Featured Honda Clarity Plug-in

interesting ... accounting for 120v to DC losses, a 12hr charge time would mean ~12kWh useable battery (1kWh per hr) - between top & bottom buffers - presuming traction pack has reached near bottom, & running in charge sustain mode. 12kWh into epa's 47 ev miles would mean Clarity gets ~ 3.9 miles per kWh ... that's not too shabby.
That would necessarily mean the clarity has a really decent drag coefficiency .... better than the Prime undoubtedly .... as Toyota, decided to take a hit there, so that they could incorporate that funky styling. Yea, that's a head-scratcher imo. One would think if you wanted to negatively affect weight & drag, one woyld opt for a 5th seat. That's another Clarity plus. Regarding drag, for the life of me, I keep searching & searching for that CD # & honda, for what ever reason have been slow to release it. Anyone else seen that # published?
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Picked up a quick 200 miles at the local Honda dealer just now, & lo and behold. What should I spy right next to me. Yep. 4 plug in hybrids all around, all different colors. Black red ... and I forget the other 2. I think one was silver. The overhead fluorescent lights do not do justice for the red color.

Saw one couple taking a test drive in the pure ev. Said they have a ridiculously killer deal on a lease right now. Not too shabby, if you can get by on what, 110 mile range?
Sure lovein' how many choices there are out there nowadays. NOT lovin' how honkin' that Mongo 'H' is - on the grillwork tho.

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i thought it was 45, or 300+ with gas. oh dang, you changed horses mid stream, never mind.

 

No no - just saying their straight all electric non hydrogen Clarity is only 110 mile range. That's what's a couple said was getting a killer lease deal from Honda. Not sure, but those might be Lease Only, too .
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if you have another long range car for trips, 110 isn't an issue. i'd be happy with 50, but i may be in a very small minority.

 

clarity fuel cell and clarity bev are both low volume compliance cars that are lease only and restricted to California for the fuel cell, and California and Oregon for the bev.
2017 Honda Clarity BEV long-range not in the equation | Torque News

The clarity phev will be sold in all 50 states. Honda is expecting a run of 75,000 of the phevs over the years around the world. That volume will help pay for the science experiment fuel cell, which honda is now splitting with gm.

IMHO the clarity phev checks all the right boxes for a mid sized eco car. It should give honda experience to make the next one better.

 

I realize you're talking about the Clarity Electric. We do have a Toyota 4Runner but it only gets 13-20mpg. So for us the short EV range is fine when coupled with the ICE for long trips.

I'm in that minority. My wife drove the Clarity to my son's school, and the grocery store, a total of about 26 miles, home by 9am. Then we plugged it in level 1 because we don't have level 2 capability at home yet. Went out about noon for a 14 mile round trip, then I took another 12 mile trip later. A total of 52 miles with a bit of recharging at home and not a drop of gas was used.

We've had two Prius cars dating back to 2008 so we've been taught how to drive for fuel economy. When we took the 14 mile trip today we left home with 27 miles of EV capacity and returned with 17. So only used 10 EV miles to go 14 road miles. That is likely due to our light foot on the accelerator + regen. I was using the paddles to force a bit more regen but frankly I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I think just applying the brake pedal lightly does a better regen. This was city driving all less than 40mph. The Econ meter shows we are getting 110 mpge or so. I still have to wrap my mind around MPGe.

Once we install the Level 2 charge station (already ordered) in a few weeks we should be good to go with no gas used for pretty much all trips around town. We should have no problem with 50 to 75 mile days of short trips with charging in between. We should have solar installed in the next 3 to 4 weeks which will cut our electric grid use considerably. The solar was purchased to power the house; the car is a bonus.

For me a PHEV is the sweet spot. We can drive around town for weeks using no gas. Then take to the road for 250 to 1,200 mile round trips too.

 

First, congrats on the new car. And you will fully enjoy the speed of L2 charging. I've used my L1 cable just once and it was like time stopped for 6+ hours. The L2, in my Prime's case, reduces that to 1h:55m. Still a while, but I can go back out for more errands after making coffee, eating lunch and reading (tossing) the mail. The L1 is merely a backup. I had the 40A 240v and a second 20A 120v lines installed and all set up with the EVSE installed 3 weeks before the car arrived at the dealer.

 

The Clarity EV range is only 89 miles. It seems Honda only heard Fit EV drivers saying they'd like a larger car, but not that they'd like more range. Thus it becomes lease only with great deals, like the Fit EV was.

If 89 miles works for daily use, and you have another car for trips, then great. We use the wife's Camry for trips already, so I would prefer to replace the Sonic with a BEV instead of a PHEV. The issue with that range in the Clarity PHEV is that it is such a large car. Instead of paying for more range, you are now paying for more car, and that range limits the usefulness of a larger car more.

The extra space is nice, but unless your daily use involves dropping off the wife and three kids, a current Leaf will do the same job. In essence and use, the Clarity is a luxury version of the gen1 Leaf and Fit EV.

The range the car is displaying is the same as a distance to empty display for the fuel tank. It's a prediction based upon past fuel use.

In use, regan paddles are the same as paddle shifters for a transmission. On a traditional car, downshifting allows slowing down without using brakes, which can be important on declines. For the regen, the paddles mean not triggering friction brakes, though that may not be an issue depending on the car's braking behavior by peddle. Some will like it. Some won't. Nicer for the car to have it as an option than not at all. I wish the Sonic had paddles instead of raching for the shifter for manual shifting.

 

It would have been nice to have our 240V plug when the car arrived. The company installing the solar agreed to install the 240V outlet as part of the solar roof job. The solar roof is being held up by both city planning, and by the roofer who will first replace the roof. We may go the full month of December on Level 1.

Level 1 is working for us but requires some planning. My wife drove 25 miles this morning using up 22 miles of EV range. After being plugged in for about 2 hours she took a 14 mile trip. Then without charging I took a 9 mile trip. A total of 68 miles with a bit of level 1 charging thrown in. I think we're going to squeeze way more than the EPA 47 mile estimate out of this car. Still not a drop of gas used.

 

The Clarity screen in front of the driver has a gauge showing how much EV power is being used. On the same scale is an indication of when the ICE would kick in should we use more power. As the traction battery power decreases the chance of the ICE coming on increase. That gauge can be very handy for us to prevent ICE use in most cases.

In this photo the car was charging from the grid. but the blue outer ring is where these indicators are shown. Do other PHEV cars have a similar indicator?

 

well well, isn't that interesting. I definitely heard the prospective customers telling me the over 110 mile range number - which they'd just gotten from the sales critter. Was it ignorance that allowed the sales critter to give the wrong range number to the customer? Was it fraudulent? Apparently he was quoting the EPA efficiency number rather than the range - but if it were me, & I relied on the higher number, I'd be looking to unwind that lease contract.
On an equally disturbing stealership note, we put our email on the list to see how soon the local Honda reseller would have the plugin. All we got, once they had our email, were tons & tons of spam for every other car that they sold. By coincidence I found 4 plugins on their lot when I stopped by for a charge session, but never got an email for vehicle I wanted to actually see & read up on. Yea, really loving the dealerships.
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Honda made some interesting decisions with the Clarity PHEV. It's like they had a long list of things that could be features of this car, checked the INCLUDE box for some and didn't check it for others.

I have the Touring so the list could be different for the other model.

Included:
- Regen paddles
- Power seats
- 4 automatic windows
- memory seats
- much much more

Not included:
- Adjustable lumbar
- Side mirrors that adjust with the memory seats
- Rain sensing wipers
- USB power for the back seat (but there is a 12V outlet)

They also designed in this odd shift console. It looks like a patch or add on. It is an inefficient use of the space. They also included the bulges or wings along both sides of the shift buttons. Those bulges have no purpose. They could have had small storage bins with lids. but they are just wasted space. The Odyssey has a much more efficient shift button design.

This is the Clarity console. Ignore the little garage door opener.

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This is the Odyssey design.

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One other thing they left out was the Odyssey and 2018 Accord have the same 8" screen but there is a volume knob as well.

Don't get me wrong. The car is great. We haven't used a drop of gas in the first 4 days.

 

Our local Honda has the ev for $129 monthly lease. Is that pretty much standard - if you saw or if you noticed - ?
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Some of those not includeds sound like they were left off to keep costs under some target. I know the replacement windshield for rain sensing systems can be quite pricey. But the mirrors not being memory with the seats is just odd. It almost had me asking if they were power.

In addition to wasted space, the middle console, and steering wheel buttons, seem a little out of place with the rest of the interior design.

 

Makes me wonder if you could finagle a special deal. Maybe ask to see if you could get mirrors that were programmable/assigned to different drivers, & rain sensing wipers.
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terrible console, what a waste of real estate. reminds me of the flying bridge. no homelink?