Does the screen bother you at all?

I don't know what Honda could have done about it but yes the LCD screen in the center of the dash both has a lot of glare and shows fingerprints.

 

I think it would have looked and worked better if it were recessed into a nice shallow cowling in the dash. It seems to me Honda tried too hard to make it look like a tablet to appeal to the digital natives.

 

Maybe they can make the screen tilt-able so that users can adjust it to their preferences. I also hate the fingerprints persisting on these screens. Many other touch screens do not have this issue.

 

Those fingerprints drive me crazy. Never had that problem with the Volt. I've got a microfiber towel in the car that I use surprisingly often to clean the screen.

 

Both my 2006 Prius and my 2012 Prius Plugin had the same problem. When i took an afternoon test drive in the 2018 Prius hybrid with the 11" screen, it was the same. The Clarity seems to suffer from glare somewhat less. I think it maybe more upright than the Priuses.

 

Agreed.

 

If they wanted to appeal to the digital natives, they should have done something about the way the whole user interface was designed. Haha.

 

The problem going into direct sunlight can be fixed by pressing the "day/night" button at the left bottom of the screen. When you do you get a very bright easy to see screen. I do it every time I exit the Garage or back up at night.

 

Thanks for the tip. Will try this for sure.

I think we've gotten a bit "spoiled" over the past several years, with phone screens auto-dimming/brightening. We forget that there are sensors built into the phones that do this by detecting how bright/dark it is in the surrounding space.

Tree-based menus were very popular before, not just in Japan. I think you are partly right that Japanese software doesn't tend to keep up with the times, so to speak. But then, I remember visiting Japan about 5-6 years ago, and noticing that even the younger folks were using flip phones. So, hardware wise, they may not have cutting edge tech either.

As much as I love my Clarity PHEV, I have to admit that their hardware isn't really cutting edge either. I like my car because that it does most things decently (decent range, great roominess), but not outstanding in any particular way.

 

Of course I think Clarity is the best overall package for the same reasons as you!

What I mean is that no single EV or tech related feature stands out as better than anything else. The EV range is not as good as a Volt. In fact, the Clarity BEV has dismal EV range, which implies to me that their EV powertrain(?) engineering is not the best either. This also implies that fuel efficiency also isn't as optimized as it could be. I would guess if the Volt were sized exactly as the Clarity and could use the extra space to house a bigger battery, its range would be even greater. Just speculation of course and happy to be pointed out as wrong. (Now that I think about it, my only real wishes for the Clarity is even greater EV range.. and some better tech features, like better mobile app, better info and controllability in the dashboard etc.)

 

We have officially gotten off-topic from the thread, but here is the math that I worked out.

Volt: 53mile range / 18.4kWh = 2.8804 miles per kWh
Clarity: 47mile range / 17.0kWh = 2.7647 miles per kWh

So, it seems like the Volt is slightly more efficient. But this is a moot point anyways, as I would never buy a Volt at this point in time.

 

EV range difference between Clarity and Volt is trivial. going for even more EV doesn't seem worth it, you would need a bigger battery which means carrying around extra weight 90% of the time for no reason, and also would need a bigger ICE!

 

Keep in mind, the useful part of the battery for the Clarity is closer to 13kWh. Not sure what the number is for the volt. But it will definitely affect your calculation.