Great Brakes

D

David Towle

Well-Known Member
One of the best Clarity features for me is the brakes. I had read previously how some hybrids were inconsistent going from regen to friction braking. Not Clarity! It has one of the best brake systems I've ever experienced, whether in regen or friction phase (i can't tell where one ends and the next begins). The pedal is firm, never spongy, and very consistent. Thanks Honda!
 
Totally agree. Arguably the best brakes in the EV market place for feel, and amount of regen gained vs friction brakes. (Just no one pedal driving)

Here are two diagrams that show how Honda engineered it to eke out as much regen over stopping distance as possible.
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0A2FD2EA-5B2C-4668-8120-01AA0999F182.webp
 
"There's one pedal driving, just use Sport and 4 chevrons of regen."

Until you use cruise control. Then you are back to original 1 chevron.
 
My understanding is that true “one-pedal” driving uses a lot higher regen level than we have access to. That it can almost, or maybe even completely, brake the car to a stop.

Do I have that right?
 
As an old (both me and car) Insight driver and hypermiler, it was sort of nice to be able to tell the difference in feel between regen braking and caliper braking. That said, the Clarity's brakes are truly a work of engineering art.
 
ken wells said:
Hey KKen, these are very interesting diagrams. Have you an URL for the source?
Click to expand...
I copied then off this forum. I think @insightman or @Atkinson or someone I’ve forgotten might have the source.
As a way of apologizing for not being able to find the source documents, here is a very interesting paper on the development of the Clarity that has an amazing number of charts. Hopefully this will tide you over until someone chimes in with the sources for them.

I did find one of the documents but not the URL. It’s attached. I’m sorry but I can’t find the other one.
 

Attachments

I agree that the engineering of the brake system is amazing. But I have a slightly different question. How much power are we actually putting back into the battery by using regenerative braking? If the scale on the panel meter of regen power is the same as the scale for traction power then the amount of regen power captured is tiny. To rephrase my question ... although I love the feel of the brakes, is the whole regenerative braking system really just a marketing gimmick? Is the amount of power reclaimed worth the additional weight and complexity of the system's components?

Since I am a flatlander, maybe the benefit is one that I never see, since I never descend a mountain. But for my day-to-day driving, I've never seen any evidence that I'm capturing enough power from the braking system to make a difference.
 
KentuckyKen said:
I copied then off this forum. I think @insightman or @Atkinson or someone I’ve forgotten might have the source.
As a way of apologizing for not being able to find the source documents, here is a very interesting paper on the development of the Clarity that has an amazing number of charts. Hopefully this will tide you over until someone chimes in with the sources for them.

I did find one of the documents but not the URL. It’s attached. I’m sorry but I can’t find the other one.
Click to expand...
I think all this good stuff has been coming from @Ray B .
 
Fast Eddie B said:
My understanding is that true “one-pedal” driving uses a lot higher regen level than we have access to. That it can almost, or maybe even completely, brake the car to a stop.

Do I have that right?
Click to expand...

To me, one-pedal driving just means that you can use regen braking to avoid using the brake pedal at least sometimes. Bolt literally comes to a stop in "L" most of the time because of the much larger regen ability (not by friction brakes engaged). Clarity (for any non-Clarity readers) does not come to a full stop (except perhaps on an uphill grade). Also, max available regen in the Clarity, sport, chevron 4 is less regen than is available in other EVs (e.g. Volt, Bolt, "L").

However, it is still possible to do a lot of Clarity driving (sport, 4 chevrons) without using the brake pedal, so at least real-actual "one-pedal" driving a good amount of the time.

That said, I ended up driving Clarity most of the time in normal mode with regen paddle use by habit or for fun (sport on the highway for better adaptive cruise performance), while I almost always drive Bolt in L.
 
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sniwallof said:
That said, I ended up driving Clarity most of the time in normal mode with regen paddle use by habit or for fun (sport on the highway for better adaptive cruise performance), while I almost always drive Bolt in L.
Click to expand...
Help me understand what driving in "L" means.
 
Thanks KKen for the information. Sometimes my friction brakes are a little noisy so I can tell exactly when they engage. I noticed that I don't hear them until at the very end so I had assumed that it's all regen until then. I'm glad this confirmed my own observations. There's been a lot of discussion where folks say they use the paddles to avoid engaging the friction brakes. This shows that there's no need to do that if that's the goal, just use the foot brakes normally. Honda's design not only results in more natural braking and more regen but it also dramatically reduces brake wear. It's win-win-win!
 
"Help me understand what driving in "L" means."

I test drove a Volt before purchasing the Clarity. "Driving in "L"" is Chevys max regen mode. Sort of like driving the Clarity in Sport with max reg.
 
insightman said:
I think all this good stuff has been coming from @Ray B .
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tip. I searched @Ray B’s posts and found the URL to the regen article I posted above.
So props to @Ray B for posting so many great source docs and @ken wells here is one of the URLs you requested.

https://www.plugincars.com/honda-reinvents-regenerative-braking-fit-ev-110596.html

I have learned a boatload of valuable (and $ saving) information from this forum. Thanks to all and keep it coming.
 
insightman said:
I think all this good stuff has been coming from @Ray B .
Click to expand...

Thanks Insightman. I may have provided a link for the second reference KentuckyKen attached, but the paper on the Clarity development, and many other sources valuable info on this forum come from Anthony W. I think both he deserves a lot more credit than I.

Not to mention you, KentuckyKen, MNSteve and a handful of others who steer everyone in the right direction on almost every topic.

Aside... Someone has to teach me how to link people inside a post with the @ symbol. :)
 
How did I forget @AnthonyW? Mea culpa. Props to him and several others, especially the long time posters that started us off on this forum. (@dstrauss, @jdonalds , @insightman, @Viking79, just to name a few and all the great newer posters too numeric to mention. And please don’t feel slighted if I didn’t name you because I was trying to keep this post under 10 pages and have memory issues to boot)

Linking posters is easy. Just enter “@“ and three or more letters of the name and a box wil pop up with names to select from.
 
MNSteve said:
Help me understand what driving in "L" means.
Click to expand...

Bolt and Volt have D and L on the shifter. D is "drive" and L was probably "low" an artifact of low gears in ice vehicles. But, then many drivers found that they just liked to drive in L, for the one-pedal experience. So much so, that GM added brake light operation in gen 2, recognizing that so many Volt owners used L for regular driving.

In D both Volt/Bolt coast when you let up on the accelerator ("go") pedal. In L, you depress the go pedal for the desired speed. Letting up from that point (desired speed) on the go pedal immediately causes regen braking (as compared with coasting in D). In L, the go pedal position is "feathered" by small continuous movements to maintain the desired speed, or the desired rate of deceleration, which in Bolt, can be all the way to stopped. Some drivers find feathering the go pedal (one-pedal driving) to be too much work and fatiguing, others a joyful way to drive approaching nirvana.

Clarity, sport, 4 cheverons, is the closest one can get to Volt/Bolt L (Tesla, Leaf too) nirvana. It's not there, but it definitely gives a one-pedal driving experience, albeit somewhat limited and less aggressive.
 
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