Left Clarity "ON" by mistake! Way way up in the Mtns...Ohh Dear!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter NW Surfer
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies Replies 58
  • Views Views 16K
Subscribe to Remove Ads
bpratt said:
I found the best way to make sure I turn the car off is to never hit the Park button. If you just turn the car off, it will shift into park before it shuts down.
Click to expand...

Makes sense, but if you forgot to turn it off, and haven't set it in Park, perhaps leaving it still in Drive, wouldn't it roll forward?

That actually happened to an elderly lady in our community a year or two ago. She got out of her Prius that way, forgetting to put it in Park, with the car still running, and checked her mailbox, but her Prius ran into her, and she was killed, sadly.
 
loomis2 said:
I have never had to jump start my Clarity, but I have used my Clarity to jump start my Prius. The Clarity replaced the Prius but there was a three month gap between buying the Clarity and selling the Prius. After sitting outside in the freezing winter for weeks the Prius was dead (this happened twice over the three months). Jumpstarting the Prius with the Clarity was a breeze.
Click to expand...

One thing to note is that you're probably not supposed to jump start a regular car (ice vehicle) with the Clarity or any other hybrid. It's very likely the 12 v battery is not a high current battery.
 
vicw said:
Makes sense, but if you forgot to turn it off, and haven't set it in Park, perhaps leaving it still in Drive, wouldn't it roll forward?

That actually happened to an elderly lady in our community a year or two ago. She got out of her Prius that way, forgetting to put it in Park, with the car still running, and checked her mailbox, but her Prius ran into her, and she was killed, sadly.
Click to expand...


I think there's a sales video saying that it moves to park if the door is open and the seat belt is not buckled.
 
ab13 said:
One thing to note is that you're probably not supposed to jump start a regular car (ice vehicle) with the Clarity
Click to expand...
Interestingly enough they don't mention that in the Jump Starting section of the manual (539) as I would have suspected.

But here's a surprise from page 538 - in an emergency situation you can hit the Power button 3 times even while driving and the steering will not lock but you lose all power assist. The vehicle will then roll to a stop and will automatically switch to park and Vehicle Off power mode. My only guess would be that if you thought there was some sort of electrical problem with the high voltage battery you might try this. Any other ideas?

geo
 
K8QM said:
Interestingly enough they don't mention that in the Jump Starting section of the manual (539) as I would have suspected.

But here's a surprise from page 538 - in an emergency situation you can hit the Power button 3 times even while driving and the steering will not lock but you lose all power assist. The vehicle will then roll to a stop and will automatically switch to park and Vehicle Off power mode. My only guess would be that if you thought there was some sort of electrical problem with the high voltage battery you might try this. Any other ideas?

geo
Click to expand...
And then you would have to remember that obscure fact in the heat of the moment.
 
I'm seriously confused here--are you sure the car was "on" rather than in accessory mode?

In Accessory mode, everything is running off the 12V battery, and, as in any car with a key it will die pretty quickly.

But in regular "On" mode, I've checked twice and the car was definitely keeping the 12V battery floated using the high voltage battery pack. I would expect that, in this state, when the high voltage battery pack gets low the car will start the ICE to keep it from discharging too far. That, I admittedly haven't tested, but I have had the car turn the ICE on while sitting turned on in park for 10 minutes or so even when the high voltage battery had plenty of energy left...

I understand shutting down after too long in park (Volts now do this after 90 minutes because people early on forgot to turn them off and the garage filled with exhaust gas because the car kept cycling the ICE). The manual doesn't say one way or the other anywhere I can find, but I'd expect it to either shut itself off after a while or just keep cycling the ICE. Running down the high voltage battery pack then letting the 12V battery die seems like a bizarre misfeature.

ab13 said:
One thing to note is that you're probably not supposed to jump start a regular car (ice vehicle) with the Clarity or any other hybrid. It's very likely the 12 v battery is not a high current battery.
Click to expand...
Due to the capacity of the DC/DC converter that feeds the 12V battery off of the high voltage battery pack, the Clarity should have absolutely no trouble jumping another car. I've never tried it with my Clarity, but I jumped a few vehicles with a Volt without issue (I know that DC/DC converter is rated at around 60A before you even start drawing down the 12V battery, and the Clarity should be similar given how many high-power climate control things run off 12V).

Conversely, since it's not the 12V battery starting the ICE, it should in theory be extremely easy to jump a Clarity with a 12V battery--you just need to supply enough power to get the electronics to power up long enough to get the DC/DC converter going. Even one of those cheesy "pocket jump start" things that don't actually work on regular cars should be fine.

NW Surfer said:
Looking into "eye" of 12v batt charge indicator on top of the 12v battery... looked normal charged colors.
Click to expand...
I could be mistaken, but per page 508 of the manual I don't think that indicator has anything to do with state of charge--I think it has to do with electrolyte (and therefore battery) health.
 
M.M. said:
Even one of those cheesy "pocket jump start" things that don't actually work on regular cars should be fine.
Click to expand...
M.M., I too was skeptical of those pocket jump start batteries until I left my lights on in a 2008 CR-V this winter at a restaurant. A teenager came over to help me and pulled out this little lithium ion batter pack with short little cable clamps that was the size of a small paperback book. I thought no way is that going to start my car when it was so dead it wouldn’t even make a clicking sound. But low and behold it started right up. I bought him supper and Goggled up that some that are a little bigger, say large paperback book, will jump an 8 cyl. Who knew!
 
KentuckyKen said:
M.M., I too was skeptical of those pocket jump start batteries until I left my lights on in a 2008 CR-V this winter at a restaurant. A teenager came over to help me and pulled out this little lithium ion batter pack with short little cable clamps that was the size of a small paperback book. I thought no way is that going to start my car when it was so dead it wouldn’t even make a clicking sound. But low and behold it started right up. I bought him supper and Goggled up that some that are a little bigger, say large paperback book, will jump an 8 cyl. Who knew!
Click to expand...
The amount of energy contained in a Li-ion battery is plenty sufficient, but the really cheap pocket starters are too current limited to actually crank the engine; they're intended to sit charging the 12V battery for long enough that it can supply the cranking amps. Even the cheesiest one, however, should be fine to get the electronics to boot up.
 
M.M. said:
The amount of energy contained in a Li-ion battery is plenty sufficient, but the really cheap pocket starters are too current limited to actually crank the engine; they're intended to sit charging the 12V battery for long enough that it can supply the cranking amps. Even the cheesiest one, however, should be fine to get the electronics to boot up.
Click to expand...
All I can say is that he started my 4 cyl ICE with a completely dead battery at 35F with a tiny little one he said he paid $50 for. And it cranked within a minute of when he hooked it up.
 
megreyhair said:
I left my car on one time and didn't realized it was still on. I guess I was too excited to do my first public charging and once I plug the charger in, the damn thing wouldn't start. I kept pushing the buttons on the charger and nothing worked. Then I realized the car was still on. :p

I made it a habit now to watch the car-off animation and see how many green leaves I accumlated. :D
Click to expand...

What do those green leaves mean? It took about 6000 miles to finally get them all lit and now at 7000 miles they are still all lit. I have no idea what they tell me.
 
M.M. said:
Due to the capacity of the DC/DC converter that feeds the 12V battery off of the high voltage battery pack, the Clarity should have absolutely no trouble jumping another car. I've never tried it with my Clarity, but I jumped a few vehicles with a Volt without issue (I know that DC/DC converter is rated at around 60A before you even start drawing down the 12V battery, and the Clarity should be similar given how many high-power climate control things run off 12V).

Conversely, since it's not the 12V battery starting the ICE, it should in theory be extremely easy to jump a Clarity with a 12V battery--you just need to supply enough power to get the electronics to power up long enough to get the DC/DC converter going. Even one of those cheesy "pocket jump start" things that don't actually work on regular cars should be fine.

I could be mistaken, but per page 508 of the manual I don't think that indicator has anything to do with state of charge--I think it has to do with electrolyte (and therefore battery) health.
Click to expand...

I agree that the hybrid system should be able to jump another car. My Toyota dealer didn't recommend doing it due to possible electronics damage. Perhaps the Toyota system doesn't have enough protection in case of short circuit, who knows.
 
Chooch said:
What do those green leaves mean? It took about 6000 miles to finally get them all lit and now at 7000 miles they are still all lit. I have no idea what they tell me.
Click to expand...
It means that the magical King of the Realm of Ecological Goodness will tell his Elves of the Order of the Environment to come and sprinkle magical hybrid pixie dust on your car. Realizing that all that magical flying to every garage or driveway was harming the ozone layer, they decided to to just take Elon Musk’s boring machine over to Japan and sprinkle (or was it tinkle?) once at the factory and be done with it. And this is why every Clarity PHEV can get 1,000+ miles of HV Range.
The elves being very pleased with themselves formed a union and decided to take the summer off and flew with Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy to their customary annual vacation in the Caribbean. This made the king very mad so he ordered his ICE Demons to shoot the plane down over the Bermuda Triangle. And sadly you will now have to tell your kids or grandchildren that there may not be money under their pillows, presents under the Christmas tree, or a basket of plastic green glass and chocolate at Easter. And all the Clarity owner’s lived happily ever after in the Land of Unlimited HV. The end.

Or it could mean that some Japanese software engineers were hitting the Sake heavily at the Karaoke Bar one night and said, “Wouldn’t it be hilarious to sneak some code in to...”

Man, I gotta stop checking this forum during the middle of the night prostate runs to the john!
 
I just did an experiment. Drove the car in EV mode until the ICE was forced to come on shortly before arriving home due to low battery. Battery reported 10% in the app when I parked. ICE shut down when I shifted to park, but I didn't turn the car off, just handed the remote to my wife to simulate leaving walking away with the car turned on. I left the heat pump on (heating to 70 with an outdoor temperature in the high 50s) and turned on the seat heaters to speed up the test.

The car gradually ran down the high voltage battery pack until, about 30 minutes later at what I think was the bottom of 2%, it turned the ICE back on. (I say I think because I believe it shut off the cellular communication at that point; it no longer would connect to the car until I had plugged it in to charge later; seems like maybe the HondaLink system runs off the high voltage pack and shuts down at 1% SOC to protect the battery.) At no time did it stop floating the 12V aux battery; I checked it a couple times and it was sitting comfortably at 14.5V even with the heat pump, a couple of seat heaters, and the radio on.

So in this case, it sure looked like the car was just going to keep cycling the ICE to keep it from running down the battery. This doesn't fit at all with what this thread is describing unless:
  1. The car will eventually shut down the ICE and stop using the HV battery after some timeout greater than 30 minutes, but not shut off the auxiliary power, so it will end up running down the 12V battery at that point.
  2. The car was aware someone was sitting in it, and behaves differently in that situation than if it's empty.
  3. The thread starter actually had the car in Accessory mode rather that just on.
Since I originally joined this forum to ask questions about the 12V DC system when left on for an extended period of time in exactly this situation--I'm hoping to hook an inverter to the 12V battery to act as a backup for a few circuits in my house in lieu of a portable generator--I'm very curious if the car will indeed run itself dead if left on in park for several hours. (Also if it automatically shuts off, and if so what the timeout is; leaving it in neutral with the parking brake set would be a possible workaround for us edge cases that don't want it to turn off.)

Also, an aside, the heat pump compressor cycles surprisingly frequently (probably on and back off every 10-15 seconds) at some temperatures. You really can't hear it inside the car, but with the hood open it's pretty loud.

Second aside: I really can't believe that it's 2018 and cars can drive themselves, park themselves, and maintain a complex hybrid drivetrain, but can't manage to shut off accessory mode before the 12V battery is too dead to start the car. Seriously, guys, this has been a problem since the starter motor was invented, and it would take about an hour to code the logic using sensors that the car already has.
 
Fantastic, M.M. But now with so much data, I have to ask, when can you do the exact same thing with the fob oustide the car??
You know, in all your spare time...
 
KentuckyKen said:
Fantastic, M.M. But now with so much data, I have to ask, when can you do the exact same thing with the fob oustide the car?
Click to expand...
The fob was outside the car. I had my wife take it inside in case the car does something different when there's no fob present. The dash displayed a warning message repeatedly.

The car could, however, still have known I was sitting in it due to the seat sensors and/or when I got out to check the battery voltage. A more thorough test would be to not even sit in it, which I may do the next time I run the battery down.
 
M.M. said:
I'm seriously confused here--are you sure the car was "on" rather than in accessory mode?

In Accessory mode, everything is running off the 12V battery, and, as in any car with a key it will die pretty quickly.

But in regular "On" mode, I've checked twice and the car was definitely keeping the 12V battery floated using the high voltage battery pack. I would expect that, in this state, when the high voltage battery pack gets low the car will start the ICE to keep it from discharging too far. That, I admittedly haven't tested, but I have had the car turn the ICE on while sitting turned on in park for 10 minutes or so even when the high voltage battery had plenty of energy left...
Click to expand...

I agree that the car must have left in Accessory mode and the fob left in the car. I was in a horrendous traffic jam last March where we didn't move for quite some time and I had the car in Park. The heater was on so the 12 v battery would have died in a few minutes if it wasn't fed by the Li ion battery. The dealer also told me that the car automatically shuts down if the fob becomes out of range. This is true for pretty much all cars with push button starts. Once I left the Clarity in Park and went to retrieve something in the house. The car started chirping at me as a warning. I suggest that the OP go back to the dealer for warranty work because there appears to be a defect in their specific car.
 
Subscribe to Remove Ads
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top