Clarity fails to start after 2 weeks of ownership - anyone see this issue?

Sadly, I got stranded with by Clarity for the 2nd time. Same exact problem. I've owned this car for 5 months and been stranded twice. This is extremely frustrating. I was skeptical of the "bad 12V battery" explanation explanation the dealer gave me the first time, and clearly that wasn't the problem. I filmed the behavior this time:
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This time I drove the car for 3-5 miles in ev mode, parked outside in the sun on an 83F degree day, waited three hours, and then the car failed to start. I tried to start the car many times, tried jump starting the car, and disconnected & reconnected the 12V battery hoping that would somehow reset the software. Still the car would not start. Eventually the car was towed by a flat bed towing truck that had really jerky hydraulics. Getting the car on and off the flatbed resulted in some pretty significant stress on the car. I compared the stress of getting on & off the tow truck to having adults stand on the front and rear bumper of the car bouncing up and down several times. After the car was off the tow truck I tried to start the car and it actually started. I tried several times and the car started each time. Somehow it was fixed. This makes me believe there is some sort of intermittent issue with the sensors and signal chain that detects if the brake is depressed. Perhaps the shock of getting the vehicle on and off the tow truck jostled the components enough that they started working again. The only other thing that changed was temperature. By the time we got to the dealership it had dropped from 83F to 78F. The first time the car failed to start it say directly in the sun during a 75F degree day.

I'd be interested if any other Clarity owners (or owners of any Honda vehcile) has seen this problem.

The Clarity is a really buggy car. Be extremely cautious if considering purchasing one. At this point, I have very little faith in the car. I'm optimistic its just a bad break sensor or something. However, I'm pretty much scared to take the car more than 10 miles away from my home or the dealership and will probably avoid parking in places where it will be hard for a tow truck to haul it away. At this point, my fairly expensive brand new car is pretty much just good for driving to and from work. In all other circumstances we take my wife's car so we aren't stranded with no way to my children home. Purchase at your own risk.
 
At this point, your best chance is that the dealer can pull some codes from the OBDII port that will give them a clue why you have the most unreliable Clarity yet reported here. You might consider buying an OBDII scanner to capture codes that might vanish into the ether while your Clarity is being dragged unceremoniously onto a poorly maintained flatbed truck.
 
Definitely not normal behavior.
At the end of Oct last year I took a vacation and car sat for 12 days in my garage unplugged at temps in the 60s. Started right up and acted normally with no extra ICE operation when I got home. It also lost only 2% SOC.
 
Where was the car towed to this time? I assume it was the dealer? Did you leave it there with them? If so, what did they say? I would think the fact that they have already replaced the 12v battery once would help in the next attempt to diagnose the real problem.
 
TLDR: It is nearly impossible to repair a Clarity and extremely expensive to do so. Honda has not put thought it to how to repair the vehicle and many of the repair procedures are incomplete or physically impossible to perform. Make sure you have a warranty for your Clarity. Expect repairs to take months to complete. Expect repairs outside of warranty to cost in excess of $15K.

Well my Clarity saga continues... Its been 14 days since my Clarity left my family stranded (for the 2nd time) and I still don't have the vehicle back. It appears there will be another week of repair needed. Assuming I actually get the car back at the end of next week, it will be a total of 28 days in the first 4.5 months of owning this vehicle that it has been in the shop. Fortunately, it looks like there is an end in sight, but my experience has made me extremely weary about owning a Clarity. IF YOU'RE CONSIDERING PURCHASING OR OWN A CLARITY READ THIS THREAD.

The good news: After a few days of diagnostics, the dealership was able to isolate the problem. There was a bent/damaged pin in a wiring harness connecting the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) in the dash to an ECU in the engine. As I understand, wiggling the mating connection of this wiring harness intermittently caused the problem. When the technician disconnected the wiring harness the damaged pin had completely broken from the male end of the harness and was stuck in the female connector. Great. This seems like a plausible root cause. Fix the harness and give me my car back.

The bad news: The official Honda repair manual defines a repair procedure that Honda estimated would take 1.5 days. However, according to the dealership's service manager the a repair procedure defined in the manual was not physically possible to perform. Due to the complexity of the vehicle, the tightly integrated electronic & physical systems, and the lack of space in the vehicle there was simply no way to perform the repair. Because the vehicle is so new, many of the repair procedures have not been vetted, and the service manager was alarmed at the amount of repair procedures described in the manual which his tech deemed impossible to perform. After many hours of "direct meetings with Honda engineers" it was determined that a full disassembly of my vehicle would be the only way to replace the harness. Essentially everything in the engine cavity of the vehicle and everything in the dash before the front seats was completely disassembled. The steering column was removed, entire dash was removed, the glove box and airbags were removed, the entire engine was removed from the engine cavity, and all fluids were drained from the vehicle. The service manager showed me pics, but basically the vehicle was stripped down to the frame between the front bumper and front seats. They were then able to replace the wiring harness. The entire repair took ~12 working days. Essentially, a Honda technician is rebuilding the majority of the Clarity by hand. Amazingly, they were able to get the car back together and its "works". However, given the complexity of this vehicle, driving 5 miles in EV mode doesn't sufficiently prove to me that everything "works". But hey, my hand build Clarity actually started. Of course, in the process of disassembling my entire dash they caused some cosmetic damage to the interior of the vehicle, and ultimately deemed that the vehicle was unsuitable to return to me due to scratches, scrapes, and cosmetic damage to the interior of the dash. They've ordered new parts for the dash and will return my car to me after the cosmetic damage to the interior of the car is fixed. This should take one more week. Fortunately, this should all be covered under warranty.

The service manager indicated that if not covered under warranty this repair would likely have exceeded $15K, He expressed serious concern that many of the repair procedures for the Clarity have not been vetted and are not possible to perform. He expressed concern that many normally trivial repairs would require a near complete tear down of the vehicle due to the complexity of this vehicle. The service manager point blank said, "Do no own this vehicle without a warranty". Barring a few simple maintenance items, he couldn't imagine a repair costing less than $10K, taking at least several weeks, and requiring a near full disassembly of the vehicle. He was concerned that after a few years of depreciation the cost of most repairs on the vehicle would likely exceed the value of the car. Unless the repairs are covered under warranty, you'd be better off junking the car an buying a new one.

Basically, I spent ~$30K for a defective Clarity, and after a months in the shop I am being returned a car rebuilt by hand with God knows how many new problems introduced. I knew I was taking risk being a new adopter of car like this, but this has been a nightmare. I'm in the process of contacting Honda USA to understand if they're willing to do anything to make this right. I contacted lawyers and lemon laws in my state don't apply (yet) so I can't take legal action on that front. I really love the car (when it works), but it was clearly a mistake to purchase a Clarity. Think twice about buying one. If you do buy a Clarity purchase an extended warranty or be prepared for the possibility of scraping the car if an issue occurs outside of warranty. Be prepared for repairs to take months.
 
The intriguing (for lack of a better word) aspect of this is the statement by the service manager:

"He expressed serious concern that many of the repair procedures for the Clarity have not been vetted and are not possible to perform. He expressed concern that many normally trivial repairs would require a near complete tear down of the vehicle due to the complexity of this vehicle."

Clearly replacement of this particular wiring harness seems to fall into this category, but I am wondering why he is referring to other repairs being equally difficult. While in there did the technician see other parts that they felt would also require massive disassembly? If this really is the case then we will eventually need to build up a list of such repairs, and what standard warranties they are covered under (and for how long) and to also make sure that extended warranties will cover these repairs. Again I am referring to repairs plural even though at the moment we only know of this one. And not that we can count on it, but if in fact some normally trivial repairs require massive disassembly, hopefully Honda will consider extending the warranty on these items.
 
The lemons laws in most states pretty clearly cover your experience and lemon law lawyers get paid from the settlement from the car manufacturers. Nothing out of your pocket. Important: Do not mention to the dealer or Honda that you are working with a lemon law lawyer. Let the dealer try and fail. Let them have your car for protracted time periods. Make sure the service reports mention the same problem each time. Say nothing confrontational. Keep smiling. Let the lemon law lawyer handle the communications. They speak to their counterparts from the car manufacturers.
 
The fault, a bent, broken pin in a connector certainly seems plausible. Usually one just changes the pin on that one wire, or worst case, the entire connector to fix a problem like that. Or, if the one wire can be refitted with a new pin, but the wire is too short, there are several ways to reliably add an extension piece and put the new pin on that wire. Worst case, if the end of the harness is now too short, all of the wires of the harness can be extended that way if an entire plug needs to be replaced.

Replacing the entire harness (for one broken pin in a connector), requiring so much disassembly does result in a new "new harness" for a like new car, but that approach, given your details, seems a bit silly.

There could be more to it, but at first read, sounds like the repair strategy is nuts.

BTW: I have not done any disassembly on Clarity, but on my last Bolt, had to open some connectors, including the ECU connectors, and it was just a lever arm latch and then they pulled apart. If any of these connectors are easily accessible, checking for a bent pin is something a tech savvy owner could do. (With some risk, warranty violation, inadvertently bending a pin yourself, etc.)
 
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+1 on what @sniwallof says. He beat me to it.
I have repaired a broken pin on an 8 pin harness and while difficult, it is not impossible. A little Goggle searching let me get replacement pins and a little soldering and heat shrink tubing and it was as good as new.

If limited access is a problem, you can always just cut on both sides of the connector and splice the single wire as @sniwallof mentioned. If I had it to do over again, I would do that and use heat shrink water resistant butt connectors to avoid the prolonged standing on my head to reach under the dash.

I would certainly prefer to fix a pin or even jumper a wire past the connector rather than have the dash and engine compartment completely disassembled with that potentially creating more problems. I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t work. If the connection is sound with no increase in resistance, the electrons won’t know the difference.
 
Presumably the dealership consulted Honda America and the warranty manual regarding the wiring harness and the ultimate fix for the problem. I can't imagine they would take the chance to spend 15 days on repair if they weren't going to get reimbursement. So it would seem that Honda gave authorization to do a massive disassemble. Why would they do that when there are apparent easier fixes?

Sent from my SM-G955U using Inside EVs mobile app
 
TotallyNotRegrettingThis said:
TLDR: It is nearly impossible to repair a Clarity and extremely expensive to do so. Honda has not put thought it to how to repair the vehicle and many of the repair procedures are incomplete or physically impossible to perform. Make sure you have a warranty for your Clarity. Expect repairs to take months to complete. Expect repairs outside of warranty to cost in excess of $15K.

Well my Clarity saga continues... Its been 14 days since my Clarity left my family stranded (for the 2nd time) and I still don't have the vehicle back. It appears there will be another week of repair needed. Assuming I actually get the car back at the end of next week, it will be a total of 28 days in the first 4.5 months of owning this vehicle that it has been in the shop. Fortunately, it looks like there is an end in sight, but my experience has made me extremely weary about owning a Clarity. IF YOU'RE CONSIDERING PURCHASING OR OWN A CLARITY READ THIS THREAD.

The good news: After a few days of diagnostics, the dealership was able to isolate the problem. There was a bent/damaged pin in a wiring harness connecting the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) in the dash to an ECU in the engine. As I understand, wiggling the mating connection of this wiring harness intermittently caused the problem. When the technician disconnected the wiring harness the damaged pin had completely broken from the male end of the harness and was stuck in the female connector. Great. This seems like a plausible root cause. Fix the harness and give me my car back.

The bad news: The official Honda repair manual defines a repair procedure that Honda estimated would take 1.5 days. However, according to the dealership's service manager the a repair procedure defined in the manual was not physically possible to perform. Due to the complexity of the vehicle, the tightly integrated electronic & physical systems, and the lack of space in the vehicle there was simply no way to perform the repair. Because the vehicle is so new, many of the repair procedures have not been vetted, and the service manager was alarmed at the amount of repair procedures described in the manual which his tech deemed impossible to perform. After many hours of "direct meetings with Honda engineers" it was determined that a full disassembly of my vehicle would be the only way to replace the harness. Essentially everything in the engine cavity of the vehicle and everything in the dash before the front seats was completely disassembled. The steering column was removed, entire dash was removed, the glove box and airbags were removed, the entire engine was removed from the engine cavity, and all fluids were drained from the vehicle. The service manager showed me pics, but basically the vehicle was stripped down to the frame between the front bumper and front seats. They were then able to replace the wiring harness. The entire repair took ~12 working days. Essentially, a Honda technician is rebuilding the majority of the Clarity by hand. Amazingly, they were able to get the car back together and its "works". However, given the complexity of this vehicle, driving 5 miles in EV mode doesn't sufficiently prove to me that everything "works". But hey, my hand build Clarity actually started. Of course, in the process of disassembling my entire dash they caused some cosmetic damage to the interior of the vehicle, and ultimately deemed that the vehicle was unsuitable to return to me due to scratches, scrapes, and cosmetic damage to the interior of the dash. They've ordered new parts for the dash and will return my car to me after the cosmetic damage to the interior of the car is fixed. This should take one more week. Fortunately, this should all be covered under warranty.

The service manager indicated that if not covered under warranty this repair would likely have exceeded $15K, He expressed serious concern that many of the repair procedures for the Clarity have not been vetted and are not possible to perform. He expressed concern that many normally trivial repairs would require a near complete tear down of the vehicle due to the complexity of this vehicle. The service manager point blank said, "Do no own this vehicle without a warranty". Barring a few simple maintenance items, he couldn't imagine a repair costing less than $10K, taking at least several weeks, and requiring a near full disassembly of the vehicle. He was concerned that after a few years of depreciation the cost of most repairs on the vehicle would likely exceed the value of the car. Unless the repairs are covered under warranty, you'd be better off junking the car an buying a new one.

Basically, I spent ~$30K for a defective Clarity, and after a months in the shop I am being returned a car rebuilt by hand with God knows how many new problems introduced. I knew I was taking risk being a new adopter of car like this, but this has been a nightmare. I'm in the process of contacting Honda USA to understand if they're willing to do anything to make this right. I contacted lawyers and lemon laws in my state don't apply (yet) so I can't take legal action on that front. I really love the car (when it works), but it was clearly a mistake to purchase a Clarity. Think twice about buying one. If you do buy a Clarity purchase an extended warranty or be prepared for the possibility of scraping the car if an issue occurs outside of warranty. Be prepared for repairs to take months.
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Let me try to reply to everyone's repair here... I feel like you guys think a lot like me.

1) @sniwallof and @KentuckyKen. I agree. How in the world is dissembling the entire vehicle a better solution that fixing the bent pin in the harness?? Cut open the cable conduit, pull out the wire connected to the broken pin, solder in a wire to bypass the broken connector, heatshrink and strain relief the thing, and you're done. I asked just this and was told that the dealerships don't have the authority to perform unauthorized repairs. Honda America indicated that repairing the harness was not possible. Reading between the lines, I assume the dealerships are required to perform the repair as dictated by Honda America and don't have the authority to hack in clever solution. Sadly I wasn't informed my entire car was disassembled until after the fact, and didn't have the opportunity to advocate for fixing the harness.

2) @Richard_arch74. As I understand, the dealership consulted Honda America and the warranty manual regarding the wiring harness and the ultimate fix for the problem. The dealership was initially approved for 10 hours of labors for which they would be reimbursed. After 10 hours the dealership deemed the repair was impossible to perform. After consultation, Honda America agreed the repair was impossible and the dealership was given additional repair steps and approved for a small amount of additional labor (I'll guess 8 hours). After 8 hours the dealership deemed the repair was impossible to perform. Again, Honda America agreed the repair was impossible and the dealership was given additional repair steps and approved for a small amount of additional labor This process repeated until the repair stretched to 3 weeks at very small intervals. I don't understand all of the jargon, but the impression I got was that if the Honda America had initially realized the repair would take this long and cost this much they may not of approved the labor and just replaced the car or tried to put my in something of equivalent value.

3) @2002, I shared the same thought but didn't follow up further. How did they determine that many minor repairs would require a complete disassembly of the vehicle? Did they audit the entire repair manual and assess the feasibility of each repair? I didn't ask. My assumption is that this comment was based more on a generalization due to the complexity of the vehicle, and the challenges they had with this particular repair.
 
TotallyNotRegrettingThis said:
Let me try to reply to everyone's repair here... I feel like you guys think a lot like me.

1) @sniwallof and @KentuckyKen. I agree. How in the world is dissembling the entire vehicle a better solution that fixing the bent pin in the harness?? Cut open the cable conduit, pull out the wire connected to the broken pin, solder in a wire to bypass the broken connector, heatshrink and strain relief the thing, and you're done. I asked just this and was told that the dealerships don't have the authority to perform unauthorized repairs. Honda America indicated that repairing the harness was not possible. Reading between the lines, I assume the dealerships are required to perform the repair as dictated by Honda America and don't have the authority to hack in clever solution. Sadly I wasn't informed my entire car was disassembled until after the fact, and didn't have the opportunity to advocate for fixing the harness.

.
Click to expand...

If the dealer had modified the cable, then they would be responsible for any future issues. Would be curious to know the part number of the harness to see what it looks like, probably snakes around. Factory parts are intended as replacements since they are manufactured and tested to spec. This failure, if it was only the pin, seems to be a manufacturing error or quality problem of the connector.

This is another reason why when the vehicles are in a collision, there could be a lot of possible electrical issues that cannot be detected.
 
If it was one of the ECU plugs, I can see how the repair would be difficult. There are a lot of pins and small wires in that plug / socket combination. However, plugs like that should be repairable by replacing a pin or socket (here the plug has lots of sockets, and the Jack on the ECU has the pins), and extending the wire to the new pin or socket if need be. Here, I guess you just replace the ECU (the pins are in the socket part of the ECU). Getting a broken pin out of the "plug" part of the wire harness might be difficult, but should be doable. If that electrical socket/jack behind the tiny hole is damaged, well, that is a more difficult, but hopefully not insurmountable problem.

To remove the ECU plug (left front corner under hood),
-push down top middle top at the end near the cross part of the latch (inside the gray latch, on the top surface, all the way to one end of the end of the plug) to release the gray latch (Do not pull up on the gray latch before it is released)
-gently raise the grey latch which rides over the cam pins on the sides of the ECU socket that will disengage and raise the plug out of the socket. Keep the plug level as it comes out.

When plugging in, do the reverse.
-Very gently align the plug with the ECU socket
-Gently lower the grey latch cam slots over the ECU socket cam pins and start to close it. The latch and cam slots actually lower the plug into the socket, engaging all of the pins. If anything stops, Do not force it!
-push the grey lever closed until the black part near the inside of the end of the gray latch bar clicks locked.

There is always some risk, generally, if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. OTOH, inspections done very carefully can be helpful to find potential problems. If you have less experience with this sort of work, it is probably best to not touch these connectors.

See ECU plug / jack pictures:
ECU jack Large.webp
ECU jack small.webp
ECU with Plugs.webp
small ECU plug.webp
 
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ab13 said:
If the dealer had modified the cable, then they would be responsible for any future issues. Would be curious to know the part number of the harness to see what it looks like, probably snakes around. Factory parts are intended as replacements since they are manufactured and tested to spec. This failure, if it was only the pin, seems to be a manufacturing error or quality problem of the connector.

This is another reason why when the vehicles are in a collision, there could be a lot of possible electrical issues that cannot be detected.
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The entire story is somewhat amazing and shocking. Is this simply bad design? An outlier? It certainly is not normal wear and tear. Wow.

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I have a hard time believing that the wiring harness is harder to replace on a Clarity than an Accord Hybrid, Insight, etc. I just don't buy "the complexity of the vehicle" line as the Clarity is not more complex in regards to the wiring harness and the myriad computers connected to it. Any modern vehicle will be more or less the same. The only added complexity is the charging circuit, and that is nothing new to Honda.

It would be interesting to see any documentation on the repair. It smells a little like the shop making some excuses.
 
I am reminded of a quote from a favorite author:

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
-Douglas Adams
 
Entire wiring harness replacement seems a bit over the top for a dealer service dept to work on.

IMO, the dealer should have sub contracted / sub vented to a body shop that is capable of taking apart the car and putting it back together as body shops deal with this issue everyday...
 
DucRider said:
I have a hard time believing that the wiring harness is harder to replace on a Clarity than an Accord Hybrid, Insight, etc. I just don't buy "the complexity of the vehicle" line as the Clarity is not more complex in regards to the wiring harness and the myriad computers connected to it. Any modern vehicle will be more or less the same. The only added complexity is the charging circuit, and that is nothing new to Honda.
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It has nothing to do with complexity it has to do with location and accessibility. The 1975 Chevy Monza spark plugs were no more complex than any other car but one of them was only accessible by lifting the engine a half an inch.
DucRider said:
It would be interesting to see any documentation on the repair. It smells a little like the shop making some excuses
Click to expand...

Honda paid for the repair and was directing the shop on what to do, and apparently Honda was agreeing with the shop each time they said what they were being told to do was impossible.
 
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