3rd Day Owning my Clarity Touring....

Not everyone may realize that you are referring to pushing your airplane yourself unpowered. Believe it or not some people have never been to a general aviation airport.

Then again most people have pushed a car or two in their day

 

But maybe not far enough to observe the effect of a tiny grade. <Mental image of people push a car to the top of a hill and not realizing they will soon be chasing it>

 

The power meter on the drivers instrument display in EV mode is blue and continues around the dial to approx. the 2 o'clock position where it turns to the gray HV zone and the engine kicks on.

Sport mode makes the accelerator pedal more sensitive. So for example (figures made up for illustration only and "Normal" means neither ECO or SPORT buttons activated):

Pushing pedal halfway in "Normal" gives you 50% power/acceleration.
Pushing pedal halfway in ECO gives you 25% power/acceleration.
Pushing pedal halfway in SPORT gives you 75% power/acceleration.
Pushing pedal to the floor in any mode always gives you 100% power and both ev motor and gas engine always run.

So you can see that Sport makes the car feel more lively while ECO makes it more sluggish (good for economy).

On a level road in Normal while maintaining a set speed push SPORT and you should feel the car should surge.

Nope. The only workaround is to pull over, come to a complete stop, and turn car off/on. It's best to let the ICE warm up and burn off any moisture in the oil and exhaust system.

It didn't take long for my "butt-dyno" to adjust to the more sensitive nature of the Sport pedal plus glancing at the driver's power gauge to keep from activating the ICE (the dreaded gray zone).

YMMV

 

Using the battery only, the Clarity offers 121 hp of oomph. Activating the ICE, even in ECON Mode, potentially brings 60 extra horses onto the team. The combination of the ICE's 60 hp and SPORT Mode can provide noticeably quicker acceleration, but remember, SPORT Mode leads to smoking and drinking (which I often claim despite a complete lack of scientific evidence).

 

Let's just say it hasn't been proven yet

I wonder what effect a cold engine has on horsepower. Presumably when cold the system limits the amount of power drawn from ICE for at least the first several seconds. So if for example you pulled onto a highway with a cold engine and floored it, your acceleration at at first would not be much more than EV alone I would think. Whereas if ICE had already warmed up when you got onto the highway you would have a lot more power. I suppose if you knew in advance that you might have a hard acceleration coming up, like on a daily commute route, you could activate HV a mile or two ahead. But usually you don't know and the need for power is usually instantaneous. I suspect a cold engine doesn't actually help that much but at least it makes a lot of noise and that at least makes you feel like you are going really fast. Then again even with just EV acceleration is very good, so the placebo effect of the noisy engine actually can be pretty convincing.

 

That 0W-20 weight oil is pretty thin. Wouldn't that make the cold engine nearly as powerful as a warmed-up engine?

 

I found sport mode useful while driving in a very curvy mountain road. On curves that are obscured by trees etc. You have instant braking in sport mode as soon as you lift your foot off the pedal (when paddle is preset)and this helps for safer and smoother braking. I love the handling and braking of the clarity.