Clarity in the range "sweet spot": Clean Technica

The article, most will notice, has one glaring error; that being that only the Volt qualifies for the full $7,500 tax credit. Clarity does of course.

The only thing separating me from owning a full EV is charge times. The 2 hour 10 minute full recharge times we've experienced are perfect for us around town but not for road trips. When EVs have a charge time of 15 minutes for 200 miles added we would gladly switch.

We take two 1,100 Mike trips every year. 550 miles can easily be driven in 10 hours. If we had to stop every 200 miles for even an hour each time would not only add a couple of hours to the trip but might push us into the decision of spending a night in a hotel, extending our trip be two days and adding hotel costs to our trip. We are already at the edge of the extra hotel expense, and longer transit time, as it is.

Also I find that currently electric charging stations add up to more costly miles than gas. And there is the real danger that other EVs will be using the limited EV charge stations.

I would very much like to dump the ICE but for us it's just not the right time to switch to full EV.
 
jdonalds said:
The article, most will notice, has one glaring error; that being that only the Volt qualifies for the full $7,500 tax credit. Clarity does of course.

The only thing separating me from owning a full EV is charge times. The 2 hour 10 minute full recharge times we've experienced are perfect for us around town but not for road trips. When EVs have a charge time of 15 minutes for 200 miles added we would gladly switch.

We take two 1,100 Mike trips every year. 550 miles can easily be driven in 10 hours. If we had to stop every 200 miles for even an hour each time would not only add a couple of hours to the trip but might push us into the decision of spending a night in a hotel, extending our trip be two days and adding hotel costs to our trip. We are already at the edge of the extra hotel expense, and longer transit time, as it is.

Also I find that currently electric charging stations add up to more costly miles than gas. And there is the real danger that other EVs will be using the limited EV charge stations.

I would very much like to dump the ICE but for us it's just not the right time to switch to full EV.
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Kind of depressing that Koenigsegg Quant didn't get made. That would've been a real self-charging EV, unlike the misleading PHEV ads from certain companies.
 
jdonalds said:
The only thing separating me from owning a full EV is charge times. The 2 hour 10 minute full recharge times we've experienced are perfect for us around town but not for road trips. When EVs have a charge time of 15 minutes for 200 miles added we would gladly switch.
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Agreed. My suspicion is that by the time I'm ready to replace my Clarity in six of seven years that charging will no longer be a serious issue.
 
petteyg359 said:
"The Chevy Volt is the only PHEV to qualify for the full $7500 tax credit"... Uh, nope.
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I started reading the article this morning, but stopped in my tracks when I read that huge and basic misstatement. I couldn't see a reason to spend any more time on it.
 
WindsorBoy said:
Agreed. My suspicion is that by the time I'm ready to replace my Clarity in six of seven years that charging will no longer be a serious issue.
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Highly doubt that EV charging will become that fast and widely available as gas stations in just 6-7 years in the US.
Just like the promised self-driving hype, I feel it is a long way off.
 
vicw said:
I started reading the article this morning, but stopped in my tracks when I read that huge and basic misstatement. I couldn't see a reason to spend any more time on it.
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Looks like the article was revised - now says the Volt, Clarity, and Pacifica get the full credit.

Personally, I am a relativist - if I can reduce my usage of something by 2/3 or more, the remaining portion is minor compared to the rest of society on average - and it is usually easier to reduce an equivalent amount by influencing others rather than striving for zero personally. This applies whether it is gasoline, energy, water, etc. Remember that transportation only accounts for 30-40% of oil use, and much of that is for freight, which we all still "use" indirectly. Influencing power generation, chemical processes, and manufacturing will be needed to reduce more than 15% of oil use.

Of the 15,000 miles/yr I am likely to drive my Clarity, I expect about 3,000 to be on gasoline. I consider that a significant reduction, and don't really care about trying to hit 0 (I would still have my mower, etc. using gas anyway).
 
PHEVs will be a remarkably good solution for some time to come, in the transition from ICE transportation to EV transportation. Very few folks realize the massive infrastructure change necessary to support all-EV transportation, from increasing generation capacity for the grid, to upgrades and expansion of the grid, to building charging stations and wiring to accommodate EVs, to the network of information to EV owners about charging station availability. (No one wants to get behind a line of 8 EVs all waiting for a charge that will take even 15 minutes.) This will be a multi-generational change in this country and may require new technology to be used, like roads that charge a car wirelessly, or public transportation in areas that can't be built out for EVs. Interesting times ahead.......but for now, PHEVs with good range rule! :D
 
Not to pile on with this this, but an 80 kWh charge to get 200 miles of range in 15 minutes requires 320kW of power (more if you assume a ramp up and ramp down needed for charging that would eat into the 15 min for full power charging). At 375V DC (Tesla batteries, I think), that is about 850 Amps going into the battery. I don't want to stand very close to that when it is going on. Another problem is that if you had just 10 charging stations at a site active at the same time for this, that is 3.2MW of power from the electric grid and that's a lot of power to supply too. I agree that it may take some time to prepare for this future.
 
Battery charging technology is nowhere near ready for wide adoption for two reasons.

First, for long road trips, imagine refueling a car taking just twice as long, i.e., ten minutes instead of five. That would result in long lines at highway gas stations. And the current charging rates are nowhere near 300 miles in five minutes. Either consumers needs to accept long lines and waits, or gas/electric stations need to expand their "pumps" by an order of magnitude or more. Neither will happen in the near future.

Second, there exist vast segments of the potential buyer market that do not and never will have access to charging stations. Some of us have garages or at least exterior outlets that we can hook up to. Even after EV widespread adoption (i.e., say half the population), there will remain tens of millions of buyers who cannot practically charge an EV. Until those tens of millions are addressed, EV buyers will continue to consist of higher income households. This will require installation of chargers at all apartments and streetsides. The installation of widespread EV charging infrastructure will require an investment similar to the original installation of electric distribution infrastructure over 100 years ago. There will not be an appetite to spend the many (tens to hundreds) billions of dollars across the US to support that infrastructure.
 
I think I remember seeing a research paper from a university that worked on an optimization of a EV/PHEV car type that would serve western driving habits and I recall that they settled on a 17 kWh battery PHEV that had a 45-50 mile range. So it is no coincidence that both Honda and GM went in that same design direction. I'll see if I can find it again.
 
lanb said:
Highly doubt that EV charging will become that fast and widely available as gas stations in just 6-7 years in the US.
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Yes, the conversion of gas stations to charge stations will likely take a while.

My thought is the free market will provide the impetus for businesses to offer EV charge stations as a perk to bring in customers. Kind of like the way Cracker Barrel and WalMart encourage camping at most of their locations.

Just like the promised self-driving hype, I feel it is a long way off.
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In real time, it will seem like a slow process. Kind of like the switch from cassette and records to CD’s. But once critical mass is reached, in retrospect it will seem like it happened almost overnight.
 
Great article!

I liked this about infrastructure which is probably the number one reason why BEV and PHEV are not seen as much:
"...........
  • Lack of Charging Infrastructure — 90% of the country has limited or no charging infrastructure. What little we have is often broken or ICE’d. For the general public to get onboard, we need 20 times as many chargers as we have and they need to be working and available."
 
As to BEVs, I like the Bolt a lot and plan to keep it. However, I strongly agree with some of the sentiments here. PHEVs are still the best way to go for trips and for one car families or persons IMHO. If someone is fortunate enough to be able to have two cars (or a multi-car family already), a BEV is a really practical EV for most short to medium trips, and a lot of fun to drive as a second car.

The Clarity for me was the sweet spot in PHEV (especially now with the $200 / mo. lease options), I like it better than Volt. I guess it will still be many years before there are enough fast charge stations with reasonably priced charging cost, higher capacity batteries, and faster charging BEVs before BEV is more than a novelty niche car.

more detail on BEV - In some cases the optimum Bolt winter re-charge mileage can be as low as 80-120 miles. Also, "fast charge", at least for Bolt, is only to 80% SOC, e.g. 180 miles summer at 80% of the 230 mile summer range, but then some margin in reserve is good too, incase the first fast charger is down, and you have to drive to an alternate. It is very much like planning reserve fuel for flying an airplane to an alternate landing field for any number of reasons. Also, for fast-charge, the companies charge dollars by time at the station in minutes. So, depending on your battery state (temperature, etc.), you get a different amount of charge in say 45 minutes. With so few fast charge stations, the risk of a station being inoperative is relatively high, followed by being iced or another BEV already there. With the Bolt, you can only re-charge to 80% at the fast rate, then (if you have any remaining charge time, the fast chargers only allow 45 minutes), it charges much more slowly on the tapered down charging to 100%. Worse yet, the cost of fast charging has been increasing. In terms of geographic coverage and availability of fast chargers, it seems that we are at about maybe the year 1905 for gas station availability (seemed to vary a lot by areas and city, with some rural areas getting gas stations later).
 
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lanb said:
Highly doubt that EV charging will become that fast and widely available as gas stations in just 6-7 years in the US.
Just like the promised self-driving hype, I feel it is a long way off.
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I disagree. Here in Canada we are already seeing companies like Petro Canada announce plans to roll out charging stations at gas stations along major highways and I have read that in the US companies like Shell and others have started doing the same. I think as EV car sales climb that more station owners will see opportunities to make money off these services, not just in charging fees but in providing restaurant and other services Now, will this infrastructure be as prevalent as gas stations are today? Probably not because a larger portion of the car driving population will be able to charge at home so they won't need to but I guess only time will tell.
 
Quoted from the article cited in the OP:

The typical American drives fewer than 25 miles a day on average. In that case, you could drive a Chevy Volt two days without plugging in or burning a drop of gasoline. In fact, Chevrolet programs the gasoline engine in the Volt to start itself up every few months just to make sure all the internal bits are kept properly lubricated. We have CleanTechnica readers who have driven a Volt for two years and used less than two tanks of gasoline the whole time. They can hold their heads high and say they truly drive an electric car.​

Sorry to be a "Negative Nancy", but I don't like it when EV bashers cite outlier examples in their EV bashing, and I don't think it's any better when EV advocates do the same. If the average Volt used as little gasoline as the examples cited here, then BEVs would hardly be needed; PHEVs would suit most of the needs of the EV revolution just fine.

But the reality is that, according to the statistics at VoltStats.net, only about 2/3 of Volt miles are powered by electricity from the wall; the other 1/3 of the miles come from burning gasoline. I appreciate that GM increased the EV range of the Volt over the years it was produced, but I submit that PHEV ranges need to go significantly higher, much closer to 100 miles, before they truly hit what I would call the "sweet spot" of 85% or more EV miles vs. gas-powered miles.

Of course, the Clarity PHEV isn't the Volt, but since the Clarity's EV range isn't any higher than the Volt's (actually the Clarity's is a bit lower than the last model year or two of the Volt), I doubt the average percentage of EV miles for the average Clarity PHEV is any higher than it is for the Volt.

No offense to any Clarity PHEV owner posting here, and I have no doubt that the average percentage of EV miles for of Clarity owners reading this comment is higher than that 2/3 figure. Those who are dedicated enough to regularly participate in online EV discussions don't necessarily represent the average Clarity PHEV owner.

All just my opinion, of course.
 
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Most driving for work (commute) is about 30 miles round trip for a majority of drivers which makes the Clarity PHEV perfect.

It's perfect for me as my daily commute it 15 miles round trip.
I end up charging every other day.

I am sure within 5-6 years, the new generation PHEV will have more battery capacity and longer EV range but for now, I am very happy to have this first year production car from Honda that has been perfect!~
 
Sandroad said:
This will be a multi-generational change in this country and may require new technology to be used, like roads that charge a car wirelessly...
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Nope, all that will happen in a single human generation, which is ~25 years. Just look how swiftly the U.S. built a national highway system of paved two+ lane highways during the motorcar revolution.

And no need for anything as wildly expensive as roads which charge an EV wirelessly. We just need to get average charging times for BEVs down to 10 minutes or less, and we've already seen significant reductions in charging time: Some EV makers are now claiming an 80% charge in only 15 minutes.

I fully expect to see EVs capable of charging 300 miles of range in 10 minutes within 7 years, altho it will take more years for the average EV ultrafast-charging station to be upgraded to support that.
 
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