That's because it's not an Acura or Lexus, etc.
If the whole feature (say something like HUD or heated steering wheel or rain-sensing wipers) was something that was never available on a non-Acura branded vehicle this would hold some water, except as megreyhair notes, the Honda Pilot, which costs less than a Clarity PHEV and is most definitely not an Acura, has better fancy stuff. So even by car company reasoning, this doesn't hold water.
I think Honda was more concerned with keeping the cost of the car at a certain threshold than keeping features.
If this was stuff missing from the base package I'd say "sure, makes sense". Yes, a base Clarity PHEV costs a hair more than a base Acura TL, but I get that I'm paying for something other than luxury.
Except the Touring package is very explicitly nothing but luxury extras, so there's no excuse for cutting corners there to save, or saying that the extra goes toward the battery pack or something. Certainly if they'd given me the choice of auto-adjust mirrors (and preferably the tilt-down-when-reversing, too) for $3400 extra instead of $3200 extra for corner-cut luxury, I'd take the slightly more expensive version. I mean, heck, they offer interior or door sill accent lighting packages for hundreds of dollars extra.
When you look at what you're paying for, the Touring package lists at $3200 and gets you:
- Honda Satellite-Linked Navigation System
- Leather-Trimmed Seating
- Driver's Seat with 8-Way Power Adjustment and Two-Position Memory
- Front Passenger's Seat with 4-Way Power Adjustment
- Leather-Wrapped Steering Wheel
- Voice Recognition
- Remote Climate Pre-Conditioning
This is a mix of features from the Acura TL "Technology Package" and "Advanced Package", but the Technology package is closest at a cost of $3700, since it includes the GPS add-on. That one gets you all of those features except the 2-position memory:
- Acura Navigation System with 3D view, real-time traffic, and traffic rerouting
- Perforated Milano Premium Leather-Trimmed Interior
- Driver's 12-Way Power Seat with Power Lumbar Support and Power Thigh Extension
- Song By Voice
- GPS-linked Climate Control
Plus:
- ELS Studio Premium Audio System with 10 Speakers
- Rain-sensing windshield wipers
- 19" Split 5-Spoke Pewter and Machine-finish Wheels
- Blind Spot Information System
- Rear Cross Traffic Monitor
- Rain-Sensing Windshield Wipers
And a couple features that are standard on the Clarity PHEV:
- Color Multi-Information Display (MID) with Turn-By-Turn Guidance
- AcuraLink The Next Generation
- HD Radio
...which basically sounds like a much better deal for 15% more dollars.
Point not being that the Clarity is a bad deal, but that there's really no excuse for cutting seemingly pointless corners on the memory seats (and rendering the feature
much less useful) when someone is already willing to pay several thousand dollars for the package that includes that.
I'm kind of inclined to agree with dstrauss--there are some great tech features, but some things seem like they were raiding the spare parts bin instead of going all-in on a $37,000 car.
