craze1cars
Well-Known Member
This is long. Go pee first, if you don't get bored after the first few sentences and choose to just skip the whole thing...
I’m writing this not so much for the benefit of forum regulars, but for the benefit of people who may be shopping for this car, or another EV or PHEV, who may not be regulars on the forum and are just drifting through on a Google search....this is written for lurkers and curiosity seekers. Most of us regulars here have expressed our opinions ad nauseum about this car among ourselves, but they’re so scattered among many topics I thought I’d consolidate most of my thoughts about the car right here in one place. I know other regulars here disagree with me on many things and agree with me on others. No problem I respect all opinions. Obviously all are welcome to comment and write your own, on my topic or start your own…whatever you think is appropriate. This is largely just stream-of-conscious writing…
After about a year and a month, we’ve now passed 25,000 miles on our 2018 Green Clarity Touring. Probably 40% local commuting and 60% rather long road trips, including one extremely long one of about 4,500 miles all across the Midwest and over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and other such states when the car was nearly brand new, and just last week we did another round trip from Indianapolis to Savannah GA and back. We drove straight through each direction without a hotel…more than 750 miles each day. This is how we often road trip….long distance days.
Based on a quickie look a US map, my Clarity has now spun its tires in all of the following US States: IN, IL, IA, MO, NE, KS, WY, CO, AZ, UT, NM, TX, OK, AR, KY, TN, NC, SC, and GA.
A little bit about me. I live near Indianapolis and I am probably not the typical Clarity owner. I’m not an EV enthusiast. Nor am I a hybrid enthusiast. Neither is my wife. I do not believe I am making the world or climate better in any way whatsoever by buying this car. I’m not a Honda or Clarity cheerleader and am brand loyal to no manufacturer or country of origin. I bought Clarity because I’m a car guy and I was intrigued by the technology, I also trusted Honda as a company that it would be reliable, I certainly hoped to save some fuel costs of transportation over my ownership time, and also because the Feds handed me a $7,500 down payment. And it seemed like a nice car the wife would enjoy. She test drove and agreed, so we bought.
For reference this is mostly my wife’s car. She drives it most of the time locally, on electric as much as reasonable, and she also does many 200 mile loops within the state of IN. The majority of my driving this car has been on the long road trips, where I usually do most of the driving.
Anytime I ask, she simply likes the car. Of course she says this about every single car she has ever owned so no surprise there. She just loves every car we purchase for her to drive, and Clarity is no different. Neither of us has regrets on the purchase, and we have no desire to trade or sell anytime soon. It’s quiet and comfy. Generally she drives around town on all electric but often exceeds range, so it burns a bit of fuel some days, and she makes a point to hit the HV button on interstate runs and tries to get battery down pretty low before bringing it home if she knows she’ll be exceeding EV range. That’s about all she does with button pushing.
Neither of us “works” very hard at owning or driving this car. Usually we get in, hit the start button, and drive. We don’t play games with charging to random levels. We don’t track KW usage. We don’t change modes much. If we know we will exceed EV range, we try to hit HV for interstate runs. Sometimes we don’t and just let it run down and start the engine when it needs to. If the engine starts up because we accidentally accelerate too hard, we don’t care, and we make no effort to shut it off…just let it do its thing and it either shuts itself off eventually or we reach our destination and we park it. When it goes into the garage, it gets plugged in and topped off regardless of state of charge so it’s ready for the next usage. Time of day is irrelevant. We use a L2 220V Mustart charger from Amazon in our garage, works very well, charges the battery from dead to full in about 2 hours. Not uncommon for the car to see 2 top-offs some days, occasionally 3 per day, sometimes one per day. If it's mid-charge and we need to go somewhere, we just unplug and go. On the road we carry the OEM 110V and plug in when opportunity permits, but we don’t look too hard and just drive it in HV mode on gas if we’re not sure where or when it will be plugged in next. We have never used public charging stations. We own 3 cars…currently my sporty little stickshift Mazda 3 for scooting, my Silverado Crew Cab 4x4 for hauling/work/towing, and wife's Clarity. The Clarity replaced wife’s previous 2013 Honda Accord EX-L 2.4L. Between our 3 cars it is not uncommon for us to drive 60,000 or more miles per year.
Here are my opinions and observations with the understanding that I’m comparing this car to other cars. NOT just to other PHEVs and other EV’s, as I’ve never driven another besides our Clarity. So keep in mind I’m comparing it to other 4 door cars in general. These are pros and cons and observations all mixed randomly:
1. The car has been flawless from a reliability standpoint. No gremlins, nothing weird. It works as Honda designed it. It has never gone back to dealer. I do my own oil changes and tire rotations. We replaced wiper rubbers recently with a pair from the dealer and the wipers now work perfect. I have no complaints about the washers or wipers as others seem to.
2. The car is exceedingly quiet and comfortable to sit in and ride in. Cadillac/Buick/Toyota Avalon like. It feels big. Bigger and smoother and quieter than the Accord we replaced for sure. Probably the quietest car I've ever been in.
3. On road trips I do have a button pushing regimen. Since I know I’ll be running 100% gasoline I push the following as soon as I buckle up: Start, Sport, HV, LKAS, and I make sure the ACC is set as close as possible for shorter following distance. Those are the settings I have grown to like for road trips. Then I don’t mess with them until next fuel stop and I reset them all again. It would be nice if it remembered them all, but it doesn’t. So I spend 2 seconds pushing those 4 buttons, and then I drive. Not a big deal. I generally set the ACC at 78 mph and just burn along. It all works great and the ACC and LKAS reduce fatigue and allow me to drive longer and farther very comfortably. Fuel mileage is like clockwork…39mpg on the flats of the Midwest. When things get real hilly like through the Smokey Mountains it goes up to about 41 mpg. Super steep mountain passes like the Rockies I’ve seen upwards of 50 mpg, with the caveat that usually those roads have some slower speeds due to curves. I do believe that the ability of this car to store gravity from long steep downhills in the battery is the reason it gets better MPG the steeper the hills get. I have recorded much lower mpg at occasional times with big long headwind/uphill runs, and higher at times with big tailwinds/downhill runs. I am 100% in agreement with the 40 mpg highway rating this car has. That’s exactly what it gets for me as a long term average. All those numbers are manually calculated with actual ODO and fuel usage. The MPG display is ALWAYS exaggerated by 7% to 9%. When it gets 39 mpg, the display says it got around 42.5. When it gets 41, the display says it got 45. Every single time. Yes if I slowed down I would get better fuel mileage. But then I would get there later. And I’d rather drive 78 mph, so I do.
(Continued on next page as I exceeded character count)
I’m writing this not so much for the benefit of forum regulars, but for the benefit of people who may be shopping for this car, or another EV or PHEV, who may not be regulars on the forum and are just drifting through on a Google search....this is written for lurkers and curiosity seekers. Most of us regulars here have expressed our opinions ad nauseum about this car among ourselves, but they’re so scattered among many topics I thought I’d consolidate most of my thoughts about the car right here in one place. I know other regulars here disagree with me on many things and agree with me on others. No problem I respect all opinions. Obviously all are welcome to comment and write your own, on my topic or start your own…whatever you think is appropriate. This is largely just stream-of-conscious writing…
After about a year and a month, we’ve now passed 25,000 miles on our 2018 Green Clarity Touring. Probably 40% local commuting and 60% rather long road trips, including one extremely long one of about 4,500 miles all across the Midwest and over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and other such states when the car was nearly brand new, and just last week we did another round trip from Indianapolis to Savannah GA and back. We drove straight through each direction without a hotel…more than 750 miles each day. This is how we often road trip….long distance days.
Based on a quickie look a US map, my Clarity has now spun its tires in all of the following US States: IN, IL, IA, MO, NE, KS, WY, CO, AZ, UT, NM, TX, OK, AR, KY, TN, NC, SC, and GA.
A little bit about me. I live near Indianapolis and I am probably not the typical Clarity owner. I’m not an EV enthusiast. Nor am I a hybrid enthusiast. Neither is my wife. I do not believe I am making the world or climate better in any way whatsoever by buying this car. I’m not a Honda or Clarity cheerleader and am brand loyal to no manufacturer or country of origin. I bought Clarity because I’m a car guy and I was intrigued by the technology, I also trusted Honda as a company that it would be reliable, I certainly hoped to save some fuel costs of transportation over my ownership time, and also because the Feds handed me a $7,500 down payment. And it seemed like a nice car the wife would enjoy. She test drove and agreed, so we bought.
For reference this is mostly my wife’s car. She drives it most of the time locally, on electric as much as reasonable, and she also does many 200 mile loops within the state of IN. The majority of my driving this car has been on the long road trips, where I usually do most of the driving.
Anytime I ask, she simply likes the car. Of course she says this about every single car she has ever owned so no surprise there. She just loves every car we purchase for her to drive, and Clarity is no different. Neither of us has regrets on the purchase, and we have no desire to trade or sell anytime soon. It’s quiet and comfy. Generally she drives around town on all electric but often exceeds range, so it burns a bit of fuel some days, and she makes a point to hit the HV button on interstate runs and tries to get battery down pretty low before bringing it home if she knows she’ll be exceeding EV range. That’s about all she does with button pushing.
Neither of us “works” very hard at owning or driving this car. Usually we get in, hit the start button, and drive. We don’t play games with charging to random levels. We don’t track KW usage. We don’t change modes much. If we know we will exceed EV range, we try to hit HV for interstate runs. Sometimes we don’t and just let it run down and start the engine when it needs to. If the engine starts up because we accidentally accelerate too hard, we don’t care, and we make no effort to shut it off…just let it do its thing and it either shuts itself off eventually or we reach our destination and we park it. When it goes into the garage, it gets plugged in and topped off regardless of state of charge so it’s ready for the next usage. Time of day is irrelevant. We use a L2 220V Mustart charger from Amazon in our garage, works very well, charges the battery from dead to full in about 2 hours. Not uncommon for the car to see 2 top-offs some days, occasionally 3 per day, sometimes one per day. If it's mid-charge and we need to go somewhere, we just unplug and go. On the road we carry the OEM 110V and plug in when opportunity permits, but we don’t look too hard and just drive it in HV mode on gas if we’re not sure where or when it will be plugged in next. We have never used public charging stations. We own 3 cars…currently my sporty little stickshift Mazda 3 for scooting, my Silverado Crew Cab 4x4 for hauling/work/towing, and wife's Clarity. The Clarity replaced wife’s previous 2013 Honda Accord EX-L 2.4L. Between our 3 cars it is not uncommon for us to drive 60,000 or more miles per year.
Here are my opinions and observations with the understanding that I’m comparing this car to other cars. NOT just to other PHEVs and other EV’s, as I’ve never driven another besides our Clarity. So keep in mind I’m comparing it to other 4 door cars in general. These are pros and cons and observations all mixed randomly:
1. The car has been flawless from a reliability standpoint. No gremlins, nothing weird. It works as Honda designed it. It has never gone back to dealer. I do my own oil changes and tire rotations. We replaced wiper rubbers recently with a pair from the dealer and the wipers now work perfect. I have no complaints about the washers or wipers as others seem to.
2. The car is exceedingly quiet and comfortable to sit in and ride in. Cadillac/Buick/Toyota Avalon like. It feels big. Bigger and smoother and quieter than the Accord we replaced for sure. Probably the quietest car I've ever been in.
3. On road trips I do have a button pushing regimen. Since I know I’ll be running 100% gasoline I push the following as soon as I buckle up: Start, Sport, HV, LKAS, and I make sure the ACC is set as close as possible for shorter following distance. Those are the settings I have grown to like for road trips. Then I don’t mess with them until next fuel stop and I reset them all again. It would be nice if it remembered them all, but it doesn’t. So I spend 2 seconds pushing those 4 buttons, and then I drive. Not a big deal. I generally set the ACC at 78 mph and just burn along. It all works great and the ACC and LKAS reduce fatigue and allow me to drive longer and farther very comfortably. Fuel mileage is like clockwork…39mpg on the flats of the Midwest. When things get real hilly like through the Smokey Mountains it goes up to about 41 mpg. Super steep mountain passes like the Rockies I’ve seen upwards of 50 mpg, with the caveat that usually those roads have some slower speeds due to curves. I do believe that the ability of this car to store gravity from long steep downhills in the battery is the reason it gets better MPG the steeper the hills get. I have recorded much lower mpg at occasional times with big long headwind/uphill runs, and higher at times with big tailwinds/downhill runs. I am 100% in agreement with the 40 mpg highway rating this car has. That’s exactly what it gets for me as a long term average. All those numbers are manually calculated with actual ODO and fuel usage. The MPG display is ALWAYS exaggerated by 7% to 9%. When it gets 39 mpg, the display says it got around 42.5. When it gets 41, the display says it got 45. Every single time. Yes if I slowed down I would get better fuel mileage. But then I would get there later. And I’d rather drive 78 mph, so I do.
(Continued on next page as I exceeded character count)
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