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.
