. The car was often in gear-drive mode.

This is the same stretch of road that was noisy in my first Bee Control file (first half of BC graph).
 

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There have been questions about HV mode, and I wanted to try that also... The charger was tied up at my destination, so my SOC was a little low to start my next drive.

I started out the drive in HV Charge mode. Doesn't look like the battery charged much in the stop and go traffic. When I got on the highway, looks like the SOC is gradually increasing. Continued to increase on the interstate at 73 mph. The sound at 3400 rpm was annoying, so I switched back to HV mode about 16.5 minutes into the drive.
 

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After the HV charge mode, I stopped for gas. When I got back on the interstate, I had to go uphill for about 5 minutes. In HV mode, the engine went over 4K rpm, and it was noisy. Running 2500 rpm or less, I think the Clarity would be considered a quiet car. Over 4000 rpm, it is a loud car. If I had EV range available, I would have switched to EV mode for the hill, and avoided the loud car. This graph is in HV mode.
 

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ClarityBill said:
Over 4000 rpm, it is a loud car
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ClarityBill:

Thanks for gathering all this data - it is excellent, and gives good insight into the variety of behavior that seems nominal to me for this vehicle.

You observe that it is a loud car when 'Over 4000 RPM'. These data sets demonstrate that the over 4000 condition is quite transient. Even with HV_Charge (where you might expect the highest RPM's), your 'HV_Charge.pdf' never reached 4000, and was consistently operating at 3500. The "Noisy Hill" run had only a few brief peaks that reached 4000, then a couple of more persistent periods at roughly 3500. "Bee Control" was very quiet throughout.

I think you may have used a histogram in an earlier post to quantify what percentage of the time that you experienced operation within certain ranges of RPM. I suppose you may consider 3500 pretty loud too, and there were some fair stretches of that (under predictable circumstances). It would be very interesting to be able to log the cabin noise along side these test runs in order to quantify sound levels.

It seems to me that you have not [yet] captured any anomalous behavior (high RPM's for no apparent reason), and [luckily - maybe unluckily in the interest of science] you have not experienced the reported syndrome of high RPM's accompanied by loss of power.

Nice job helping us to understand this remarkable vehicle !
 
Hi Fixit,

I considered the first half of my 'Bee Control' drive to be an unacceptably loud experience. From minute 28 to 45, there were numerous RPM's over 4000, and high 3K's much of the time. It was not a quiet car during that time. I have driven that same stretch of road in 'quiet car' mode, and my discussion has been the way that I try to stay quiet.

The second half of the 'Bee Control' graph was how I achieved a quiet ride by running the highway with a lower SOC. My recent graphs (including the two today) demonstrate using the low SOC to keep RPM's under control. My technique was not able to maintain low RPM's going up the hill (as you mentioned).

Until I had the graphs, I felt the high RPM's were for no apparent reason.

I think other owners are considering their similar RPM experience as problematic. If operated differently, the car will stay over 3500 RPM more: Most people would consider that a bad driving experience.
 
Agreed...

I was looking at 'Bee Control 2', and thinking that didn't seem so bad... Indeed 'Bee Control' does have a pretty bad stretch. I am getting confused about the different runs and conditions. Will go back and carefully review again.
 
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