K8QM
Active Member
All my usual caveats hold - YMMV!
At least once a day since late February I have pulled our Clarity out of our garage, driven about 150 feet up our gravel driveway and then headed down a hill approximately 2/10ths of a mile long. In well over a hundred trips I've never had the ICE come on due to the regen process causing the car to need to "shed load" as it would be called in the power industry.
So today I decided my daughter and I needed some weird science.
Act One
When I got home from work I fully charged the car on the level 2 charger, drove it once around the neighborhood to shed some charge and parked it pointed downhill on the side of our road. About 75 feet of extension cord got the Honda charger out to the car where I topped it off from 98% to 100%.
Once we hit 100% we unplugged, turned off HVAC, radio and lights and started rolling down the hill. We were in regen the whole way, but once I started applying brakes at the bottom the ICE kicked on. Note again that this has never happened before, but the simple difference of not having the 150 foot drive up our driveway would seem to have made the difference in how much charge the battery could take.
Act Two
After driving around long enough for the ICE to warm up fully I repeated the level 2 charge, this time going directly to my roadside parking place instead of doing a loop around the neighborhood. When I plugged in the level 1 charger nothing happened; presumably the battery was not even down 1% and would take no charge.
So I repeated the roll down the hill, but instead of only applying brakes at the bottom as I normally would I applied them as much as possible the whole way down and indeed was able to get the ICE to start up. This lends credence to those that say braking provides more regen than just rolling and also shows that everyday I'm probably just a couple of brake taps away from starting the ICE when I leave home.
Act Three
After driving around long enough for the ICE to warm up fully I repeated the level 2 charge, drove it once around the neighborhood to shed some charge and parked it pointed downhill on the side of our road. About 75 feet of extension cord got the Honda charger out to the car where I topped it off from 98% to 100%.
Once it was fully charged we unplugged, cranked the heat on HI, turned both seat heaters on full, waited about a minute and then repeated the roll test with as much braking as possible.
No ICE, only silent running in EV.
*I'm stepping on my soap box here*
So, a non-scientific experiment, but I think the results are valid and show that although we often make assumptions that things are happening randomly, they may very well be working exactly as designed. That design may not be well thought out or it may not fit our view of how something should work but it doesn't make it wrong.
Even in the case of the annoying as heck HV readings there is a case to be made that some Engineer thought it would be really clever to average all your driving into one reading. That could be valid for some drivers but certainly not for the vast majority of us and luckily Honda has gotten the word.
It could be that the Clarity needs to charge to 99% of what it does now to allow some regen space or maybe the max charge needs to be 101%. That's for someone smarter than me to figure out.
*Off the soapbox*
Comments and questions welcome.
-geo
At least once a day since late February I have pulled our Clarity out of our garage, driven about 150 feet up our gravel driveway and then headed down a hill approximately 2/10ths of a mile long. In well over a hundred trips I've never had the ICE come on due to the regen process causing the car to need to "shed load" as it would be called in the power industry.
So today I decided my daughter and I needed some weird science.
Act One
When I got home from work I fully charged the car on the level 2 charger, drove it once around the neighborhood to shed some charge and parked it pointed downhill on the side of our road. About 75 feet of extension cord got the Honda charger out to the car where I topped it off from 98% to 100%.
Once we hit 100% we unplugged, turned off HVAC, radio and lights and started rolling down the hill. We were in regen the whole way, but once I started applying brakes at the bottom the ICE kicked on. Note again that this has never happened before, but the simple difference of not having the 150 foot drive up our driveway would seem to have made the difference in how much charge the battery could take.
Act Two
After driving around long enough for the ICE to warm up fully I repeated the level 2 charge, this time going directly to my roadside parking place instead of doing a loop around the neighborhood. When I plugged in the level 1 charger nothing happened; presumably the battery was not even down 1% and would take no charge.
So I repeated the roll down the hill, but instead of only applying brakes at the bottom as I normally would I applied them as much as possible the whole way down and indeed was able to get the ICE to start up. This lends credence to those that say braking provides more regen than just rolling and also shows that everyday I'm probably just a couple of brake taps away from starting the ICE when I leave home.
Act Three
After driving around long enough for the ICE to warm up fully I repeated the level 2 charge, drove it once around the neighborhood to shed some charge and parked it pointed downhill on the side of our road. About 75 feet of extension cord got the Honda charger out to the car where I topped it off from 98% to 100%.
Once it was fully charged we unplugged, cranked the heat on HI, turned both seat heaters on full, waited about a minute and then repeated the roll test with as much braking as possible.
No ICE, only silent running in EV.
*I'm stepping on my soap box here*
So, a non-scientific experiment, but I think the results are valid and show that although we often make assumptions that things are happening randomly, they may very well be working exactly as designed. That design may not be well thought out or it may not fit our view of how something should work but it doesn't make it wrong.
Even in the case of the annoying as heck HV readings there is a case to be made that some Engineer thought it would be really clever to average all your driving into one reading. That could be valid for some drivers but certainly not for the vast majority of us and luckily Honda has gotten the word.
It could be that the Clarity needs to charge to 99% of what it does now to allow some regen space or maybe the max charge needs to be 101%. That's for someone smarter than me to figure out.
*Off the soapbox*
Comments and questions welcome.
-geo
