Interesting O EV miles behavior.

Fast Eddie B

Fast Eddie B

Well-Known Member
Today, we had to do about a 150 mile round trip. With a full charge and 50 EV miles estimated, I let EV miles drop to 5 remaining before switching to HV. Leaving our appointment it showed 3 miles remaining, hovered there for a while, but then dropped to 0.0, in spite of being in HV mode. Never done this before, but I usually go to HV miles with at least 10 miles EV remaining.

What was interesting was that in spite of some extended downhill stretches, and the display showing charge going to the battery, the EV miles never budged from 0.0. At all. The downhill stretches would normally put at least several tenths back into the battery.

Maybe it’s designed this way, to avoid the tiny variations is SOC which could be distracting and are, after all, pretty unimportant in the general scheme of things. And even with some hills, pretty normal HV behavior with no angry, or even mildly irritated, bees!

I’m guessing this behavior may have been reported here before, but I thought it worth mentioning.
 
I have noticed when I get to 0 the number will not change unless I turn the car off and back on. When it comes back on the EV range will fluctuate until it hits 0 again.

Personally I think people try to think to much about the combination of EV/HV and I just let the car do what ever the computer thinks it should do. The only time I manually change from EV to HV is when I am on a long highway trip and I manually switch to HV mode to preserve EV knowing that I will be driving on surface streets at a much lower speed where EV is more efficient at the end of my trip.

Also I don’t think people really understand that when EV hits 0 there is battery remaining to make the car work like a normal hybrid.
 
Yeah. It’s just weird watching “green” flow into the battery with no change in EV range.

It feels like something’s being wasted, though pretty sure that’s not the case.
 
Claritydfw said:
I have noticed when I get to 0 the number will not change unless I turn the car off and back on. When it comes back on the EV range will fluctuate until it hits 0 again.

Personally I think people try to think to much about the combination of EV/HV and I just let the car do what ever the computer thinks it should do. The only time I manually change from EV to HV is when I am on a long highway trip and I manually switch to HV mode to preserve EV knowing that I will be driving on surface streets at a much lower speed where EV is more efficient at the end of my trip.

Also I don’t think people really understand that when EV hits 0 there is battery remaining to make the car work like a normal hybrid.
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"Personally I think people try to think to much about the combination of EV/HV and I just let the car do what ever the computer thinks it should do."

Agree!
 
It is normal for EV range to drop after starting HV, I don't know if it just does preset levels or what. If you want to keep some EV range be sure to engage it by about 10 miles remaining.
 
Claritydfw said:
I have noticed when I get to 0 the number will not change unless I turn the car off and back on. When it comes back on the EV range will fluctuate until it hits 0 again.

Personally I think people try to think to much about the combination of EV/HV and I just let the car do what ever the computer thinks it should do. The only time I manually change from EV to HV is when I am on a long highway trip and I manually switch to HV mode to preserve EV knowing that I will be driving on surface streets at a much lower speed where EV is more efficient at the end of my trip.

Also I don’t think people really understand that when EV hits 0 there is battery remaining to make the car work like a normal hybrid.
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Agreed! This car seems to attract “Rocket Surgeon” types who love to over-analyze their car!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Not all Clarity owners are able to achieve normal HV mode when EV range hits zero.
I know what HV normally does (with non-zero EV range). Some of us hit really unusual behavior when EV hits zero. It's not a mild difference between normal HV mode and hitting zero EV range- for my Clarity. It's like holy ****, what just happened and when will it end?

I'm glad most folks hit zero EV and things just truck along as if someone were more or less in normal HV mode. That sounds awesome. I think you should trade cars with me. You can then display your expert driving behaviors and call my car's noise as 'normal' as you like :)

-Dan
 
Claritydfw said:
Also I don’t think people really understand that when EV hits 0 there is battery remaining to make the car work like a normal hybrid.
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Honda must believe that displaying 2 bars on the battery gauge when you have 0 miles of EV range makes it clear that there is still enough battery left to provide hybrid operation. If the bottom two bars can't be used to calculate usable battery capacity, why not just paint the bottom two bars onto the plastic? (OK, I do remember reading that one person once saw a single bar and another had a dealer who somehow managed to deliver his Clarity with zero bars. Those two reports are the rare outliers.)

I personally believe that the battery gauge should behave like the fuel gauge--like all the fuel gauges anyone has ever seen: Show zero bars when there's no battery power left to move the car. When I glance at the battery gauge and see it appears to be half full, it's NOT half full. I have to distract myself from driving while calculating the displayed number of bars minus 2 bars.
 
I still think the ev range estimator causes folks more anxiety than its worth. Alls ya have to do is: switch to hv mode when it gets to 3 bars for most circumstances.
 
insightman said:
Clearly, you do not suffer from engine anxiety the way many of the fanatics on this forum (me) do.
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Modern airplane navigation and autopilot systems are amazingly capable and versatile. But listening to cockpit voice recorders, “Why is it doing that???” is heard fairly often.

For me, and I’d guess many here, there’s little if any “fanatical anxiety” involved interacting with the Clarity. It’s more just intellectual curiosity about why our cars do what they do and when do they do it? “Why is it doing that?” is often followed by a post here along the lines of “Is that normal?”.

I think, overall, it’s the level of complexity that makes driving the Clarity both more absorbing, engaging and enjoyable, as others have pointed out.

I’m still digging it anyway!
 
I am of the quarter tank group when it comes to ICE "fuel" levels = never let any of my vehicles get under 1/4 tank to protect the fuel pump and injectors.
Something that has stuck with me over 40 years of driving...

So when the EV range drops to 3 or 4 bars, I switch to HV Charge mode if I am on the highway or HV mode if I am slow driving.
Guess I don't need to do that since the car is smart enough to switch over when needed and the 2 "empty" bars actually means that the car can still work hybrid with both motor & engine working together - that's a well engineered teamwork happening.

Gotta love this car designed by engineers...
 
Agreed Fast Eddie B -
And it probably would be less interesting for many of us if it was a garden variety car. But this one is pretty different (no transmission I think counts as different) and has as many as 9 different user-selectable 'modes' - I really dislike that term because it is used to describe some many different things - and several different computer controlled 'modes', which change depending on the level of SoC, the aggressiveness of the driver, the temperature of the battery, the use of cabin heater and other accessories, regen paddles vs brakes... just to name a few.

Certainly one can just drive and enjoy, but trying to understand and anticipate the behavior of the car, and particularly to notice when something is not normal is what many here are attempting to do by studying its response in a multitude of scenarios.
 
Ray B said:
Certainly one can just drive and enjoy, but trying to understand and anticipate the behavior of the car, and particularly to notice when something is not normal is what many here are attempting to do by studying its response in a multitude of scenarios.
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Exactly. And that is one of the amazing things about this car . . . folks who want to jump in and drive it like every other car they've ever driven can do exactly that, while those of us who enjoy trying to reverse engineer it can speculate endlessly.
 
All im saying is that its been pointed out many times the range estimator has much to be desired. So there's no use relying on it too much. Admittedly with service bulletin installed it has improved, But my car still over estimates the total range. Also on my last charge i drove about 5 miles and still showed all the bars. So i guess I've simplified things. But i do agree its fun to learn how and why the car does certian things! Instead of ev range anxiety im thankful i can just run hv mode and avoid having to charge in severve cold weather or when i really need to get some where. Testla owners cant say that.
 
neal adkins said:
All im saying is that its been pointed out many times the range estimator has much to be desired. So there's no use relying on it too much. Admittedly with service bulletin installed it has improved
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I believe the range-fix Service Bulletin affected only the guestimation of HV range on gas, not the EV range. For me it's not so much relying on the EV range Guess-o-Meter, but the challenge of making it happy (I was about to write, "bending it to my will" before snapping back to reality).
 
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