craze1cars
Well-Known Member
Hi all...long time lurker, first time poster.
Bought a Honda Clarity about 2.5 months ago. Just turned 7,000 miles. No I do NOT normally drive that much, but we just completed a 4,200 mile road trip starting and ending in Indiana, crossing Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, touching Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and back home thru Missouri/IL/IN again...great trip! And a heckuva learning experience with this strange little car!
Gotta say to this day I have YET to see a single other Clarity on the road to-date. And I find this a little disconcerting since I know darn well what it's like to find parts for low-production vehicles as I spent a couple decades on the insurance side of the auto collision industry. Suffice it to say my #1 advise for everyone who owns one of these cars -- do NOT drop your collision coverage!! Fender benders no big deal, but if you wreck these things right, they WILL be more expensive to fix than a typical other car!!! But that's a discussion for another post...
Our first 2,500 miles or so were more typical Clarity usage. Local running around town. Usually within electric range, occasionally running the ICE if exceeded. Quickly realized level 2 charger was mandatory for our usage, and installed one myself in my garage. I elected the Mustart 32A portable off Amazon and have been pleased with it.
As other say the car is near dead silent in EV mode and generally a pleasure to drive. It's a basic sedan, just a bit quieter and smoother/more luxurious than most. Performance? Meh. Not surprising. 212 HP in a 4,050 lb car = 0.52 hp per pound. I put it slightly below the performance level of my previous 2013 Accord EX with a base 4 cylinder engine...185 hp in a 3300 lb car = 0.56 HP per pound. And by seat-of-pants comparison there is little doubt in my mind that our old 4 cyl Accord would beat this Clarity in a drag race by just a little bit. A race car it is not. But it does have enough power for merging and getting out of its own way. It is not slow or underpowered. But any one thinking this car will provide V6 power should frankly shop elsewhere.
But that's not what this car is about, is it? Like others, our first 2,000 miles or so resulted in minimal gasoline usage...maybe 2 tanks because we took a couple in-state road trips. And it all worked great. But how about the 4,200 mile road trip? Interesting.
I will sum it up by saying that that it handled the trip very comfortably, yet differently.
Crossing Kansas was frankly the car's biggest challenge. Cruise control set at 80 mph, probably 20 mph headwind, for hours on end. The little generator was spinning mightily, the MPG readout recorded 33 mpg, and my calculated mpg was about 28. The range calculator was downright dangerous until I learned to not trust it at all -- at one time it said we had 80 miles to go and battery had been dead for the past 300 miles. 35 miles later the range was zero and we were down to one bar. Thankfully there was an exit nearby with a gas station. We took 6.75 gallons in our 7 gallon tank! Lesson learned. IGNORE the range calculator and start looking for gas as soon as you get down to about 1/3 tank, especially if you can hear that engine working, and at any substantial speed you will hear that engine working! And stopping for gas every 190 miles is frankly a little annoying if you don't need to pee yet...
Mountain passes were a pleasant surprise. After vowing to start a day with a full charge (thanks to a nice mom & pop hotel owner who had no objection to a plug-in overnight), and go directly to HV mode to ensure no dead battery issues, we did some beautiful and substantial mountain passes in Colorado taking us over 12,000 feet. This car handled it extremely well, but again rather differently. Going up it was not uncommon for the engine to be running a certain 5,000 to 5,500 rpm -- instant MPG meter was registering about 12 mpg. But power was more than adequate, as an experiment even on these steep inclines I floored it to see how much was left for passing or whatever, and it took off reasonably briskly for a heavy pig of a car with the power-to-weight ratio of a 4 cylinder -- it actually had power in reserve which was refreshing! (Let's all remember that electric does NOT lose 30% of its HP like a NA gas engine does at 10,000 feet...so having that reserve in the battery really helps at altitude) And then we got to go DOWN these passes, which was an absolute blast! Working those paddle shifters I could gain 2, 3, sometimes 4 bars on the battery by the time I got to the bottom. And then we filled up with gas we got a whopping 49 mpg actual measured (55 mpg indicated on the exagger-o-meter)! This was a VERY pleasant surprise. This car was VERY economical thru mountain passes and large elevation changes (and the associated lower speeds), and such results repeated themselves.
As for wierdness, you gotta get past the whole "pushing the gas pedal does NOT make the engine get louder when you think it should" thing. Once your mind gets past that and allows you to accept random rev-ups and shut-downs which ONLY effect your ears and nothing else, this car does work very well, and it's economical even without much electricity to run on.
Over 4,200 miles we had opportunities to charge up 5 times -- not much -- that's only about 200 miles worth of electric. The rest of the time we were on gasoline. The exagger-o-meter said we got 46.5 mpg for the entire 4,200 miles. I actually calculated 41 -- pretty much dead on what the EPA said we would get. The car was quiet and comfortable save the angry bees under the hood which really are NOT that loud when you're running the interstate with the radio on -- I'd say overall it's quieter than most cars even with the bees running.
And what other large sedan of ANY type would get 41 mpg legitimate over such a 4,200 mile road trip including long 80mph cruise control runs and 12,000 ft mountain passes? I will submit VERY few -- if any.
Honda Sensing is fabulous. I have owned it before on a 2016 Honda Civic so this is nothing new to me, but it bears mentioning to those who have not used it before. On long road trips the Lanekeep assist and adaptive cruise control are absolutely outstanding at preventing driver fatigue. I do think the adaptive cruise control is WAY too slow to respond to re-accelerating the way Honda programmed it -- that's my only complaint. Otherwise once you get used to it and just stomp the gas to get back up to speed, it works very well and add a dimension of safety to your drive.
And lets face it, this type of car excels around town, burning zero gasoline. Yet you CAN take cross-country road trips like you can with any other car. That's really really cool.
I like the car. It doesn't "wow" me in any way as a car. Beyond its silence when running on electric. Overall I gotta admit when compared to other cars and similar 4 door sedans I find it to be remarkably average. But the technology and application of that technology absolutely DOES wow me. It simply has no competition. Show me another sedan of this size, with PLENTY of trunk space and outstanding road-trip manners, that will burn ZERO gasoline for 100% of your commuting all year long, yet allow you to run 4,000 miles on a vacation going all old-school and actually buying gas...at more than 40 mpg?
Chevy Volt is as close as it gets. And I assure you that that is NOT a large sedan. It's just a sedan. Tesla? HAVE FUN chasing down all your electric charging stations. You Tesla owners can keep that stupid game. Until there is a full blown electric charging infrastructure I'm gonna use the antiquated gasoline network as my "keep this trip moving" plan. Some day it might turn, but we're simply not there yet.
I am very pleased I purchased the Clarity and I REALLY hope this technology continues and improves. Honda has proven it works.
I will post here periodically with my thoughts, but probably won't be a SUPER active member. But I want to contribute a bit as I learned quite a bit about the quirks of this car by lurking here and feel some payback is in order.
Happy Thursday everyone!
Bought a Honda Clarity about 2.5 months ago. Just turned 7,000 miles. No I do NOT normally drive that much, but we just completed a 4,200 mile road trip starting and ending in Indiana, crossing Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, touching Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and back home thru Missouri/IL/IN again...great trip! And a heckuva learning experience with this strange little car!
Gotta say to this day I have YET to see a single other Clarity on the road to-date. And I find this a little disconcerting since I know darn well what it's like to find parts for low-production vehicles as I spent a couple decades on the insurance side of the auto collision industry. Suffice it to say my #1 advise for everyone who owns one of these cars -- do NOT drop your collision coverage!! Fender benders no big deal, but if you wreck these things right, they WILL be more expensive to fix than a typical other car!!! But that's a discussion for another post...
Our first 2,500 miles or so were more typical Clarity usage. Local running around town. Usually within electric range, occasionally running the ICE if exceeded. Quickly realized level 2 charger was mandatory for our usage, and installed one myself in my garage. I elected the Mustart 32A portable off Amazon and have been pleased with it.
As other say the car is near dead silent in EV mode and generally a pleasure to drive. It's a basic sedan, just a bit quieter and smoother/more luxurious than most. Performance? Meh. Not surprising. 212 HP in a 4,050 lb car = 0.52 hp per pound. I put it slightly below the performance level of my previous 2013 Accord EX with a base 4 cylinder engine...185 hp in a 3300 lb car = 0.56 HP per pound. And by seat-of-pants comparison there is little doubt in my mind that our old 4 cyl Accord would beat this Clarity in a drag race by just a little bit. A race car it is not. But it does have enough power for merging and getting out of its own way. It is not slow or underpowered. But any one thinking this car will provide V6 power should frankly shop elsewhere.
But that's not what this car is about, is it? Like others, our first 2,000 miles or so resulted in minimal gasoline usage...maybe 2 tanks because we took a couple in-state road trips. And it all worked great. But how about the 4,200 mile road trip? Interesting.
I will sum it up by saying that that it handled the trip very comfortably, yet differently.
Crossing Kansas was frankly the car's biggest challenge. Cruise control set at 80 mph, probably 20 mph headwind, for hours on end. The little generator was spinning mightily, the MPG readout recorded 33 mpg, and my calculated mpg was about 28. The range calculator was downright dangerous until I learned to not trust it at all -- at one time it said we had 80 miles to go and battery had been dead for the past 300 miles. 35 miles later the range was zero and we were down to one bar. Thankfully there was an exit nearby with a gas station. We took 6.75 gallons in our 7 gallon tank! Lesson learned. IGNORE the range calculator and start looking for gas as soon as you get down to about 1/3 tank, especially if you can hear that engine working, and at any substantial speed you will hear that engine working! And stopping for gas every 190 miles is frankly a little annoying if you don't need to pee yet...
Mountain passes were a pleasant surprise. After vowing to start a day with a full charge (thanks to a nice mom & pop hotel owner who had no objection to a plug-in overnight), and go directly to HV mode to ensure no dead battery issues, we did some beautiful and substantial mountain passes in Colorado taking us over 12,000 feet. This car handled it extremely well, but again rather differently. Going up it was not uncommon for the engine to be running a certain 5,000 to 5,500 rpm -- instant MPG meter was registering about 12 mpg. But power was more than adequate, as an experiment even on these steep inclines I floored it to see how much was left for passing or whatever, and it took off reasonably briskly for a heavy pig of a car with the power-to-weight ratio of a 4 cylinder -- it actually had power in reserve which was refreshing! (Let's all remember that electric does NOT lose 30% of its HP like a NA gas engine does at 10,000 feet...so having that reserve in the battery really helps at altitude) And then we got to go DOWN these passes, which was an absolute blast! Working those paddle shifters I could gain 2, 3, sometimes 4 bars on the battery by the time I got to the bottom. And then we filled up with gas we got a whopping 49 mpg actual measured (55 mpg indicated on the exagger-o-meter)! This was a VERY pleasant surprise. This car was VERY economical thru mountain passes and large elevation changes (and the associated lower speeds), and such results repeated themselves.
As for wierdness, you gotta get past the whole "pushing the gas pedal does NOT make the engine get louder when you think it should" thing. Once your mind gets past that and allows you to accept random rev-ups and shut-downs which ONLY effect your ears and nothing else, this car does work very well, and it's economical even without much electricity to run on.
Over 4,200 miles we had opportunities to charge up 5 times -- not much -- that's only about 200 miles worth of electric. The rest of the time we were on gasoline. The exagger-o-meter said we got 46.5 mpg for the entire 4,200 miles. I actually calculated 41 -- pretty much dead on what the EPA said we would get. The car was quiet and comfortable save the angry bees under the hood which really are NOT that loud when you're running the interstate with the radio on -- I'd say overall it's quieter than most cars even with the bees running.
And what other large sedan of ANY type would get 41 mpg legitimate over such a 4,200 mile road trip including long 80mph cruise control runs and 12,000 ft mountain passes? I will submit VERY few -- if any.
Honda Sensing is fabulous. I have owned it before on a 2016 Honda Civic so this is nothing new to me, but it bears mentioning to those who have not used it before. On long road trips the Lanekeep assist and adaptive cruise control are absolutely outstanding at preventing driver fatigue. I do think the adaptive cruise control is WAY too slow to respond to re-accelerating the way Honda programmed it -- that's my only complaint. Otherwise once you get used to it and just stomp the gas to get back up to speed, it works very well and add a dimension of safety to your drive.
And lets face it, this type of car excels around town, burning zero gasoline. Yet you CAN take cross-country road trips like you can with any other car. That's really really cool.
I like the car. It doesn't "wow" me in any way as a car. Beyond its silence when running on electric. Overall I gotta admit when compared to other cars and similar 4 door sedans I find it to be remarkably average. But the technology and application of that technology absolutely DOES wow me. It simply has no competition. Show me another sedan of this size, with PLENTY of trunk space and outstanding road-trip manners, that will burn ZERO gasoline for 100% of your commuting all year long, yet allow you to run 4,000 miles on a vacation going all old-school and actually buying gas...at more than 40 mpg?
Chevy Volt is as close as it gets. And I assure you that that is NOT a large sedan. It's just a sedan. Tesla? HAVE FUN chasing down all your electric charging stations. You Tesla owners can keep that stupid game. Until there is a full blown electric charging infrastructure I'm gonna use the antiquated gasoline network as my "keep this trip moving" plan. Some day it might turn, but we're simply not there yet.
I am very pleased I purchased the Clarity and I REALLY hope this technology continues and improves. Honda has proven it works.
I will post here periodically with my thoughts, but probably won't be a SUPER active member. But I want to contribute a bit as I learned quite a bit about the quirks of this car by lurking here and feel some payback is in order.
Happy Thursday everyone!
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