"Find My Car" During Auto Transport

S

subsonicdriver

New Member
I'm having my new Clarity shipped cross-country. I've registered and added it to HondaLink, so I can use Find My Car to locate the car.

A few days ago, as the car was getting loaded, I could locate the car to the dealership lot. Then I was able to refresh and see the car "moving" down the freeway, even though it's parked on the truck. That was pretty cool, and I was hoping I could track the car the whole way over.

But the car hasn't moved in recent days. I initially thought it might be the truckers making a stop, but now I suspect that HondaLink doesn't update the location after X hours since the last time the car was on. The app however does say "Last Updated at <right now>".

I realize this isn't a very common situation, but anyone else have an experience like this? (Yeah, I can call the truckers, but this is more fun.)
 
My car was built in May and delivered in Michigan in mid-September. I can't imagine it was in continuous motion in the interim.
Honda imports very few cars these days. I suspect the logistics are a bit inefficient.
 
On the map screen, before it finds the car, it say it cannot find a moving car. If yours is in transit on the highway the app will not find it.
 
Tek_Freek said:
On the map screen, before it finds the car, it say it cannot find a moving car. If yours is in transit on the highway the app will not find it.
Click to expand...

I guess I interpreted "moving vehicle" to mean that it won't locate the car as it's being driven, rather than while it's moving but on a trailer. And even if that were the case, I'd expect the location to update at least when the truckers are resting.
 
I have wondered about these HondaLink updates too.

It seems like maybe updates will only occur if something is 'active' with the vehicle. For instance, it updates while being charged. It does not update while it is on (and moving), but perhaps it sends a location every time you turn it off, and maybe every time turn it on. Maybe the updates run for a brief period of time after it is shut down and then stop. Or, if you stop at a light (and the vehicle is still running).

One piece of evidence I have seen is if the car is parked for several days, and you ask for a location update, it will report the position but the 'last updated' time corresponds to the day that it was parked and not the current day.

This is consistent with your experience. I have a feeling that during time periods when the car is off (and not charging) that no updates occur (even if the vehicle is moved passively). This makes sense from the standpoint of not having any drain on the 12V battery, and in most cases the location would not be 'wrong'... You have found an unusual case where it won't update the location until it is plugged in or turned on again.

Of course, there is a case where the vehicle can communicate when it has been parked for an extended period... I think you could engage the climate control. Maybe it listens but doesn't transmit while 'off'.

If you were very brave, you could activate the climate control. This may bring the vehicle to life and provide a location update too !!! Of course, the risk would be that you couldn't turn it off and run the risk of discharging the HV battery remotely. I have wondered what would happen if you accidentally hit the climate button while you were away somewhere.
 
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subsonicdriver said:
I'm having my new Clarity shipped cross-country. I've registered and added it to HondaLink, so I can use Find My Car to locate the car.

A few days ago, as the car was getting loaded, I could locate the car to the dealership lot. Then I was able to refresh and see the car "moving" down the freeway, even though it's parked on the truck. That was pretty cool, and I was hoping I could track the car the whole way over.

But the car hasn't moved in recent days. I initially thought it might be the truckers making a stop, but now I suspect that HondaLink doesn't update the location after X hours since the last time the car was on. The app however does say "Last Updated at <right now>".

I realize this isn't a very common situation, but anyone else have an experience like this? (Yeah, I can call the truckers, but this is more fun.)
Click to expand...
I have found that the telemetrics (car talking to the Hondalink) turns off after about 7 days of inactivity with the car to avoid depleting the 12v battery (too bad Honda didn't engineer the telemetrics to stay on until the battery was below a certain charge as I keep the 12v battery on a battery minder so the battery won't deplete its self).

When snowbirding in the winter I leave Claire in our garage for 3 months and I will only get about 7 days of reporting before the telemetrics goes to sleep.

Interesting that you could follow the car while it was moving.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Inside EVs mobile app
 
@Richard_arch74 -
Let's say the telemetrics shuts down after the 7 days...
Do you think it could be brought back to life by commanding the climate system to come on, or is it stone dead for both transmit and receive?
 
@MrFixit, I don't know. I would guess not. The only way I know to start the telemetrics again is to start the car (which I have had my daughter, here in town, do for me several times).
I'm not sure I would want to start the climate control for fear that I would lose the telemetrics after I started the climate control.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Inside EVs mobile app
 
Update: It turns out I was able to track the car essentially the whole way cross-country while it was sitting on the truck for ~10 days. The HondaLink location update frequency was very spotty and random, but I was able to locate the car at least once a day, sometimes more. During the times when I suspected the app had stopped updating, I'm pretty sure the truck was actually parked en route.

I did turn the climate control on/off remotely, which sometimes worked, but it didn't really help in forcing a location update from my experience.
 
Very cool that you were able to track the car!

I may be overly paranoid here, but I don't think it's a good idea to be turning remote climate on/off on a car that's in an unknown location being handled by someone else. I wouldn't someone to be say fixing tiedown straps, reaching under the car and have fans and other things start running unexpectedly.

That said, I probably would have tried it too :-)
 
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