Switching from EV mode to HV mode and back to EV mode

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Armandy

Armandy

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After having my Clarity well over 3 months and driving over 2000kl in EV mode finally drove to another city 170kl away. Started off in EV mode until I was out of town limits and switched to HV mode on the highway. When I reached my destination tried to switch back to EV mode in the city, it would not switch back to EV mode until I pulled over and stopped, then was able to restart in EV mode. Had the same experience on the return trip home. This does not seem right to me, is anyone experiencing this? Haven't been back to the dealer yet, probably sometime in June. The only minor problem so far is no AM and FM reception and possibly this mode switching back to EV from HV mode while the vehicle is running.
 
Did a similar thing yesterday, without having to stop. After about 150 mi in HV (with remaining EV range estimated to be 19 mi) I switched back to EV to drive the last 15 miles, without difficulty.
 
I did a similar trip yesterday and both times it switched back to EV immediately when I exited the highway and manually changed modes. Your experience definitely seems abnormal and unacceptable.
 
I've had instances when the switch from HV to EV was not immediate. Didn't have to stop but it took a mile or so of driving before it changed.
 
Armandy said:
Thanks will try on my next outing, maybe I was just impatient.
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I was uncomfortable until it made the switch. There are things about the car that are non deterministic so some faith in Honda engineering is required. This does nothing to change my high opinion of the car though. It's really terrific.
 
It definitely takes a little while to switch back to EV. I have no idea why it is, but it’s consistently done it when I experimented.

This doesn’t apply directly to your situation since you’d been driving for a while, but also keep in mind that if you do something to cause the ICE to start, it will continue running (and therefore not show EV mode) until the engine has warmed up, which in my experience takes 5-10 minutes. The manual explicitly mentions this.

I think one thing Honda arguably did wrong with this vehicle is that the’ve got logic in the background doing a bunch of stuff regarding switching drivetrain modes, but since there’s little to no user indication in the car, and the manual gives brief explanations if at all as to how they work, people who are actually paying close attention end up getting confused because responses seem slow or random.

For example, the first time I tried HV for a minute then switched out, I was confused as to why it wasn’t going back to EV mode until I was reading the manual and saw the warmup sentence. If it had an “ICE warming up” message or something, nobody would think anything of it.

It’s also quite possible that 95% of drivers just aren’t paying that much attention so they’ll never notice at all, and it’s only people who post in places like this who are sensitive to what the car’s doing.
 
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