how to drive the car

V

victor_2019

Active Member
in the thread about the NHTSA complains, a lot of the answers were "those people didn't know how to drive the car"...

well, that's true. so, are there any resources that explain how to drive the car?

Should one switch to HV mode with 100% battery charge? will the car be able to regen in that case?

I've taken a few long trips with my clarity and had different experiences.

first trip was when I bought it fro ma dealer 500 km away from home. I let the battery drain all the way first before switching to HV mode. but it was all flat highway so I didn't notice any loss of power and I got about 5.5 l/100 km fuel consumption which wasn't bad at 120 km/h.

now I did another trip but this time I switched to HV mode a lot earlier.
first part of the trip I think I switched to HV mode when I had maybe 80% of the battery charge, and I got about 4 l/100 km, driving around 100 km/h. I know speed can make a big difference in terms of fuel consumption, but can the battery state also make the gas engine consume less fuel in HV mode?

second part of the trip I switched when I had about 50% of the battery and it used just slightly more fuel, but I can't really draw a definite conclusion from that.

however I did notice some funny behaviour:
when driving let's say constant 50 km/h in HV mode with battery at 50% and cruise control, on a relatively flat terrain, the gas engine would sometimes rev up for now obvious reason and the fuel consumption would basically double. then it would go back down. anyone know why it does stuff like this?

then when accelerating from a stop the engine would rev up quite high. however I am not accelerating hard and I have 50% of the battery. in town I drive in EV mode only and the battery is more than capable of accelerating the car in the manner I drive it, even at much less than 50% capacity, so I don't see why the engine would rev up like crazy when doing the same type of acceleration in HV mode. especially that it doesn't do it consistently...
 
From my experience and the many posts and threads on here about drive modes, I would say your car is behaving normally. For example, when using cruise control the engine (generator really) will rev occasionally to meet the demands of the electric drive motor. Even on flat terrain at a constant vehicle speed, there is some variability in required horsepower. And when accelerating from a stop in HV mode, the car gets to decide when to use the engine (generator) and when to use the battery (or both) to supply electricity to the drive motor. Run some searches on here to gets lots more information on which drive modes do what.
 
For what it is worth, here is my strategy for long trips. Leave the house with a full battery(55 miles), when I get to the freeway I switch to HV mode, usually have about 45 miles of EV range by then. If I know I will be able to charge at the destination I keep an eye on the nav system and when I get about 40 miles away I go back to EV mode. I feel(not know) that having 50-70% battery capacity will give the car more flexibility when in HV mode as it encounters hills etc. Sometimes as I go up pass I will switch to EV mode the last few miles knowing I can get them back in regen on the way down(4-6% grades). Of course my wife has driven the car and never pressed a single button with no complaints (other than how much slower it is than her Bolt and missing the one pedal driving)
 
For us it's simple. EV around town, HV on the highway. When on the highway we also select Sport mode which helps the ACC resume speed quickly. That's pretty much how we drive the car.

We only use HV charge if we've forgotten to reinitialize the HV mode while on long trips. In that case the battery gets drained quickly. So we use HV Charge to bring it back up to 57% charged. We don't like using HV Charge, because it is inefficient, so we try to remember to reset HV after stopping at a gas station or rest stop.
 
My wife is one of those that would complain because she does not do any "switching" of modes driving the Clarity.

She is of the type that just starts the car, drives it and does not care about anything else.

So when she complains of the engine running (when the EV runs out), or when the A/C smells (leaves A/C running all the time) - I just look at her and say "you drive it that way, that's what you get".

When I ride along as a passenger, I try to teach her how to switch from EV to HV when going on the highway/freeways.
Then I teach her how to switch off the A/C for the last 10 minutes before reaching home to vent out and dry out the vents to prevent the smelly mildew growth...

That's all fine but then she still drives it as if a car magically takes care of itself....
 
4sallypat said:
Then I teach her how to switch off the A/C for the last 10 minutes before reaching home to vent out and dry out the vents to prevent the smelly mildew growth...
Click to expand...

is that a thing? I've never done that in any of the cars I've owned over the years and never had any mildew problem...
 
no I live in montreal where the summers tend to be quite humid and september is the worst, very high humidity and not so hot days
 
victor_2019 said:
is that a thing? I've never done that in any of the cars I've owned over the years and never had any mildew problem...
Click to expand...
All cars develop an odor after running the A/C due to condensation forming on the vent channels and air channel gates.
To avoid that, I always turn off the A/C about a mile before I park her and let the outside air run thru at high speed.
Dries out the vent and makes for a better smelling car...
 
4sallypat said:
My wife is one of those that would complain because she does not do any "switching" of modes driving the Clarity.

She is of the type that just starts the car, drives it and does not care about anything else.

So when she complains of the engine running (when the EV runs out), or when the A/C smells (leaves A/C running all the time) - I just look at her and say "you drive it that way, that's what you get".

When I ride along as a passenger, I try to teach her how to switch from EV to HV when going on the highway/freeways.
Then I teach her how to switch off the A/C for the last 10 minutes before reaching home to vent out and dry out the vents to prevent the smelly mildew growth...

That's all fine but then she still drives it as if a car magically takes care of itself....
Click to expand...
Same here. I don't even bother telling her about the Regen paddles...LOL
 
craze1cars said:
Never have...never will...never noticed a problem
Click to expand...

Same. A/C is mandatory here nearly 365 and never had an issue leaving it on but I do know it can be an issue for some.

The only issue we've ever had with a/c condensate was on my first new car: '84 Honda CRX and about 5 years in the condensate hose clogged. I didn't realize this until water backed up high enough in the evaporator box that it would spill out onto the floor board during right turns and any passenger would get a large splash of very cold water on their feet! Now, the carpet did smell for a bit til I removed it and thoroughly dried everything out.
 
And some folks have more defined sense of smell and will notice odors that others do not. Sat in plenty of cars that smelled damn funky to me.

I run AC pretty much all the time the car is being driven from March to Nov.
 
victor_2019 said:
in the thread about the NHTSA complains, a lot of the answers were "those people didn't know how to drive the car"...

well, that's true. so, are there any resources that explain how to drive the car?

Should one switch to HV mode with 100% battery charge? will the car be able to regen in that case?

I've taken a few long trips with my clarity and had different experiences.

first trip was when I bought it fro ma dealer 500 km away from home. I let the battery drain all the way first before switching to HV mode. but it was all flat highway so I didn't notice any loss of power and I got about 5.5 l/100 km fuel consumption which wasn't bad at 120 km/h.

now I did another trip but this time I switched to HV mode a lot earlier.
first part of the trip I think I switched to HV mode when I had maybe 80% of the battery charge, and I got about 4 l/100 km, driving around 100 km/h. I know speed can make a big difference in terms of fuel consumption, but can the battery state also make the gas engine consume less fuel in HV mode?

second part of the trip I switched when I had about 50% of the battery and it used just slightly more fuel, but I can't really draw a definite conclusion from that.

however I did notice some funny behaviour:
when driving let's say constant 50 km/h in HV mode with battery at 50% and cruise control, on a relatively flat terrain, the gas engine would sometimes rev up for now obvious reason and the fuel consumption would basically double. then it would go back down. anyone know why it does stuff like this?

then when accelerating from a stop the engine would rev up quite high. however I am not accelerating hard and I have 50% of the battery. in town I drive in EV mode only and the battery is more than capable of accelerating the car in the manner I drive it, even at much less than 50% capacity, so I don't see why the engine would rev up like crazy when doing the same type of acceleration in HV mode. especially that it doesn't do it consistently...
Click to expand...
As long as you keep 3 or more bars of ev range it should perform more consistently. If you select economy mode it can also help with the engine rpms going high. But occasionally the car will idle higher because you pushed the accelerator pedal past the detent or if the car is performing a system check.
 
As I look at the OBDII information, I do not see a difference between going to HV mode by allowing the battery to go to Zero EV remaining (11% state of charge) versus selecting HV mode by pressing the HV button. The engine will warmup, and go to gear mode until the battery drops another 5% and then go to high rpm to recover battery charge. The engine rpm goes very high when charge is about 9% below target level.

The only negative that I have found driving with zero EV is there is no battery to allow my HV reset.

HV mode, or zero EV mode, works fine as long as the hills are not too steep, or long.

I am not sure what benefit people are getting from switching to HV with remaining EV, unless they use the HV reset. The algorithm does not seem to use the remaining EV any better than when it shows zero EV remaining. When the display goes to 0.0 EV range, there is still about 11% battery remaining.
 
I haven't had mine long. On trips longer than the EV can handle on it's own, I switch to HV while on the freeway. Like most of us I try to drive in EV as much as I can. I don't like how the regen resets, so off the highway I usually put it in sport mode and set the regen to max and try to time it so I don't have to use the brakes much.
 
ClarityBill said:
As I look at the OBDII information, I do not see a difference between going to HV mode by allowing the battery to go to Zero EV remaining (11% state of charge) versus selecting HV mode by pressing the HV button. The engine will warmup, and go to gear mode until the battery drops another 5% and then go to high rpm to recover battery charge. The engine rpm goes very high when charge is about 9% below target level.

The only negative that I have found driving with zero EV is there is no battery to allow my HV reset.

HV mode, or zero EV mode, works fine as long as the hills are not too steep, or long.

I am not sure what benefit people are getting from switching to HV with remaining EV, unless they use the HV reset. The algorithm does not seem to use the remaining EV any better than when it shows zero EV remaining. When the display goes to 0.0 EV range, there is still about 11% battery remaining.
Click to expand...
On car trips I put HV on immediately so I can keep the battery full for when I get off the highway. I’m not a fan of driving around town with no battery. What’s quiet on the highway becomes annoying on city streets when the engine is rev’ing all over the place to keep the car going in the city.
 
ClarityBill said:
As I look at the OBDII information, I do not see a difference between going to HV mode by allowing the battery to go to Zero EV remaining (11% state of charge) versus selecting HV mode by pressing the HV button. The engine will warmup, and go to gear mode until the battery drops another 5% and then go to high rpm to recover battery charge. The engine rpm goes very high when charge is about 9% below target level.

The only negative that I have found driving with zero EV is there is no battery to allow my HV reset.

HV mode, or zero EV mode, works fine as long as the hills are not too steep, or long.

I am not sure what benefit people are getting from switching to HV with remaining EV, unless they use the HV reset. The algorithm does not seem to use the remaining EV any better than when it shows zero EV remaining. When the display goes to 0.0 EV range, there is still about 11% battery remaining.
Click to expand...
I found if i use all the ev range then the car will rev higher (sometimes) when accelerating than if i have 3 battery bars remaining, especially when doing stop and go driving. On the highway it may not be a problem when just cruising because as you say if the gear symbol shows up then the ice is supplying all the power and battery is recieving some charge. The system takes into account total ev power remaining when choosing how to power the car.
 
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