Is the EV range embellished?

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Ken7

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I've noticed that driving on the highway I don't get the range that the EV initially states. Today was an example. Granted, I was driving at 68-70mph, which was just keeping up with traffic, so not hypermiling. But the weather conditions were ideal with temps in the mid 70s and very light winds. I never touched the brake, so speed was consistent. My range when I started out indicated 55 miles, but I ran out of electric at 40 miles! That's 15 miles short of predicted and only 73% of the stated EV range. This has happened before in similar driving conditions.

As a comparison, driving my Model S exactly the same way, I'll generally get 95% of the stated range. So I can't help but think, unless you drive very conservatively and keep your speeds well below 70mph, you won't get anywhere near the stated range.
 
Ken7 said:
I've noticed that driving on the highway I don't get the range that the EV initially states. Today was an example. Granted, I was driving at 68-70mph, which was just keeping up with traffic, so not hypermiling. But the weather conditions were ideal with temps in the mid 70s and very light winds. I never touched the brake, so speed was consistent. My range when I started out indicated 55 miles, but I ran out of electric at 40 miles! That's 15 miles short of predicted and only 73% of the stated EV range. This has happened before in similar driving conditions.

As a comparison, driving my Model S exactly the same way, I'll generally get 95% of the stated range. So I can't help but think, unless you drive very conservatively and keep your speeds well below 70mph, you won't get anywhere near the stated range.
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Your ev range was an est. of what you have been driving. So if the last few times you drove 30-40 in the country without having to stop, your est. would be 60 to 70. If you were on the interstate traveling 60-70 your est. would have been much lower. It is just a guess from what you have been driving.
 
I've actually found the opposite. For example yesterday my EV range was showing almost exactly the distance I had left to get home, yet when I pulled into my driveway I still had 4 bars on the EV meter remaining and could have driven longer on pure EV than I anticipated.
 
@stacey burke has it correct; the range is an estimate based on the past "X" miles of use. If you change use, the system will need some time to re-calculate. It's not about conservative or aggressive driving, it's about consistently driving the same each usage. I don't think the range is either embellished or too low and in fact seems to be very accurate if your use pattern stays the same. Mine is certainly accurate, within a very small error.
 
I think it's pretty accurate. The issue you had was highway mileage, at higher speeds. It gets better consumption rates at lower speeds.
 
The EV range on this car seems to be a little inflated to me, as well. If I'm driving very conservatively and staying off the freeway, I can generally beat the estimate. But as soon as I'm on the freeway at 70-80MPH, the range falls off pretty quickly. However, I think it's probably a much less sophisticated system than the one found on the Tesla. Even when I'm doing similar trips in our Model S, the range adjusts itself fairly instantaneously. The affects of things like A/C or heater use, speed, hill climbs, extra weight, etc. are more easily seen on the Tesla display than on Honda's numerical display.
 
Yeah the range estimate is always based on the last full charge and does not change dynamically although it is fairly accurate. So if I did all city my previous trip I'd get 88km range (76km is EPA). But if I decide to do all hwy on the next trip, the 88km displayed will drop faster and turn out to be closer to 75km. On my next full charge I'll see 75km as the estimate. Again, if i proceed to drive all city I'll easily beat the 75km estimate and it will revert back to the 88km estimate on next charge.

What i love about this car is that for the first time ever city driving is better than hwy and that is a huge win for me as my old SUV was rated 12.8L per 100km (or 18mpg) city and I'd routinely get 16.5L /100 or around 14.5 mpg ouch ... yes Toronto has worse traffic than L.A. Love the all electric range.
 
bfd said:
The EV range on this car seems to be a little inflated to me, as well. If I'm driving very conservatively and staying off the freeway, I can generally beat the estimate. But as soon as I'm on the freeway at 70-80MPH, the range falls off pretty quickly. However, I think it's probably a much less sophisticated system than the one found on the Tesla. Even when I'm doing similar trips in our Model S, the range adjusts itself fairly instantaneously. The affects of things like A/C or heater use, speed, hill climbs, extra weight, etc. are more easily seen on the Tesla display than on Honda's numerical display.
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Exactly. The Tesla gives me a far more accurate estimate of my range regardless of whether I’m driving locally or on the highway or if I change my driving style from one day to the next. You’re probably right and the Tesla’s algorithm is likely far more sophisticated than the Claity’s.

If you think about it, many people will drive locally one day or for a few days and then pop on a highway over the weekend. So this change in usage is going to render the Clarity’s estimate much more dicey.
 
I agree with Stacey Burke. I believe the car creates an estimate of your future EV Range based on your recent driving past. But that will be accurate only for future driving that mirrors the recent past.

Overall I've found the EV Range estimate to be quite accurate. Usually within a couple of miles after a 35 mile set of EV only drives.

The really good news to me is watching the range estimate vs actual is just a fun game because there is no range anxiety with a PHEV. They can just smoothly kick over to use the gas engine. It's great.

This car is perfect for us. If it had a slightly smaller traction battery with 10 miles less range we wouldn't make it through most days on pure EV. If it had a larger battery the price would be higher, battery repair or replacement (hopefully many years in the future) would be more expensive, the car would weigh more, and perhaps would lose some cargo space.
 
jdonalds said:
The really good news to me is watching the range estimate vs actual is just a fun game because there is no range anxiety with a PHEV. They can just smoothly kick over to use the gas engine. It's great.
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In the 9 months we've had our Clarity, it hasn't been to the gas station once. We don't have range anxiety, we have ICE anxiety. Some day we'll throw caution to the wind and drive somewhere further than 50 miles away. Well, maybe we should take one of our Insights instead to conserve the remaining two bars of gas in our Clarity. I'm now regretting my rash experiments with SPORT Mode 8 months ago!
 
insightman said:
In the 9 months we've had our Clarity, it hasn't been to the gas station once. We don't have range anxiety, we have ICE anxiety. Some day we'll throw caution to the wind and drive somewhere further than 50 miles away. Well, maybe we should take one of our Insights instead to conserve the remaining two bars of gas in our Clarity. I'm now regretting my rash experiments with SPORT Mode 8 months ago!
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ICE Anxiety. Right on.
 
We love both the Clarity and Model S, but you do get over the ‘range anxiety’ thing over time. I can drive from NY to Florida in my Tesla, with no concerns, because of the numerous free Super Chargers along the route. Sure it might add a bit to the total time of the trip, but I like to take rest stops anyway, it’s safer. Just this year, Tesla has added 3 new SC locations on Long Island where I live. The already extensive network is growing rapidly.

Just yesterday, as we headed home from NYC to LI on gas, my wife complained that there should be many more charging locations for her Clarity. She’s right. AFAIK, there are only 2 free charger locations and both are located at Tanger Outlet malls (discount outlet stores).

My real concern with the Tesla is that since the SC network is the envy of the electric car industry, Musk might be tempted to enter into too many deals with other manufacturers for access to this network. That could clog up some locations, resulting in wait times for a charger. Although I haven’t used the SC network with any great frequency, I’ve never had to wait for access to a charging stall.

In the meantime, a side note, we’ve definitely begun to see more Claritys on the road in our area. There’s even a brand new one in our condo development. So we’re no longer the only Clarity here. :)
 
There are very few free chargers in my area, if any, which is fine because I charge at home. However in the local mall they recently installed a HUGE bank of Tesla SC's (there must be 20 or more in a row!) and I have only ever seen one car parked in there at a time. Maybe that will be different in the Christmas season but for now, they are very much for future use because they are hardly seeing any use currently.
 
I’ve only run the EV range down to 0 a couple times, but both times, whenI hit 0, there were still 2 bars in the gauge remaining and the car went about 5 miles further before cutting over to gas. So, I’ve found the EV estimate, typically 55-60 with a full charge, to be underestimating. And since I expected only 47 to begin with, I’ve been delighted with the EV range performance overall. I would note that actual distance on electric is slightly lower ~ 5% than the estimate.
 
I get better mileage on the freeway when I use cruise control even at speeds of 80 MPH. I live 18 miles from the local casino and I only use 9 miles of EV. Seems as though cruise control keeps it at a steady pace. I notice the needle is often in the charge zone.
 
Ken7 said:
Exactly. The Tesla gives me a far more accurate estimate of my range regardless of whether I’m driving locally or on the highway or if I change my driving style from one day to the next. You’re probably right and the Tesla’s algorithm is likely far more sophisticated than the Claity’s.

If you think about it, many people will drive locally one day or for a few days and then pop on a highway over the weekend. So this change in usage is going to render the Clarity’s estimate much more dicey.
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We also need to take into account that the Tesla's battery is significantly larger than the Clarity. So 3kWh higher usage (due to high speed freeway travel) will have a much larger percentage difference effect for the Clarity than for the Tesla.
 
Kendalf said:
We also need to take into account that the Tesla's battery is significantly larger than the Clarity. So 3kWh higher usage (due to high speed freeway travel) will have a much larger percentage difference effect for the Clarity than for the Tesla.
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I think the point is that I’ve used a significant percentage of the Tesla’s battery on the highway after having done nothing but drive locally for weeks. In both cases my range indicated was extremely close to what I actually achieved. So 2 totally different driving styles yet both extremely accurate.

I think, as others have said, the methodology used in these range calculations is very different in each car. The Clarity is using a simple calculation that just looks at what you’ve done recently. That’s why it’s so off (as in me only getting 73% of the estimated range) as you transition from local driving on recent charges to highway driving. To me this makes sense.
 
Ken7 said:
I've noticed that driving on the highway I don't get the range that the EV initially states. Today was an example. Granted, I was driving at 68-70mph, which was just keeping up with traffic, so not hypermiling. But the weather conditions were ideal with temps in the mid 70s and very light winds. I never touched the brake, so speed was consistent. My range when I started out indicated 55 miles, but I ran out of electric at 40 miles! That's 15 miles short of predicted and only 73% of the stated EV range. This has happened before in similar driving conditions.

As a comparison, driving my Model S exactly the same way, I'll generally get 95% of the stated range. So I can't help but think, unless you drive very conservatively and keep your speeds well below 70mph, you won't get anywhere near the stated range.
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A real world example from today's driving. Started the day with full charge and EV range of 48.5 miles. Drove 46.2 miles before the ICE came on at the 2 bar level. 80% of those 46.2 miles were at 65-73 mph with A/C on in Sport mode with max regen.
That is very typical of what I see on a daily basis from the car. So yes the EV range is overly optimistic. It's great that we have so many owners getting 60+ EV miles and I am quite sure I could do the same if 90% of the driving was well below 50 mph but once you hit 65+ the range goes down quickly. Not complaining it's still a very economical car with a great many fine features.

On the other hand I find the ICE MPG on long trips to be much better than estimated. Two recent trips of over 200 miles each resulted in 50 mpg at 75+ mph...excellent!
 
I’ve had the car a month and this is the first time it’s estimated 47 miles (all other charges it was less). Last charge was 46 and seemed to be running down accurately in mixed city/highway hilly driving. It’s seems to be taking quite a few charges in the same type of driving to sort itself out. I suspect changing the driving style would cause wrong estimates for awhile potentially. I think I just need to stop worrying about it!
 
Ken7 said:
I've noticed that driving on the highway I don't get the range that the EV initially states. Today was an example. Granted, I was driving at 68-70mph, which was just keeping up with traffic, so not hypermiling.
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The EPA range certainly should not be taken as the range at 70 MPH. Even if you look at the separated city/highway ranges, rather than the combined figure, it's going to be less range than at 70 MPH. As I recall, the EPA's highway driving range tests average 55 MPH.

All cars rapidly lose range at higher highway speeds, gasmobiles included. (Aero drag increases as the square of speed, if I recall correctly.) It's just more noticeable for BEVs because their range is more limited.

As I've said many times, I wish the EPA would issue a range chart, rather than just a single number for range; a chart showing ranges at different speeds: 35, 45, 55, 65, 75, and perhaps even 85 MPH. That would really help educate the public on the advantages of using less energy, of driving at moderate speeds on the highway.
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