Winter vs warm weather driving

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insightman said:
The drivers of the two other Claritys and ordinary cars cannot choose among the many modes the Clarity Plug-In Hybrid offers to fine-tune its efficiency.
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Huh What?
The BEV can be driven in Sport or Eco modes, which will "fine tune" it's efficiency. But that being said, any of the BEV modes will be more efficient than any mode you can choose with the PHEV. The pure electric drive train is inherently more efficient than that of the PHEV.
The PHEV is most efficient when the ICE is not utilized - any use of the ICE at all drops it's efficiency well below that of the BEV. Fine tune all you want - but running the ICE in it's most efficient mode is less than half as efficient as EV mode (PHEV or BEV).
 
Bina12834 said:
How the heck! Are you just getting blasted with honks because you're driving so slow? Does the A/C not impact range like the heater does? I figured any HVAC usage impacted range equally.
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All of my EV miles are on secondary roads with a maximum speed limit of 45mph. I'm sure this accounts for the overly optimistic numbers I see on my guess-o-meter.
 
PHEV Newbie said:
I still can't understand why it doesn't sell like hotcakes! Maybe when gas prices go over $4 again...
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Here in Los Angeles gas is over $4/gallon and I don't think it's just coincidence that I've seen more new Claritys over the last month than I saw in the previous 3 months combined. Yesterday I saw 3 new ones in my 22 mile trip to work.
 
With gas under $2.30 gallon here, the majority of the rigs on the road here are 'rolling coal' diesel pickups hauling nothing but air. My Clarity stands out in this black smoke crowd for sure.
 
One comment about the big rigs and environment friendly. If gas had no environmental impact and were free, I probably would enjoy driving a big truck. I also didn't know there is a way to be environmentally friendly in a no-compromise way. The other fuel efficient vehicles I had seen were kind of physically small -- think especially early Honda Civic and the like. Almost a go-cart on wheels.

So I definitely suffered from some long held prejudice against fuel efficient vehicles which may of even had some truth years ago. A modern Prius Prime, Hyundai Sonata PHEV or Clarity are all nice vehicles to drive and not super-small. Also the original Prius, as important as it is, has a very distinctive look that some find displeasing. I saw a Prius bumper sticker (on a Prius) the other day. It said "Cool Car! -- said no one, ever."

So anyway, seems to me folks need the exposure (or education). The rebates also helped me to see the light. My initial interest was in saving money. After I bought the car I found out how much I love it.

-Dan

PS: And yes, I tend to go pro-environment, but I also readily admit, I only go "green" when I believe it to be practical.
 
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Dan Albrich said:
One comment about the big rigs and environment friendly. If gas had no environmental impact and were free, I probably would enjoy driving a big truck. I also didn't know there is a way to be environmentally friendly in a no-compromise way. The other fuel efficient vehicles I had seen were kind of physically small -- think especially early Honda Civic and the like. Almost a go-cart on wheels.

So I definitely suffered from some long held prejudice against fuel efficient vehicles which may of even had some truth years ago. A modern Prius Prime, Hyundai Sonata PHEV or Clarity are all nice vehicles to drive and not super-small. Also the original Prius, as important as it is, has a very distinctive look that some find displeasing. I saw a Prius bumper sticker (on a Prius) the other day. It said "Cool Car! -- said no one, ever."

So anyway, seems to me folks need the exposure (or education). The rebates also helped me to see the light. My initial interest was in saving money. After I bought the car I found out how much I love it.

-Dan

PS: And yes, I tend to go pro-environment, but I also readily admit, I only go "green" when I believe it to be practical.
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Dan, your stance is similar to mine.

I think that the driving public equates "environmentally friendly" with "tiny stripped-down vehicle". I ran into a friend at a meeting recently who mentioned that she was looking for a car with good gas mileage. I gave her a ride in the Clarity. She was literally amazed that it was a comfortable car with plenty of room and a nice cabin presence. I don't think that the car manufacturers are doing enough to make the buying public realize that they're not compromising when they go with PHEVs. Of course, Honda isn't doing squat to sell the Clarity.
 
DucRider said:
Huh What?
The BEV can be driven in Sport or Eco modes, which will "fine tune" it's efficiency. But that being said, any of the BEV modes will be more efficient than any mode you can choose with the PHEV. The pure electric drive train is inherently more efficient than that of the PHEV.
The PHEV is most efficient when the ICE is not utilized - any use of the ICE at all drops it's efficiency well below that of the BEV. Fine tune all you want - but running the ICE in it's most efficient mode is less than half as efficient as EV mode (PHEV or BEV).
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To the contrary, the BEV has an infinitely negative penalty to efficiency simply because it lacks range to actually use it on long trips without an unreasonable number of stops to charge. If you can't drive it, it can't be efficient.
 
petteyg359 said:
To the contrary, the BEV has an infinitely negative penalty to efficiency simply because it lacks range to actually use it on long trips without an unreasonable number of stops to charge. If you can't drive it, it can't be efficient.
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And the PHEV is negatively efficient because you can't haul 4x8 plywood? Pull a travel trailer, boat or ford a stream? Pick up 8 passengers and their luggage from the airport?

We actually do use it on long trips like the one we took to Denver last fall with only one charge, and that was a L1 convenience charge that was not actually needed. Before that, we used the Fit EV for trips to Chicago, Southern CA, Wisconsin, Texas, Denver and others I can't think of at the moment without any charging issues at all. Never had to wait for a charge or look for a charging station, and actually got parking in a "full" lot because the L1 charging stations were not all in use! It works perfectly for us on our long trips.
 
DucRider said:
The BEV can be driven in Sport or Eco modes, which will "fine tune" it's efficiency.
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That's just two modes for the BEV. The PHEV offers 3 primary modes: ECON, NORMAL, and SPORT. Those 3 modes can be used with the SoC-saving HV Mode, which makes for 6 modes. If I really wanted to expand the number of available modes in the PHEV, I'd count the 3 modes when used with HV CHARGE Mode for a total of 9 modes, but I never use HV CHARGE Mode.

How many Clarity BEV drivers have wished for a charge mode as their 89-mile EV range begins to dwindle? The other day, as I watched my Clarity PHEV's EV range expire and the car switched to HV mode automatically, I was wondering how one can set up a car to rescue a BEV driver who runs out of juice?
 
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AAA had a truck (or two?) in Oregon set up to provide roadside service to EV's out of charge. They took it out of service due to lack of use. Turns out EV drivers are very aware of remaining charge/range. While the Clarity BEV has nearly double the EV range of the PHEV, it is nearly at the bottom of the BEV range list (only the fortwo and 500e have less). The Clarity BEV is not designed nor intended to be a road trip car. Those that lease them are well aware of that and don't try and use them for a task they are not suited for. Just like you would not attempt to pull an Airstream with your PHEV (and there are those that would wonder why you would want a vehicle that could not tow, have 4wd, etc).
 
DucRider said:
AAA had a truck (or two?) in Oregon set up to provide roadside service to EV's out of charge. They took it out of service due to lack of use.
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To rescue less-savvy BEV drivers, how about sticking a $6,700 45" x 30" x 6" Tesla Powerwall with an EVSE in the back of a car for a quick recharge?

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Mark W said:
Be careful with that thinking. You would think that would be the case, but Nissan Leafs are a good case against it. The 2011 and 2012 model batteries are notorious for degrading very quickly. About a year ago, Nissan raised the price of battery replacement from around $6500 to $8500! For a small 24Kwh pack! Everyone thought that third party companies would have sprung up to provide an alternative. To date, no reliable company has, and there have been MANY more Leafs sold than Claritys!

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Honda's batteries will be better than Nissan's, and I don't expect to have a problem.
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Early Nissan Leaf uses air cooled battery. All later Leaf, Tesla, Clarity, and most other EV on market use liquid cooled battery.

Nissan raised price for battery because they retrofit the new bettery chemistry to old battery module designed. These retrofitted battery are compatible with old Leaf, but with more capacity and battery life.
I remember (maybe wrong) some news about outraged owners who bought their Leaf a few weeks before Nissan switching to new chemistry.
 
ryd994 said:
Early Nissan Leaf uses air cooled battery. All later Leaf, Tesla, Clarity, and most other EV on market use liquid cooled battery.

Nissan raised price for battery because they retrofit the new bettery chemistry to old battery module designed. These retrofitted battery are compatible with old Leaf, but with more capacity and battery life.
I remember (maybe wrong) some news about outraged owners who bought their Leaf a few weeks before Nissan switching to new chemistry.
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Unless I’m mistaken, even the 2019 Leafs with 60 kWh battery still don’t have liquid cooling. A great EV but with very questionable BMS.
 
MNSteve said:
One of the things that impresses me about the Clarity is the way that it satisfies the needs of two vastly different populations. There are the folks who want to get into a car and just drive it, and the Clarity works just fine in that mode. Then there are the folks like many of us here on this forum who enjoy the challenge of trying to reverse-engineer the inner workings of the car based on what we can observe ("looking through a glass darkly").
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^^ Perfectly said @MNSteve !

Wife fits in first category.
I am in the second category.
 
DucRider said:
Huh What?
The BEV can be driven in Sport or Eco modes, which will "fine tune" it's efficiency. But that being said, any of the BEV modes will be more efficient than any mode you can choose with the PHEV. The pure electric drive train is inherently more efficient than that of the PHEV.
The PHEV is most efficient when the ICE is not utilized - any use of the ICE at all drops it's efficiency well below that of the BEV. Fine tune all you want - but running the ICE in it's most efficient mode is less than half as efficient as EV mode (PHEV or BEV).
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Not at all, just the location of the inefficiency changes, unless you are charging all the time on your own renewable system like Kentucky Ken.

Just 17% of our power comes from renewables. The rest is fossil fuels and nuclear where the generation efficiency ranges from 30 to 60%. Not far off from the very good 40% Honda claims for our Clarity ICE. Its not easy to disobey the laws of thermodynamics.

But fortunately the renewable fraction is going up constantly!

https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_production.html
 
A/C is far more efficient than the heater in most EV's. They work totally differently, the heater works like your toaster, dumps a large amount of energy to heat up metal elements that the air blows across. The A/C uses a heat pump type of arrangement(compressor-evaporator) to move heat out of the interior of the car. Since the inside is hot it is easy to move the heat, if it was 40 inside the car it would not work as well(my home hybrid HVAC switches from heat pump to gas furnace when the out side temp goes below 40). My range drops to maybe 57 miles using A/C a lot, in the winter using heat it drops to 38. I said most EV's because a few use an actual heat pump to heat and cool the car but they must still have a resistance heater available for freezing weather.
 
David Towle said:
There are some low temp heat pumps for home use now I haven't figured out how they work but in the future they may improve the heating situation in EV cars.

https://www.arcticheatpumps.com/?gc...dFcBQbAeyxNKBfcvfenN3hi328eVxJX8aAuEZEALw_wcB
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There are also less expensive conventional cold climate heat pumps that return 1.75 for every 1 unit of electricity at 5 degrees F and close to 3:1 above freezing. I’m pricing out a Trane right now to replace a 20 year old AC unit that only has a SEER of 12. The ccHeatpump from Trane has a SEER of 21. I’m trying to see if my climate in KY would let me add this and save enough kWh in the summer to let me give up natural gas (have to pay $25/month delivery fee even in summer, grrr) and heat with occasional resistance back up in the winter and still stay within my solar production numbers. Crunching cost numbers of BTUs of natural gas vs. the ccHeatpump over degree days of winter. Ugh, the more variables, the harder it is to solve the equation.
 
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David Towle said:
Not at all, just the location of the inefficiency changes, unless you are charging all the time on your own renewable system like Kentucky Ken.

Just 17% of our power comes from renewables. The rest is fossil fuels and nuclear where the generation efficiency ranges from 30 to 60%. Not far off from the very good 40% Honda claims for our Clarity ICE. Its not easy to disobey the laws of thermodynamics.

But fortunately the renewable fraction is going up constantly!

https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_production.html
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I have no idea how any of that relates to the efficiency of the vehicle itself.

An electric motor is upwards of 90% efficient.
A gas engine is 30% (this is in fact an extremely generous number). A hybrid (traditional or PHEV) recaptures some of the energy that would otherwise be wasted - but so does an EV!

Using the "efficiency" of the various ways electricity is produced while completely ignoring the "efficiency" of drilling, transporting, refining, transporting and dispensing gas?
Just one fact to consider is that it takes about 5 kWh of electricity (varies widely depending on the source and quality of the crude oil) to refine a gallon of gas (although most of that does come from burning petroleum byproduct products - not sure how that effects your definition of efficiency).

An electric motor always converts energy into motion more efficiently that a gas engine. The efficiency in producing and distributing electricity vs gas is wildly variable and another discussion entirely.
 
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