Charger Not clicking in

Yes, I’ve been following along. What I was attempting to determine is whether or not either device, or related apps, were capable of providing any useful information.

 

Thanks for the tip - I'm under 100,000 km so should be OK - that's a relief! My bank account thanks you

 

Those are US Warranties. Not sure what applies in Canada. Assuming the km reference puts you north of the border.

 

Yes, I'm in the Toronto area and the Canadian standard warranty is as follows:


Hybrid System Warranty
Eight years or 160,000 Km, whichever occurs first.

Your Hybrid System Warranty guarantees that under normal use, the following components; Motor Stator, Motor Rotor, DC-DC Converter, Motor Control Module, Battery Assembly, Motor Power Inverter Module, Battery Condition Monitor Module and Voltage Converter Module will continue to be free from defects in material and workmanship.

If any defects should be found and reported to an Honda dealer within this period, necessary repairs or replacements with new or remanufactured Honda parts or Honda-approved equivalents will be made at no cost to you, for parts and labour immediately upon Honda’s acknowledgement that such defects are attributable to faulty material or workmanship, at the time of manufacture.

This doesn't seem to explicitly mention the on board charger, unless it's named some other way???

 

If an EVSE couldn't get a charge into the battery and HV Charge also couldn't get a charge into the battery, then the problem would have to involve circuits very close to the battery in the charging path (unless I'm wrong to assume there's only one set of wires that connect to the battery for charging). However, my stab in the dark missed because @Fidzio says HV Charge works. If the charging port isn't damaged, the onboard charger may be the butler in this mystery.

 

Batteries can accept a charge from multiple sources. Depending on the configuration, those multiple sources may charge in combination with each other or separately. A simple example would be an alternator charging a battery while there is also a portable charger plugged in, connected to, and charging the battery.

HV Charge begins at the ICE driven generator. The charging voltage and current go through an inverter and the VCU before arriving at the battery. Regenerative charging goes from the electric motor, through a separate inverter before going to the same VCU and then on to the battery. L1 and L2 charging begins when a source of AC power is connected to the charge port which enables the onboard charger to send a charging voltage and current to the battery.

We have 3 charging sources on the Clarity. Two of which share some circuitry and a third which is completely separate. Now it is possible that the charging outputs of the VCU and the onboard charger terminate at a common point and from that point there is “one set of wires that connect to the battery for charging”. If that is the case, then that last set of wires, closest to the battery, could pinpoint the fault where both the onboard charger and HV Charge fail to charge the battery.

We also know that HV Charge (and regenerative braking) will only function when the power system is On and the onboard charger will only function when the power system is in Accessory or Off. So there are isolation devices in place which could malfunction and, if left undiagnosed, could mislead one to believe that the problem lies elsewhere.

As you noted, with HV Charge functioning properly, the issue is likely with the separate onboard charging system.

 

So the final update:

Summary: Fixed under warranty (car bought in 2018 and has 94k km) - now works. Phew!

Discussion: I dropped the car at the dealer on a Friday morning as I was away for the weekend and their first available appointment was Monday. I left them a paper description of the non charging issue as per my post here on 6th July.
The dealer called on Friday afternoon and said: "It's fixed - it was a software issue and the software update has been done". I asked them if they had checked that it was indeed charging, but they said that they didn't have a charging cable. I asked them to use the 110v cable that is in the trunk, and of course when they tried it, the green light came on but it didn't charge, so they said that they'd look into it more on Monday.
The following week, they identified that the battery charger was probably faulty and that it was covered by the Honda basic warranty, but they needed some special tools and gloves to work on the car and these would have to come from Montreal as they didn't have a set at my dealer. (Looks like Clarity repairs are not a normal occurrence). Nothing more was done that week, and the following week, they gave me a rental car as my Clarity had been in the shop for over a week and they had no clear date for returning it to me. They showed me that the repair cost would have been around CAN $5300 but that it was covered under warranty and they also waived the $160 initial diagnostic charge as they had had the car for over two weeks. They also had to return the failed charger unit to Honda Canada before they were authorised to replace it with a new unit.
All in all, the dealership did a good job, even though it took over two weeks, although communication could have been improved, as I had to call them to get status updates. After they had replaced the charger (which took approx 3.4hrs of shop time) they asked me to check that the car was charging using the Honda app, which I did and it was. As the cost of the charger was so high (close to $5000) and I had found some used ones on eBay for around $500, I asked them if they would be prepared to replace the failed unit with one that I provided and just charge me the labour. They said that this would be no problem - they do this for people who bring their own oil and filter, tires etc so that could be a solution if the charger fails outside of the warranty period. I don't think that this repair is anything I'd consider as a home repair as apparently it involves removing the main battery pack with the car on a hoist. Too dangerous and complicated for DIY.

Conclusion: Likely to be selling the car before the hybrid warranty expires at 8 years and 160k km.

Thanks to all of you who made comments and suggestions! I appreciated the "clarity of the insights".

 

A minor correction: the cost of the new battery charger as shown in the attached file was $5301 and that did not include the labour charges (of 3.4 hours) to install it.

 

A couple of things to consider are:
What is the likelihood of another charger failure?
If you sell the Clarity will the replacement vehicle also have a charger?

In the US, there is an Emissions Warranty that applies in 13 States, that covers the charger, as well as many other components, for 15 years or 150,000 miles. Is there any such warranty in Canada?

 

I don't think that there is a similar warranty in Canada.



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Following the charger replacement I have an interesting observation:

Before the charger failed, the guessometer range was indicating around 55km on a good day, and I attributed that to the fact that the propulsion battery was degrading from the original 70+km that was indicated when it was new. I do have the Autel battery monitor ( thank you Mr Fixit) but I never got around to checking the battery capacity before the charger failed. Following the charger replacement the guessometer now reads 70km or in the high 60s. I don’t know how the charger knows that the battery is fully charged but maybe the charging 100% set point is also set by the charger and maybe the old charger set point electronics was failing and finally failed so that it always said that the battery was fully charged and so stopped charging the battery. Lots of assumptions but I guess I should now monitor the battery state of charge with the Autel monitor to see if the battery has really degraded or not. Food for thought?


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In all likelihood, the 12V battery was disconnected while the vehicle was in the shop. The EV range estimate has been “reset” if you will, and will resume its normal behavior after you’ve made a few trips.

It is doubtful that any of the charging parameters have changed. The charger gets its marching orders from the Battery Management System (BMS). Additionally, your description of the problem was that it wasn’t charging at all. That would suggest that it wasn’t being charged improperly.

 

Yes - I am nearly certain that with a major repair (like the charger) that your battery capacity reading has been 'reset'. We do not fully understand why / what causes these mysterious resets, but certainly replacing the charger would be a likely cause (not to mention the fact that they undoubtedly had the 12V battery disconnected for an extended period).

Your capacity reading will return back to it's normal value, but this can take quite a long time (could be months), and the time depends greatly on your driving habits such as whether you mostly operate in EV or HV mode. You can see a discussion of these Battery Capacity Resets at the bottom of this page:
https://github.com/clarity-phev/Battery-Capacity-Read