Steering Wheel with Exclamation Warning light

I have an egolf as our primary ev, and am still waiting on my Clarity. I can confirm 100% that the VW egolf exhibits the exact same behaviour with regards to button pushes and brake. Put your foot on the brake, and press the button it starts. Push the button with no foot on the brake it goes into accessory mode. Try to put the car in drive or reverse from accessory mode (accidentally thinking it’s on) and you get into a weird twilight zone where the car is sort of on, but isn’t and you have to shut everything down and start again. So same sort of process as described above.


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I beg to disagree @GTO 409.
The Honda Clarity couldn’t be simpler to start and stop.
1. To “start” at any time just put foot on brake push start button, shift and go; don’t even have to take the parking brake off.
2. To turn off just hit one button and car turns off and enters park automatically.
So it’s one button on and shift and one button to stop and exit. What could be simpler?

The car does have a some what bewildering array of modes that may be somewhat intimidating without reading the manual, but Honda designed the car such that you can just get in it and drive it like a regular car and still get 98% of the efficiency and drivability out of it. You don’t have to be a techoweenie to make it work.

As to the complaint about the menues, those involve settings that once set are hardly ever changed on a frequent basis. So that is not a pressing problem for me. There will always be a learning curve on any new car. I played around with all the menues in accessory mode in one sitting and got familiar enough with them.
If an old guy like me with no teenage tech support at home can set it up and drive it, then anyone can.

There are no gov crash test results because the car has not sold enough. I trust Honda’s excellent reputation on past crash test results and the posted engineering details of crush zones and use of high strength steel to keep me from worrying about this. And the Clarity has the full range of airbags.

I too would like to have blind spot monitoring and rear cross traffic alert , but you can’t have everything at this price and still get 135 MPGe and 49 MPG like I am.
For that kind of price, performance, safety, comfort, and economy, I’m willing to accept a few “flaws” of omission that I can adapt to.
For example I used a tip from this forum to adjust my driver’s side Mirror outward a little and now I have no blind spot. I also use the wide fish eye view on the back up camera that mostly makes up for the lack of rear cross traffic alert.

So, is the Clarity perfect? Of course not. But it’s closer to perfection than any other PHEV or hybrid out there for the same approximate price after all the tax credits IMHO.
 
GTO 409 said:
As a prospective buyer, these types of stories and glitches — or, rather, complications — make me hesitant to buy the car.

I just want to turn on car, release parking brake, move shifter to drive, and go!

The car is sounding more and more to me like a piece of difficult software, with odd controls, menu commands in unexpected places, unexpected behavior, and weird error messages!

I suppose one gets used to it, but it sounds as if it could overwhelming to mere mortals!
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I don't think it is complicated at all. Depressing the brake pedal before shifting is pretty much a standard these days. I get in the car, push the Start button, push on the brake, put it in reverse and back out of the garage. Seems like a pretty straight forward pattern to me.

The only thing that has tripped me up is the car's insistence to put the seat belt on sometimes. I've pulled into a gas station where I have to wait for a car to vacate a pump. I put the car in park, still powered up, and take my seat belt off so I can more easily reach into my back pocket for my wallet. The car applies the brake and when I try to go forward it won't move because I don't have my seat belt on. That seems a little bit too much big brother for me.
 
insightman said:
I'll bet you push on the brake before the Start button.
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Not always. On hot days I'll push the Start button to get the air conditioner started before I'm fully in the driver's seat.

I fiddled with the remote climate control a few times. It does work but I've decided I don't need to bother. The car AC works so good it's just seconds before it starts to blow cool air. Our normal summer temperatures are 100-112 F. It has been cooler this summer though, more like 95-104 or so. With the huge Carr fire blocking the sun it's only been in the 90's for the past couple of weeks.
 
jdonalds said:
Not always. On hot days I'll push the Start button to get the air conditioner started before I'm fully in the driver's seat.
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I stand corrected. I didn't know you could go from Accessory mode to Reverse by using the brake pedal.
 
insightman said:
I stand corrected. I didn't know you could go from Accessory mode to Reverse by using the brake pedal.
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Actually I stand corrected. You were right. I just went out to the car and I must automatically put my foot on the brake before I hit the start button even before I'm fully in the car.
 
GTO 409 said:
Plus, I remain troubled by Lane Watch instead of blind spot monitoring and the lack of rear cross traffic alert —and still no crash test reports!
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I can only compare with a Volt, since that's the only other car with these features I've driven.

Rear cross traffic in the Volt will beep at you when there's road traffic 500 feet behind you. It's not useful, because it teaches you to ignore it by being 99% false-positive. Maybe it's better in other vehicles. The reverse camera on the Clarity in the wide-angle view provides plenty of visibility for cross traffic in a parking lot.

The "blind spot" indicators on the Volt are also not so great. It's got no advance warning. The camera on the Clarity is more visible first from being in the center of the car rather than over on the right mirror, (which helps especially if right-side peripheral vision is a problem), and it shows you a distance behind you with marker lines (a green line at the longest distance for "I'm just switching lanes", a yellow line in the middle, and a red line for "I'm cutting-this person off and they should show me a middle finger for it"), so you have much more advance warning that it isn't safe to switch lanes than the little light in the Volt gives you.
 
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KentuckyKen said:
With respect, I beg to differ.

If you push start with no foot on brake and enter accessory mode, you can go directly to driving or on mode by pushing start one time with foot on brake pedal. It’s the same result as a normal start up (foot on brake, push start).

Here is where it gets confusing.
If you are in accessory mode and push start without your foot on the brake, you go into some sort of in between mode where some warning lights are on, the DRTs are on, but you can’t select anything but Neutral and Park and thus can’t “start” and go anywhere.
Again, no problem, just start up as usual by foot on brake and push start.
The problem for me until I figured this out was that I keep trying to select R or D (not noticing they would not illuminate) and wondering why the car wouldn’t go anywhere. With the DRTs on, it can make you think you’ve started up and are ready to go when in fact you’re in this “in between mode”.

Bottom line, at any time, from any mode, just put foot on brake and push start once to drive away.
At least that’s what my car does.

I also had to learn that if I am using brake hold and turn off the car, then the next time I start the car the parking brake is on and I’m sitting there going @#*%¥, why won’t this thing move!!!! Then I hear and see the notice to release parking brake which I didn’t expect because I didn’t put the parking brake on.
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You are right. I tried to delete my post after testing it out. I had the steering wheel light happen to me once in the beginning and thought I had to shut down first. I kept pressing and pressing which didn't do anything. I'm not sure what caused it to fix it self. Sorry for the misinformation.
 
I experienced the same issue 2018 Clarity steering wheel light came on or atypical freezing morning in NorCal ... initially thought it was because I had entered Accessory mode first ... turned off and was able to restart

Next day started normally with foot on brake and same issue came up ... multiple power cycles cleared it eventually and now that weather is not freezing no problem ... not sure what to conclude
 
Having owned three consecutive Honda products with push button start:

Foot NOT on brake:
1 push - accessory mode
2 push - ON mode (just like when we used to have to use physical keys)

Foot ON brake:
1 push - starts car

The Clarity operates in this manner just as my 2016 Fit EX and 2017 Civic Si.
 
What I found is that if you just unplugged the car with the car in accessory mode and try to start it up, it won't let you. You need to turn off the car with foot off the brake and then you can start up the car.
 
Perhaps the in between mode that only allows neutral and park is for being able to roll the car (in neutral) with only minimal systems on is some sort of service/maintenance/emergency mode.
 
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