Honda Clarity PHEV: One Car, Multiple Personalities — #CleanTechnica Review

Too bad the car had zero battery charge when he picked it up. Makes for a totally different driving experience.

 

He does make two valid points.
1. “Also, because there is a production constraint in batteries, it is generally better for CO2 emissions to have three 17kWh PHEVs reducing emissions than one 51 kWh BEV.”
2. “As its success in the USA can attest, the car has an unbeatable mix of usable electric range (47 mi / 75 km EPA), big-car space, and grand tourer comfort. It has no direct competition. The sunset-mode Chevy Volt is too cramped, the Prius Prime loses in range and space, and the Ford Fusion Energi … well, it has a 7.6kWh battery vs 17 kWh from the Clarity, and I guess that says all you need to know.”

As @Groves Cooke said, it’s indeed regrettable that he has so little knowledge of PHEVs that he didn’t know that you never let the battery go beyond complete depletion and so couldn’t give the Clarity a fair review. I’ve had it up to here with ignorant reviewers disseminating incorrect information about the Clarity.

 

This was my experience when I picked up my car from the clueless dealer, who was proud that they filled the tank with gasoline but oblivious to charging.

I actually liked this article. The author seems to be reasonably informed and he doesn't pull punches on either the positive or negative side. I also look forward to part 2, in which I suspect he will tell us why the series is named "multiple personalities". I agree with what I expect him to say - the car is a completely different beast with a charged battery. And this is so typical of Honda's dealership support - provide someone who is going to review the car with a dead battery.

 

Part 2 is available now. Actually one of the better reviewsd I have seen about this car. As the author states, there is a learning curve to know how to best drive this car.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/07/honda-clarity-phev-one-car-multiple-personalities-cleantechnica-review-part-2/

 

Much better than part one except he thinks the Clarity has a “CVT gear box instead of a more practical dual-clutch semi-automatic gearbox (DSG) that others, like Volkswagen and Hyundai, use on their plug-in hybrids”.

Will the ignorance about the Clarity never end?!?

 

Reviewers all seem to want to do long distance tests of EV cars. That makes sense for BEV but the Clarity is purchased and used for a different driving scenario. Instead of jumping in the car and driving 300 miles between cities it makes more sense to apply a use case more like the average buyer. 80-90% around town in full EV, and the rest on the road. That way they'll get a truer picture of the value of this fine car.

 

No.

This is a complicated vehicle. Yes, you can jump behind the wheel and drive it like a traditional gasoline-powered car, and it works fine, which I think is one of the biggest successes of the design. But there's a lot more to the vehicle and if you're going to hold yourself out as an expert and write a review for a national publication, there's a lot more to know. Or even if you want to be a reasonably informed owner.

There's a Facebook group for the Clarity and some of the questions there are both amazing and totally predictable. "What does this button that says 'HV' do?"

It does not help that the material in the Owner's Manual is poorly written, poorly organized, and provides few clues to the way that the car "thinks".

 

From part II:

"With the battery at some two-thirds of capacity, I turned on the hybrid mode and a third facet of the Clarity personality appeared: The “range-extended hybrid.”
While the “screaming CVT hybrid” I knew on the first day was the Honda’s “Mr. Hyde” personality and the “EV mode” of Stinson Beach was “Dr. Jekyll,” this third one was somewhere in between, more like “meh/bland mode.” You could hear the engine running, but the fact that it ran in low revs made it easily bearable and suited for the constant high speeds of the highway."

He discovered what we already knew. It is best never to let the battery run out during a drive. By keeping a significant charge, you have access to the full 181 hp and you never get the angry bees. As he described in Part I, with the battery depleted, it's an awful experience and you are power limited, making you less safe. However, I disagree with his assessment that HV mode with battery availability is bland. I put it in Sport mode then (why not? The ICE is on anyway) and it is a zippy car!

One other thing (from Part one):
"Also, because there is a production constraint in batteries, it is generally better for CO2 emissions to have three 17kWh PHEVs reducing emissions than one 51 kWh BEV."

I think most BEV owners live in/near cities so their commutes are not very far. Most of them could be all EV most of the time in a PHEV so PHEVs are probably more environmentally friendly than BEVs.

 

I can't fault the reviewer for failing to pick up on every nuance of Clarity behavior. In fact he did extremely well. Let's face it, this cars behavior, even for us 'experts' with a year or more operating experience, is sometimes baffling. That's the one fault of the Clarity - it's often non-deterministic. Sometimes it's hard to know if we're experiencing a feature or a bug. Honda could fix this with comprehensive documentation but I bet there are a thousand plus use cases dealt with in the drive train control software so good luck with that.

Would I buy it again? In a flash. Would I recommend it to someone uninterested in drilling into the details and just driving it. Nope. Unfortunately getting battery management wrong under some circumstances could be quite dangerous.

 

"only dangerous" for the few that experience power loss-they must have defective cars. I have let the battery deplete on the highway and have never over the past year lost power. In fact putting the car in Sport on the highway with only 2 bars makes it quite enjoyable.

 

Same experience here but I haven't climbed any mountains yet. Pushing a 4000+ pound car up a mountain with 103 HP seems like a potential problem.

The possibility of a defect does concern me and I'm looking forward to something definitive on this. I do wonder if some of these reports are the result of being in HV charge mode which is easy to mistakenly do. The one time I tried HV Charge on a steep hill at lower speed the car barely budged and I had to switch back to EV immediately. The owners manual says not to do what I tried but Honda should do a much better job of controlling when it's possible to choose/be in HV Charge.