High Mileage Clarity PHEV - Reliability, Maintenance, Cost

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Kundan

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Apologies if this is already started. A quick search didn't show a similar thread.

I was hoping we can get a thread started on "high mileage" cars and maintenance performed, and unexpected repairs performed to get there. Please also post the related costs of those maintenance items or unexpected repairs, as applicable.
 
I don't know about High Mileage but ours has 32,131 at present.

We've had two issues. One was the multiple warning light issue well documented on this forum. Honda did a reset and that problem has not returned.

Our summer battery level in 2018 was 48-53 miles of range. In April of this year, as the weather warmed, the range was increasing then suddenly fell and is averaging only 41. I took it to Honda twice but they declared it not a problem. I'm disappointed because when winter comes we will no longer be driving 100% electric around town. My only hope is the battery further deteriorates to the point where Honda can't ignore it and has to fix it.

I've started keep in a record of EV Range vs ambient temperature. You'll note two blips where the EV range increased. The first was after a one week long vacation 95% of which was in HV mode over more than 1,200 miles. The second was a day when we traveled about 50 miles up hill from 500 foot elevation to over 4,000 foot elevation. On the return trip we used very little battery power to return 50 miles back down to our starting elevation. 57 miles may look good but I think it should have been more like 70+.

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jdonalds said:
I've started keep in a record of EV Range vs ambient temperature.
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Out of curiosity, are you recording the EV range as reported by the guess-o-meter after a charge? Or the actual EV range you get on a full charge? (probably hard to do unless you completely deplete the battery between charges).
 
DucRider said:
Out of curiosity, are you recording the EV range as reported by the guess-o-meter after a charge? Or the actual EV range you get on a full charge? (probably hard to do unless you completely deplete the battery between charges).
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I find the Guess O Meter to be fairly accurate. I'm aware that it is based on previous drive(s) and averages in the current drive as well. After many round trips to the same location I've burned through 14 miles of GOM range and 14 actual miles. This happens regularly. I know that if on a given drive I alter my driving habits, for example accelerating rapidly, it will cause the GOM not to match the actual miles.

So my chart is the EV Range estimate produced by the car, and the ambient temperature which is likely off by 5 or more degrees. Temperature at the start of charge? Or temperature at the end of charge (2 + hours later)? Or the average temperature over the whole charge period? Actually what I record is the temperature from our back yard vs inside the garage. It's all relative though. The real fact is the battery is not performing as it was for the first 25,000 miles. Averaging about 41 miles of EV range in this climate is just a big disappointment.

We are retired so we are home often. We may take one to four trips in the car on a given day, and charge every time we get home. So we rarely do a full charge. As a test we did, for more than a week, allow the battery to drain to minimum before charging to see if it would "season" the battery. No effect.
 
I was a charge zealot at first, then realized its better to not be sitting around on a full charge. But since the cell balancing takes place at the top of charge cycle, i do it regularly when down around 50percent , but not after every short drive.
 
Bender said:
Maybe someone who Ubers at a leisurely pace and uses 220 chargers everywhere for half their day?
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There is at least one member on this forum with over 55,000 miles on their Clarity that uses it to Uber occasionally. Don't know about the charging, though.
 
jdonalds said:
Our summer battery level in 2018 was 48-53 miles of range. In April of this year, as the weather warmed, the range was increasing then suddenly fell and is averaging only 41.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, using estimated miles or even miles driven is mainly a measure of efficiency, has too many variables, and is not the way to measure battery capacity. It's kinda' like saying, "I use to get 30mpg but now I only get 27mpg so my ten gallon tank must only hold 8 gallons now." :confused:

You need a way to read kwh's.
 
fotomoto said:
Unfortunately, using estimated miles or even miles driven is mainly a measure of efficiency, has too many variables, and is not the way to measure battery capacity. It's kinda' like saying, "I use to get 30mpg but now I only get 27mpg so my ten gallon tank must only hold 8 gallons now." :confused:

You need a way to read kwh's.
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I get the impression they are factoring in the variables and that their driving situation hasn't changed, and yet they have experienced a dramatic dropoff in EV range. It sounds like it is very possible that as they suspect they have a problem with the battery.

jdonalds said:
My only hope is the battery further deteriorates to the point where Honda can't ignore it and has to fix it.
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If it is in fact a problem with the battery and not some as of yet undetected environment or driving condition issue, then I think you have a very good chance of this happening during the eight year warranty period. You should have a capacity test run if you haven't already, even though you may have to pay for the test. Actually if it was never done when you purchased the car check with @insightman as he can tell you where in the PDI instructions they were supposed to do the test. The numbers will likely be within Honda's acceptable range, but you should have it tested annually so that at least for yourself you can monitor the condition and if the test result numbers keep declining each year faster than would normally be expected it may give you something to convince Honda to replace it prior to actual failure. I'm pretty sure that anecdotal changes in EV range that you tell them about won't budge them, but test results might.
 
2002 said:
It sounds like it is very possible that as they suspect they have a problem with the battery.
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That's not in question. It's how to quantify it. If you can't, you're not going to get very far with either a dealership or corporate. I've watched this rodeo before on Toyota, GM, and Ford forums.

2002 said:
You should have a capacity test run if
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Like this. :)
 
FYI:
The Clarity specific PDI (SB 17-093, attached) states on the last page that warranty replacement occurs only when the Battery Capacity Test is below 36.6 Amp hours in the first 8 years (10 for Cali). Nominal value in a new Clarity is ~55 Amp hours so this is at about a 33.5% (~1/3) loss of capacity to be eligible for warranty replacement.
 

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jdonalds said:
Our summer battery level in 2018 was 48-53 miles of range. In April of this year, as the weather warmed, the range was increasing then suddenly fell and is averaging only 41.
Click to expand...
This may be a dumb thought, but what if your resistant heater is not completely shutting off. That would mean the AC would need to work harder and the heater as we all know burns a lot of power. One thing you could try since it is summer, would be to remove the fuse to the resistant heater and see if your mileage increases.
 
KentuckyKen said:
FYI:
The Clarity specific PDI (SB 17-093, attached) states on the last page that warranty replacement occurs only when the Battery Capacity Test is below 36.6 Amp hours in the first 8 years (10 for Cali). Nominal value in a new Clarity is ~55 Amp hours so this is at about a 33.5% (~1/3) loss of capacity to be eligible for warranty replacement.
Click to expand...
Even before their recent downturn in EV range they seemed to rarely get above 50 any time of the year which seems low. Of course everyone's driving conditions and driving style is different so all we can do is keep flipping a coin between it being caused by a sub par battery or their particular driving conditions. Or perhaps some other issue with the car. But I suspect that a capacity test on delivery might have shown lower than the 55 amps that most people get on a new battery, even cars that we suspect were sitting on dealer lots uncharged for months seem to test at the normal capacity. Unfortunately AFAIK they don't have an original capacity test result so we will never know if they started out with a weak battery. But if we assume that their original lower than normal range was battery related then the original test result might have been around 50 amps, and now might be somewhere in the 40's just as an example. That would not be normal loss in just one year. That's why I'm saying get a capacity test now and do one every year, let's say it tests 45 now and 41 next year, they might get lucky and Honda will agree that in two years it shouldn't go down that much. Okay maybe that is unlikely that Honda would admit that, but at least they are quantitatively monitoring the battery trend. I"m sure capacity tests can also be affected by variables like temperature at the time of the test (although I'm guessing there is a test requirement for that) but, at least the results won't be up for debate about whether it is caused by driving conditions. If it is already starting out lower than normal and continues to decline it shouldn't take all that long for it to drop below 36 amps so they can get it replaced, hopefully prior to actual failure and being stranded somewhere.
 
jdonalds said:
I don't know about High Mileage but ours has 32,131 at present.

We've had two issues. One was the multiple warning light issue well documented on this forum. Honda did a reset and that problem has not returned.

Our summer battery level in 2018 was 48-53 miles of range. In April of this year, as the weather warmed, the range was increasing then suddenly fell and is averaging only 41. I took it to Honda twice but they declared it not a problem. I'm disappointed because when winter comes we will no longer be driving 100% electric around town. My only hope is the battery further deteriorates to the point where Honda can't ignore it and has to fix it.

I've started keep in a record of EV Range vs ambient temperature. You'll note two blips where the EV range increased. The first was after a one week long vacation 95% of which was in HV mode over more than 1,200 miles. The second was a day when we traveled about 50 miles up hill from 500 foot elevation to over 4,000 foot elevation. On the return trip we used very little battery power to return 50 miles back down to our starting elevation. 57 miles may look good but I think it should have been more like 70+.

View attachment 5329
Click to expand...

I heard that the oil changes come up faster than they should, especially given the amount of miles one may put on the ICE. - Was that true for you?

I plan to get an oil change once a year due to the age of the oil rather than as a result of miles on the ICE but I am curious to know if the car's maintenance minder is conservative compared to the 1 year interval.
 
fotomoto said:
Unfortunately, using estimated miles or even miles driven is mainly a measure of efficiency, has too many variables, and is not the way to measure battery capacity. It's kinda' like saying, "I use to get 30mpg but now I only get 27mpg so my ten gallon tank must only hold 8 gallons now." :confused:

You need a way to read kwh's.
Click to expand...
My driving pattern and style hasn't change. The routs we take are quite the same day after day. We live in a small city with almost no traffic. I could lay 10 trips on top of each other from 10 days and it would look like one line on a map. I do believe I have a good sense of how the car behaves and it has lost capacity.
 
Kundan said:
I heard that the oil changes come up faster than they should, especially given the amount of miles one may put on the ICE. - Was that true for you?

I plan to get an oil change once a year due to the age of the oil rather than as a result of miles on the ICE but I am curious to know if the car's maintenance minder is conservative compared to the 1 year interval.
Click to expand...
The MM will aggregate service items such as tire rotation and oil changes to coincide by moving one up, purportedly to decrease the number of service visits (and coincidentally increase dealer profit). Many of us have gotten the MM to give us extra months on the oil change interval by resetting the tire rotation.
The MM is also way past conservative on the oil change interval since it appears to be working mostly on total miles and not just HV miles. The manual does specify not going longer than one year if the MM does not indicate sooner. There are several threads on this.
 
KentuckyKen said:
The MM is also way past conservative on the oil change interval since it appears to be working mostly on total miles and not just HV miles.
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I'm not so sure about this anymore. My car is at 7700mi. After resetting the tire alert, it now says I'm 3 months away from an oil change. Vehicle has a production date of 09/18.
 
AlAl said:
I'm not so sure about this anymore. My car is at 7700mi. After resetting the tire alert, it now says I'm 3 months away from an oil change. Vehicle has a production date of 09/18.
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On the first oil change i went ahead and had it done when the mm alerted. I heard honda uses break in oils so i thought best to go ahead and get it changed. That was around 5k miles. Now approaching 12k and no alerts yet
 
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