Only when the car ran out of battery. HV comes on automatically then. Round trip to Santa Barbara 170 miles. Back from LAX about 30 miles.
Today, the battery showed 0 miles (EV) so ICE came on. When I got home, I checked the car status with the app. It shows 0 miles in EV, but 9% in the battery pane. Inside the car, there were 2 bars left. And, the car switched back and forth from HV to EV without me select HV mode. That is a good thing.
Anybody heard this one? This from another forum. "Like you, I drove 98% EV for 4+ months. About once per week, in the morning the ICE will come on for a short bit. I found out per Honda that's a legal thing to make sure the ICE qualifies for low emissions. I now drive in the HV when I hit the freeways and that goes away."
I already go to HV about once a week on the freeway to keep the ICE properly lubricated and prevent stale gasoline from accumulating in the gas tank. For that reason, I really appreciate that Honda put in a small gas tank. The ultra-low viscosity oil used in the Clarity will drain off parts faster than the old days of higher viscosity motor oils.
It says in the user manual that sometimes even when you are driving ECO and the battery is full, the computer will turn on ICE engine either to ensure ongoing performance of ICE engine or to run a diagnostic. So it happens to me once and in a while, I would say maybe twice a month or so. I let it go and usually after less than 5 min it turns back into full EV. I understand we all buy this car to drive electric as much as possible, but let’s keep in mind it is indeed a PHEV not a EV car. The key advantage is it has an ICE engine to remove the range anxiety, but it means it still has a ICE engine! So I don’t take it so ‘personal’ if ICE kicks-inn once in a while. I still end up driving 90% of my day to day in EV and overall 70% in EV including my trips, so that is a huge improvement to a traditional car or even a hybrid. Sent from my iPad using Inside EVs