Featured Honda Clarity Plug-in

We should pick up our Clarity PHEV tomorrow. I believe if 47 EV and 42mpg works it is on a case by case basis. My best friend concludes it wouldn't work for him because his daily commute round trip is more than 47 miles, and he likes to take long trips often. If you are in sales and do a lot of highway trips probably not. If you do a lot of short around town driving and few long trips the Clarity might work for you. In our case I estimate that 16,000 of our 20,000 per year will be on EV. But the Touring model, even with the $7,500 tax credit and $1,500 CA rebate is still so expensive the gas savings will never pay for the car. Our 2015 Prius makes much more sense. But I want the Clarity.

Buying the Clarity is clearly a WANT more than anything else. I like the car inside and out. I'll be happy to have more space, especially in the back seat. I'm looking forward to all of the features. Honda loaded it up with customization through the 8" screen. We like the colors, especially the interior.

For me the down sides of the Clarity are losing about 6 Cu Ft of cargo space compared to the 2015 Prius. Also the fold down seats and pass through are a joke in the Clarity. I wish it was a hatchback instead of a sedan.

Contrary to early internet information the Clarity PHEV does not have rain sensing wipers. It also does not have mirrors that automatically fold, nor tilt down when in reverse, nor do they have two position memory like the seats do.

However the Clarity PHEV does have sliding sun visors (unbelievable how many cars leave this out) and to my surprise has regen paddles.

If a car looks good or not is subjective. Personally I care much more about the interior, where I spend all of my time, than the exterior. The looks of the car isn't a major decision maker for me; evidence we've owned two Prius cars which I don't think are good looking. However I do like the looks of the Clarity. The PHEV model is better than the fuel cell model.

My wife and I just didn't like the Prime. Seating only 4 is a big deal. The white accents were a big deal. Either black or white upholstery didn't appeal to us. I've never liked the dash centered gauges. No rear wiper. In general Toyota seems to be going in a different direction than us with their design choices.

Our daily round trips are 24 miles. Throw in a trip to the grocery store, church, or gym and the Prime would kick on the ICE. The Clarity's 47 mile range will nicely serve our daily drives. But again I say it is on a case by case basis. We expect to go for a month or more without the ICE kicking in.

With the $7,500 federal tax credits going away in January we didn't have time to wait for the Hyundai Ioniq PHEV which we like a lot, and it would be cheaper by thousands.

I've estimated the Clarity PHEV will cut our fuel bill in half compared to the 2015 Prius.

 

I missed the news story about EV credits going away in January!

Honestly.....it's shocking how many stories get shunted aside while the idealogues spend all day fish-slapping each other on TV...

Please stick around for a while!
We have several Voltistas in the forum, and it will be interesting to hear from a non-fanboy perspective on the Clarity.

Real-world cost?
First Drive perspectives?
Dealership experiences?

Meanwhile....good luck!!!

 

@jdonalds - the Touring does have two seat position memory; and on our Odyssey the rain-sensing wipers aren't that accurate.

@ETC(SS) - I'll report from the field on my experience, especially relative to my Prius days. The EV credits aren't dead yet, but on serious life support - enough so you should write your Congressman to support the Senate bill which retains the credits. If you are in the market for a EV or PHEV, and can swing one before 12/31/17, I'd do it because there is no telling what will come out of conference when they are all horse trading for their back home pet projects. I'm a little more hopeful that it will continue because GM, Ford, Toyota and Honda have all jumped on the lobbying bandwagon to preserve the billions they've spent on EV R&D.

That said, chicken here jumped on the Clarity and took no chances. Rather see that $7500 go into my car than Uncle Sam's swamp infested budget...

 

Don't look at me pal,
I think the EV industry is big enough to come off the bottle.
PHEV's are either real-world cost-effective or they're not....but all of this is probably best hashed out in another room in the forum. Head over to Fred's house of Pancakes, and listen for something that sounds like 6 small children locked in a room with only 5 toys.

Just to put a bow on the whole tax thing, I don't give dot.gov credit for much in the way of ajility, so I'm guessing that even when EV credits do sunset, and they should sunset eventually, it's not going to happen 28 days from now.....

 

2018 Clarity Plug-in Hybrid Model Features | Bellevue Honda
DANG!
and if you get the stripped version, it says $37K before tax/delivery
State & Fed $$ might get you in - right at high 30's & up. Too bad Honda has such bad historic baggage, what with overtaxing there traction packs, causing owners to have to file a class action lawsuit. I'd wait to see if they are still pulling those same Shenanigans. If not, a nice roomy Ride Like That would be pretty sweet.
.

 

Perhaps fire off an email to Toyota on why you left the fold.

 

Yes the Touring has two position seat memory, but it does not extend to the mirrors. Most cars with seat memory also reposition the mirrors.

We are buying a red Touring. What color did you choose?

 

You can't buy a stripped clarity phev (or fuel cell or bev). That price is for the touring, which has all, or at least most, of the options they can put on it. 2018 Honda Clarity Plug-in Hybrid Starts at $34,290 - Motor Trend

Then you need to cry for those poor Ultrasuede that honda is killing to make the touring model ;-)

Honda, GM, BMW, Hyundai, Ford, and Toyota all have some pretty heavy baggage when it comes to some practices. If a clarity phev is just $3000 more after tax credit than comparably equipped prime, and toyota doesn't want to have enough primes for people to even test drive in this vast non-CARB wasteland I can see this doing fairly well for a year or two until tesla starts making enough model 3s ;-) Of course the tax credit could get revoked in conference, but my guess is they will go with the senate on this one, and keep it in at least for next year. 300K tax credits more (hey not a bad place to cap it) only amount to $2.25B which does not change the deficit (dynamic scoring of deficit may actually increase if they killed it on jan 1, as imports would increase). Still I think it is close to time that these subsidies end. FHOP the issue.

 

As opposed to.........Pleath....er(*) I mean Softex?

 

From what I can tell the senate has already removed the EV tax credit from their bill. There is some question if it was added back in. The house did remove it.

Reading this page it suggests that Plug-ins could be removed but full electric might go forward. At any rate the house republicans feel strongly about it and they don't want to influence the market by providing the tax credits. The $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit is still in danger as Senate passes tax reform [Updated] | Electrek

Everything I've read over the past two weeks suggests the tax credit isn't being talked about much. It's more of an afterthought. Since this is a tax credit that has to be renewed each year, and it has an automatic phase-out based on volume of cars per manufacturer, it seems to be easy to kill. Lots of other tax credits are going down with these bills too.

 

What you read is correct, but you read it wrong. The senate did not change the credit (they removed the item killing the credit). The house bill has a provision to kill the credit. This is a reconcilliation bill about how to change the existing taxes, anything they don't touch like the carried interest loophole - stays in the tax code. My guess is a compromise would be to phase out the ev tax credit - currently only tesla, gm, and nissan are close to the phase out levels, and a compromise would be to pick a time where the credit expires - say january 2020, instead of the houses january 2018. we should know soon. They can do all sorts of devious things in committee - that discussion belongs in fhop.

 

Well I wasn't ready to gamble so we bought the Clarity. If the tax credit continues that's okay. If it's killed we still won. It's good to have this discussion so others can consider their options.

 

Still waiting for the Clarity to be delivered to the Honda dealer. They now say between 9am and 9:30am tomorrow (Tuesday). Can't wait.

 

Our new car just off the truck. Two hours of prep and we can go to take possession.

 

Like the color.
Don't like the top of the wheel well. I see where the designer was going with it, but if you are going to cover the wheel, then cover it. Someone needs to offer a full skirt for it.

 

We picked up the Honda Clarity PHEV about 5pm this evening. Taking it for a test drive the most noticeable feature was how quiet it is. Everyone remarked about the quiet, even the salesman who owns a 2017 Accord. It is the quietest car I've ever driven. Add to that the smooth ride and electric drive and it is a truly quiet car.

When the ICE is running it can be heard. It has a quiet raspy sound. The battery wasn't charged so we didn't get much time in EV mode yet.

I can feel the extra 1,000 pounds weight of the car vs the 2015 Prius. Still it has more power so it smoothly gets up and goes after an initial delay. It will have much more highway passing power when needed.

The Crimson metal flake color is beautiful. The interior is elegant. The seats are very comfortable and soft to the touch. The headrest isn't too far forward and it is also soft.

Gratefully the trunk is larger than my wife and I expected. That was a big factor in our search for a PHEV. It will have to do. The front passenger seat doesn't fold forward at all (electric seat in the Touring model).

I was disappointed to find out there is no rear window wiper. This was something I dinged on the Prime list of issues, and I didn't even bother to look into it on the Clarity. We will miss it because we do use it on the other cars.

The sun visors slide to cover the rear part of the side windows. Duh! Every car should have this feature. Too many don't.

The audio system sounds very good. Certainly much better than the Prius. Not as good as the JBL system with sub-woofer in our 2005 4Runner.

Transitioning from EV to ICE and back is un-noticeable. Breaking and transitioning from regen to physical brakes is un-noticeable. The left steering wheel paddle grabs more regen and slows the car in four levels. The highest level is pretty aggressive. It does not bring the car to a stop.

I spent my working career in high tech electronics. I spent a decade writing user interface software. I've built my own desktop PCs, and I'm generally the go-to guy for friends and relatives with technical questions. Still I walk away from the Clarity late this evening feeling a bit overwhelmed with all of the features, screens, controls, and connections this car is capable of; many features overlap each other.

The car is in the garage on the provided Level 1 charger. It takes 12 hours for a full charge.

I did try out the Charge mode which brought the battery up from 1 to 3 bars in a very short freeway 60mph drive.

In the garage charging for the first time.


If you have any questions I'll be glad to check out things and post them for you.

 

What is with these headrests that jut forward past the seat back by an extreme? We test drove a Sportage, and it didn't even take a minute before my was aching.

Other PHEV sedans were lucky to have 10 cubic feet of space in the trunk. The Clarity's is slightly bigger than the new Camry's.
Forward folding seats are rare this days, even in hatchbacks. When they do show up, it is in more plebeian, low cost models.

I can't think of any sedan having a rear wiper, even though they can have a rear window as raked as a hatch's.

Congratulations on the car. The Clarity PHEV would be my first choice if we could only have one car.