Call Honda R&D in Japan?

[Steven B]

So, based on the SAE article that @AnthonyW posted, I googled Honda R&D. If anyone is good at making international calls and fluent in Japanese, according to Google here is the number for the Honda R&D Center at Tochigi where I suspect most of the Clarity technology was developed:
+81 28-677-3311.

The hope would be that who ever answered the call would actually put you in touch with a technical person who you could then send a message to providing a link to this forum where all these unanswered questions await their dispatch. As a start, maybe you could ask for one of the three names on the SAE article from April: Toru Ohgaki, Masanori Matsuda, or Mitsunori Matsumoto. Additionally here are the two names from the "New Two-Motor Hybrid System" presentation from November 2013: Naritomo Higuchi and Hiroo Shimada.

 

[clinton]

IMO you won't get anywhere. I used to work for a car manufacturer R&D center years ago, and while quite a few of us were following the public forums on the product (the infotainment system on most of the range), only 2 were approved by the legal department to actually reply in the forums... and they weren't really technical folks either

So my guess is that the folks in that R&D center who worked on the Clarity are very well aware of our ramblings (and most likely smiling at many of our guesses), but are not allowed to reply to any of them

 

[tdiman]

IMO you won't get anywhere. I used to work for a car manufacturer R&D center years ago, and while quite a few of us were following the public forums on the product (the infotainment system on most of the range), only 2 were approved by the legal department to actually reply in the forums... and they weren't really technical folks either

So my guess is that the folks in that R&D center who worked on the Clarity are very well aware of our ramblings (and most likely smiling at many of our guesses), but are not allowed to reply to any of them

This. Ive worked in marketing, r&d and consumer relations for consumer goods companies. As a general rule you don't want technical folks talking openly to consumers without guardrails. The reason isn't what you might think (secrets). Technical people by nature work in the language of uncertainty, probabilities and alternative hypothesis. As an official rep of the company, things said can easily get taken out of context. (This happens internally too! Human nature)

Think of it this way. Imagine a Honda technical person joins the crvownersclub forums and says they "know about the oil dilution problem on 5th gen CRVs and are evaluating all options to correct, up to and including replacing the engines on affected cars". While perhaps technically true, imagine how this might play out with affected consumers (note afaik Honda US has made no official statement)

That said a well trained consumer relations associate, whom has access to the technical folks and is empowered to solve problems, is the best solution. We have conversations all the time internally regarding forums and online communities around where should we be monitoring only and where should we be monitoring and responding, based on consumer expectations. 3 years ago consumers generally weren't talking to manufacturers on Amazon product reviews, they were talking to other consumers. That's changing.

No idea if Honda consumer relations are any good. If you want to see an example of empowered consumer facing employees look at this. The attendants aren't really even part of the story, but you could imagine if they were not empowered to bend rules, felt they had to enforce at all costs and/or not trained this could be another horrible airline story. Here it clicked and the girl is rightfully the hero (but I bet the flight crew felt amazing too for what they enabled to happen with some quick thinking):

https://blog.alaskaair.com/alaska-a...ience-proves-everything-happens-for-a-reason/


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[AnthonyW]

StephenB, I was literally thinking the same thing a few days ago about somebody calling Honda R&D! On one of the many techinical papers that I have read, they list Toru Ohgaki email address but I never got the courage to actually email him...

 

[Steven B]

Even if we can't get direct answers, it would certainly plant seeds in their minds of what consumers want to know and possibly read about in future published documentation.