Newbie question about preconditioning

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Das KONA

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The manual seems useless regarding preconditioning. Through a post somewhere I found out that the "fan" button on the remote will start preconditioning. What I read said to hit the "lock" button on the remote and then the fan button and the car will heat or cool the interior to what the current heat or cool settings are. Is that right?

And if I want to do that with the car plugged in so as to use shore electricity, will that happen if it's plugged in overnight, has hit full charge, and I want to heat it up before I get in - i.e., will it start charging again to "refill" what's being used?

And that's using preconditioning regarding the car's interior. Is there a way, on Canadian models, to somehow pre-heat the traction battery on a cold morning by using shore power?

Thanks in advance. More dumb questions to come as I learn this new-to-me 2019 Clarity Touring plugin.
 
Das KONA said:
the car will heat or cool the interior to what the current heat or cool settings are. Is that right?

And if I want to do that with the car plugged in so as to use shore electricity, will that happen if it's plugged in overnight, has hit full charge, and I want to heat it up before I get in - i.e., will it start charging again to "refill" what's being used?

And that's using preconditioning regarding the car's interior. Is there a way, on Canadian models, to somehow pre-heat the traction battery on a cold morning by using shore power?

Thanks in advance. More dumb questions to come as I learn this new-to-me 2019 Clarity Touring plugin.
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No, the Clarity will heat or cool to some factory-determined temperature. You have no control over that setting.

Yes, you will preserve your full charge if you precondition the cabin while your Clarity is plugged into a Level 2 EVSE. It can't charge and precondition at the same time on a Level 1 EVSE, however.

I believe Canadian Claritys traded some interior goodies for a traction-battery heater, but I don't know how that works. I assume you'd want to be plugged into a Level 2 EVSE to avoid draining the traction battery to heat the traction battery.
 
Thank you.

We have cheaper overnight electricity (11pm to 7am), so I set the car to charge starting at 11 pm and stopping at 7 am, recognizing it will be fully charged well before that. Now, I'm going to change the time to stop charging at 4 pm which is when a peak-time surcharge on our electricity starts. That way, as long as I leave to drive and precondition between 7 am and 4 pm, the electricity used for that will just be at the normal, non-peak-time rate. I do have a level 2 charger at home.
 
If you start charging at 11pm, it will finish within 3 hours on a level 2 charger, often sooner if the battery isn't run down to 2 bars. I wouldn't change the charge settings to accommodate the conditioning. My experience is that the charge timer is very simple, when the programmed time arrives, if a charger is connected turn it on. If you connect a charger 10 minutes after the set time it will not charge. This contrasts with my Bolt EUV where I can enter the complete rate schedule for weekdays and weekends so when I plug it at any time, the car knows whether it's a good time to charge.
 
Yeah, I'd discovered that even if I extend the charging schedule from 11 pm to 4 pm (next day), if I plug it in, say, next morning at 10 am, it doesn't start. So, if it's not plugged in at 11 pm the scheduling does nothing.

But my reason for extending the time was because I didn't know if I left it plugged in past the scheduled charging end ... when I ask it to precondition would it activate the charger for that purpose, or just use the big battery because the scheduled charge time was over? I can probably figure that out by seeing if I've lost any EV range by preconditioning under those circumstances. The range drops pretty quickly with the ~0 C temps lately.
 
Hey Das KONA, I follow exactly the routine you ask about on a lot of wintery mornings, because I drive a teenage daughter to school and my precious can't be allowed to get cold....... I leave the car plugged in overnight, crack open the garage door, hit the lock button on the key fob, then hold the little fan button for preconditioning until I see the "three-peat" headlight flash. then I go back in for coffee or whatever.

As mentioned by others it doesn't heat or chill to your personal preferred settings- in my experience it seems to go to full blast whether it's heating or cooling. I've never actually seen it stop preconditioning on its own.

One thing I'll add I haven't seen in this thread- the preconditioning only ends when you open the driver's door (maybe passenger door too?). unlocking the doors and opening the back doors doesn't stop the preconditioning. When it's been cold (below freezing) and I want the battery completely charged up, I often go out and crack open the drivers door briefly a few minutes before I plan to leave, to stop the pre-condition. Usually the car will continue to charge up for a while after that even if preconditioning has ended. I'm guessing the wall charger doesn't quite keep up with the preconditioning power load so it takes a few minutes extra to catch back up. but I'm one of those "just plug it in and drive it" clarity owners, don't really worry much about how it works.
 
Update: I plugged the car in this morning, inside the scheduled charging window, but after the scheduled start time. As leehoewonek stated above, it did not start charging. I then used the app to start preconditioning. I then saw that the green light at the charging port was lit up, meaning that charging was taking place. So, at this point I believe that if it's simply plugged in, it will use shore power when preconditioning is turned on, regardless of when it's scheduled to start charging.
 
ralfalfa said:
...I've never actually seen it stop preconditioning on its own.

One thing I'll add I haven't seen in this thread- the preconditioning only ends when you open the driver's door (maybe passenger door too?). unlocking the doors and opening the back doors doesn't stop the preconditioning.
Click to expand...

My experience with preconditioning aligns with what is described in the Owner's Manual (see below). You also can cancel preconditioning by pressing and holding the climate button on the remote, or turn it off using the HondaLink app. I like the 30-minute timeout feature noted below; I'd rather not have preconditioning continue if I turn it on, then change my mind about driving somewhere and forget to turn it back off.

Owner's Manual (p. 200) said:
The climate control system automatically turned off
when any of the following conditions are met.
• The system has been operated for more than 30
minutes.
• The High Voltage battery level becomes low.
• A door or the hood is opened.
• The power mode is set to any mode other than
OFF.
• The brake pedal is being depressed.
If the charging connector is unplugged, the High
Voltage battery is used to power the climate control
system.
Click to expand...
 
One gotcha in the summer -- while the preconditioning system picks the temperature, so it doesn't matter where you have that set, if you manually turn the AC on/off like I do (to get fresh air in the cool mornings), it must be ON when you leave the car, otherwise preconditioning will just run the fan without actually cooling. I consider that a bug, but apparently not one that will ever be fixed.
 
JCA said:
One gotcha in the summer -- while the preconditioning system picks the temperature, so it doesn't matter where you have that set, if you manually turn the AC on/off like I do (to get fresh air in the cool mornings), it must be ON when you leave the car, otherwise preconditioning will just run the fan without actually cooling. I consider that a bug, but apparently not one that will ever be fixed.
Click to expand...
Thanks! I didn't know about that bug because I only use preconditioning in the winter.
 
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