Cross-country trip dream

  • Thread starter Thread starter coutinpe
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies Replies 24
  • Views Views 3K
coutinpe

coutinpe

Active Member
Hi everybody. When this nightmare is over, I am hoping to hop in my Clarity and take it across the country from LA to Miami and back by the way of Vegas/Denver/St Louis/Atlanta. I heard several of you have made long trips on the Clarity. Any piece of advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!
 
No big deal in the Clarity. First it is a fabulous road vehicle. Quiet, smooth, and comfortable. Second it will easily carry you for 200+ miles between very short stops to fill the gas tank.

While on the open road we are always in HV mode with Sport enabled. That mode maintains the battery charge in most cases. The Sport mode helps the Adaptive Cruise Control which tends to be too slow to accelerate without Sport mode.

When we pull off the freeway into a town or city we switch back to Econ/EV mode just to have the quiet electric mode.

In the case where the battery is drained we will use HV Charge to bring it back up. For us this happens when we forget to resume HV mode after gassing up. The battery will drain because we are in EV mode then.

We've never charged away from home. It just doesn't seem to be worth the effort. It may be a good idea to charge at a hotel that has it available, especially if free, but I don't even bother then. It means I'd have to wait until the car is charged, then leave my hotel room to move the car. For me it's simply not worth the effort.

If you are going to go up any significant hills it's good to have a charged battery, at least as much as you can achieve from HV Charge. That will help keep the revolutions down and hopefully avoid the Angry Bees noise.
 
There are a lot of hotels, EVEN IN TEXAS, that have EV charge stations and many are free to guests. Sounds like a WONDERFUL idea as I am getting cabin fever (queue appropriate Jimmy Buffet Song) with all this. If I had a level 2 charger I would offer it free to other Clarity owners that are on a mission to just get the heck out of dodge... I have a cheap level 1.5 (yes, Duo EVSE) that I keep in the trunk for charging when the opportunity presents itself when out (friends, work etc). Like suggested above, some strategic use of HV Charge mode can let you dump some juice in the battery before you get to the gas station, increasing your total drive away range.

There are some state parks with service outlets (30 amp) so bring some adapters! Anyway, have a great time and enjoy the scenery!

Cheers,

Cash
 
Don't worry about charging. Do it when you can but no big deal. From the time you start the trip until you get to a place you can charge - use HV. That keeps the battery maintained at a high level and you will need it going over the mountains and passing - merging. Don't try to run in EV in towns and go to HV, it is just to hard to remember and you will at some point run down the EV. The only problem using HV is to remember to start in HV after you have turned off the car.
 
Here's a report I posted from a 6500 mile road trip we took in our Clarity last fall: https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/six-grand-road-trip-report.7107/

I second jdonalds's advice, though I mostly use Normal rather than Sport mode when in HV on the highway, reserving Sport for curvy roads where I found sticky regeneration useful.

You'll come to your own decision about when and whether to use HV to reserve some battery, and whether to turn HV off when leaving the highway. Opinions vary and they all can be correct depending on the driver's habits and preferences.

I wouldn't be obsessive about charging, but I suggest combining a lunch/stretching-the-legs stop with an hour of level 2 charging when the timing and location are right -- PlugShare is your friend (if the charge isn't free or less than, say, 0.10/kWh I wouldn't bother). And level 1 charge overnight when practical; with a 12/3 extension cord there is often an exterior 120V outlet in reach at motels if you ask (and explore).

I found it to be a great road car. ACC and LKAS are far from perfect, but they were good enough to reduce road fatigue considerably, and navigation, podcasts and music on CarPlay are a boon for long trips.
 
It's so discouraging to realize you've been using up battery power on EV for the last 30 miles because you forgot to press HV after stopping! So I never pass up an opportunity to re-post my economy HV-reminder. Print this image, cut out the paper HV button, place it over the D button and tape the top edge (then you can flip it up to press the D button underneath).

upload_2020-4-5_14-48-43.webp
 
I know everyone has there wants for any car. I wish that one of the options available in the "driver" customization menu for the car was preferred "default" driving mode. I know a lot of folks enjoy exclusive EV, some Sport, and Some HV. Heck, there may be some that would even like it if HV-Charge would engage automatically at some specific SOC point. Anyway, since that is all just a software patch - would be on my feature list if Honda is reading :rolleyes:. Even "last used" would be a nice setting to have. It stays on whatever you last selected until changed?!? Probably mentioned by someone else a long time ago....

Sorry, with Covid this forum is saving my sanity... mine - not yours!

Cheers,

Cash
 
Thank you all, forum mates! Yes, it's nice to be able to remember there's something in this world besides this damn virus. Hopefully this will be over soon enough and I will be able to chronicle this dream trip on this dear forum. Please take care of yourselves and stay away from the "plague".
 
Same here. Not sure my planned road trip in August would work. Now even driving through Starbucks makes me happy.
 
We've pretty much decided our trip back to Iowa is on hold until...

A planned and paid for a flight to Quebec, sail to NY and fly home in August. Maybe?

We are hoping we can still go to Greece this fall, but who knows?
 
On my 3K mile trip to the NE I was unable to find public charging anywhere along the two 1200 mile legs of my journey - but I started with a full battery and ran in HV on interstate highways, arriving at both destinations with 2/3 charge remaining. The Clarity is a marvelous "highway cruiser" - its weight and suspension providing a silky, comfortable ride. Many people seem forgetful about pushing the HV button - I'm not sure why that is so - I've trained myself to do it every time I enter an on-ramp. I find pulling up to gas pumps silently (well, with the AVAS sound playing) to be great fun - I enjoy the puzzled looks I get from patrons at other pumps!
 
Kerbe said:
Many people seem forgetful about pushing the HV button - I'm not sure why that is so - I've trained myself to do it every time I enter an on-ramp.
Click to expand...
We homebodies who don't take long trips every year are accustomed to just getting in our cars and driving to our destinations without ever thinking about the HV button.
 
insightman said:
We homebodies who don't take long trips every year are accustomed to just getting in our cars and driving to our destinations without ever thinking about the HV button.
Click to expand...
Some of us live in states to rural that nearly every trip entails getting on an interstate highway: I just drove 110 miles to get groceries. My office is a 116 mile round-trip. My oncologist is 90 miles away. So, yeah, I think about about the button...
 
Kerbe said:
Some of us live in states to rural that nearly every trip entails getting on an interstate highway: I just drove 110 miles to get groceries. My office is a 116 mile round-trip. My oncologist is 90 miles away. So, yeah, I think about about the button...
Click to expand...

This is why we sold our lot in Tennessee. A large sloping lot down to a lake. 40 miles to a mall, a doctor, anything except a Walmart. As we age we need better access to facilities.

Man I really loved that lot.
 
So, nobody has found the lack of gasoline range an issue? I am guessing this is the case because most of us who own these cars are older and appreciate more frequent stops. I know when I was younger, having to stop so frequently for gas on long road trips would have annoyed me.
 
Kerbe, I will counter your theoretical calculations with real world experience. I’ve monitored my mpg on four long trips of 750-1500 miles. All of it on interstate 15 driving between LA and southern and northern Utah at 70-80 mph, 2-3 adults with luggage. I consistently see 39 mpg. Driving in the empty desert means that gas stations are not on every off ramp. In all of those trips I haven’t been comfortable driving all the way from LA to Las Vegas, which is about 270 miles from my house without stopping for gas. My state of charge and gas levels were just too low for me to chance getting stranded. A car that won’t get me to LV without anxiety over running out of gas is missing a pretty low bar for what I want and expect in a long distance cruiser. My clarity is a fabulous commuter car but not one I would choose for regular extended driving in the western US. Obviously this is just my anecdotal experience, but for me it disproves your theoretical conclusions.
 
Last edited:
*edited as this had become a negative discussion

I am a pilot and have x number of pounds of fuel in the tanks, divided by planned fuel burn at x#/hr, multiplied by the current cruising speed plus or minus winds aloft plus whatever reserve as appropriate for the mission (calculated as time, not distance) . I can say that although theoretical, this is used thousands of times a day for trip planning and execution and works 99.9% of the time when done carefully. **Well, it used to be used thousands of times a day.... hmmm...and I used to be...

Back to the original purpose of the thread, which was planning a long cross country trip using the Clarity (not specifically some remote death valley), the Clarity has a couple of nice features for that, and some detractors.

The thing about the Clarity is that if you have some juice in the battery, the tank going empty is not the "get out and push" point technically (although you should be at least exiting the highway for a gas station). However, I didn't purchase the Clarity for extended road trips in remote locations. It wasn't designed for those runs (although obviously you can do it), it didn't even include a spare tire (which yes, you can buy). Heading out across deep west Texas (where it is very much a long way from anything) - Big Bend for example, without a spare tire and 5 gallons of gas in the trunk/trailer hitch cargo basket, would be insanity in my mind. It would not be where I would want to take a stock Clarity.

I regularly see 300+ miles of range on my car, even with my poor economy driving. Those getting 50 EV may have even more, as they drive more efficiently. Unlike my fear of running out of gas in my Acura and the car sputtering to a stop suddenly, barring a system failure that would stop any car, the Clarity is capable (and this has been proven) of still driving. Even if you consider it limping, with not a drop of gas in the tank, you can keep going - for somewhere around another 20+ miles if you had HV mode on, saving 50% of your charge/range.

https://www.insideevsforum.com/comm...larity-from-the-globe-mail-april-9-2020.8659/

Just my thoughts, likely not worth a Sanders Penny.

Cash
 
Last edited:
I was only responding to an assertion that a clarity’s range for long distance driving is good enough for ANY driver, based on, yes, a theoretical calculation of mpg x gas tank capacity. It isn’t good enough for this driver based not on calculations but on experience behind the wheel. That’s all I wanted to say and meant to say. As I also said, I don’t expect my experience to be definitive but I don’t need to be corrected for things I never said or implied.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top