Heino
Active Member
Today, I have finally had the opportunity to test my new Clarity on the open road. I'm into about 4 weeks of Clarity ownership now, and have mostly operated on EV mode within town.
The destination I picked was perfect in terms of distance. On the drive to my destination I was able to deplete the battery down to zero, almost exactly as I reached my goal. It was funny watching the GPS inform me I was 2 miles away from my destination, and the car was estimating I had roughly 1.9 miles of EV range left.
I made it a game and tried to regen just enough to get the EV range to co-inside with the GPS estimate.
Sadly, the town I visited did not have any public EV chargers available - but that's okay, as I wanted to see how the car drives in HV mode with next to no battery charge.
Surprisingly, the car handled just fine. Yes, the engine came on, but it was hardly noticeable. The rolling hills did not pose a challenge to the car either.
I was also able to try out the Honda Sense features, and enabled adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist. Lane keep assist did very well and allowed me to relax a bit. I just find it surprising, that there are no audible alerts when the system wants the driver to take over steering again. Only a visual cue on the display.
Overall, I'm very happy with the performance of my Clarity. It's exactly what I wanted / needed in terms of having a flexible EV which allows for road trips, without the need of having to find a destination charger.
Honda did a lot of things right on this car... truly amazing!
The destination I picked was perfect in terms of distance. On the drive to my destination I was able to deplete the battery down to zero, almost exactly as I reached my goal. It was funny watching the GPS inform me I was 2 miles away from my destination, and the car was estimating I had roughly 1.9 miles of EV range left.
I made it a game and tried to regen just enough to get the EV range to co-inside with the GPS estimate.
Sadly, the town I visited did not have any public EV chargers available - but that's okay, as I wanted to see how the car drives in HV mode with next to no battery charge.
Surprisingly, the car handled just fine. Yes, the engine came on, but it was hardly noticeable. The rolling hills did not pose a challenge to the car either.
I was also able to try out the Honda Sense features, and enabled adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist. Lane keep assist did very well and allowed me to relax a bit. I just find it surprising, that there are no audible alerts when the system wants the driver to take over steering again. Only a visual cue on the display.
Overall, I'm very happy with the performance of my Clarity. It's exactly what I wanted / needed in terms of having a flexible EV which allows for road trips, without the need of having to find a destination charger.
Honda did a lot of things right on this car... truly amazing!