New owner questions - cellular radio / battery charge

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weave

weave

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I'm over the moon happy about my new Clarity, despite one scary error I got (more on that in a bit).

I have some questions that I can't find in the manuals.

1. I had my car parked at a public charger and I got a notification from HondaLink that it was done charging. So somehow there must be some sort of cellular radio in the car for data. Does anyone know what it is? Is it 3G, 4G, LTE? Can that be used as a hotspot like in some other Honda cars? I noticed in the manual it says 3G service is expected to go away in five years and 4G in ten, so the car would stop working over data. So obviously i'm concerned if it's a 3G radio.

2. Back when I was thinking of getting a Tesla Model 3, I read a lot of Tesla boards and noticed the conventional wisdom there is to not charge their cars to 100% unless they absolutely need the range -- because it will shorten battery life. Is that also a concern on the Clarity? Since it's only ~40 range going lower on a charge is gonna kinda suck.

Now for the scary thing. I stopped at a public level 2 charger and when I came back after eating lunch, it hadn't charged. I tried it a second time and this time the car faulted, gave an error of "POWER SYSTEM - Plug-in Charging System Problem. Range Limited". I've seen some other posts here about that. That's really scary and I hated driving with a check engine light on such a complicated car, not knowing what was going on. I tried restarting it twice but the check engine light didn't go away. I drove it for about 40 miles, about 20 on EV and 20 on HEV and when I got back to a charger I knew worked, I plugged it in to give it a charge. After that the Check Engine Light finally went off.
 
Yes there is a Honda paid for cell connection. Not sure what will happen when 3G goes away. Verizon just announced they will soon cut 3G service.
 
I’ve gotten that same error at 2 public chargers, and charging doesn’t continue. I think it’s a problem with the charger itself that sets up a temporary error, though it clears up in a few hours.
 
jdonalds said:
Yes there is a Honda paid for cell connection. Not sure what will happen when 3G goes away. Verizon just announced they will soon cut 3G service.
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Does anyone know if it is 3G? I don't see it listed in any specs docs. The manual says when 3G and 4G goes away, Honda is under no obligation to fix the lack of communication. :-( At least 4G will buy us some time (estimated 10 years in the manual).

Carro con enchufe said:
I’ve gotten that same error at 2 public chargers, and charging doesn’t continue. I think it’s a problem with the charger itself that sets up a temporary error, though it clears up in a few hours.
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That's encouraging that it goes away eventually. My friend was trying to read the OBD port while it was on and I wasn't sure if that action cleared it or it just went away on its own because it turned off around the time he was fiddling with it (although he said he didn't push the clear button).

That message is way too scary though. I thought the charging system in the car fried. I about had a heart attack. :-(
 
Everbody said:
2. You cannot charge to absolute 100%, or discharge to absolute 0%. The engineers do not allow it in their battery management system, BMS. They show you 100 an 0, but it isn't real. They are protecting the batteries from abuse.

Sent from my SM-T580 using Inside EVs mobile app
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How do you know this? Is it in the manual or something?
 
rickyrsx said:
How do you know this? Is it in the manual or something?
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Not stated in manual, but...
1. Notice that when you reach 0 EV range you still have 2 bars on the gauge.
2. A full charge for a fully depleted 17 kW battery is only around 14.4 kW. So the usable capacity of the battery is less than it’s actual capacity.
3. Common sense and battery chemistry. Honda cannot alter the laws of physics, so allowing the battery to be fully charged and fully discharged would so shorten the Li-ion battery’s life that the warranty claims and bad PR would ruin Honda financially.
 
jdonalds said:
Yes there is a Honda paid for cell connection. Not sure what will happen when 3G goes away. Verizon just announced they will soon cut 3G service.
Click to expand...
We can only hope that at that time somebody will market an after-market product and software patch to attach to the TCU and give us 4 or 5G. Or could a unit bridge the gap by sending and receiving 3G/4 or 5G. I have no idea if it’s possible but I hope so for I would sure hate to give up my Honda Link.
 
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