Please post your low temp experiences from the Polar Vortex here

Yesterday it took almost 6 hours to fully charge at work (on L2 30A). I preheated the car for about 20 minutes before departing, and the car stayed in EV mode the whole way home! Temperature was about 4 degrees. This is an American Clarity with all updates applied.

Parked in the driveway, and a couple hours later, went out for dinner. No preheat this time. Engine kicked on immediately. This further confirms my suspicion that the engine is running to generate cabin heat, not necessarily because it needs the power for driving.

 

Drove the car this morning. Outside ambient temperature was -4 F. Started the car in my garage, which was chilly but above freezing. Two seat warmers on and temp set to 58 degrees. Got to the destination, dropped passenger off, turned off heating (full sun and seat warmer on). Drove home. Total trip: 16.5 miles. All EV Econ mode, in town driving, ICE never came on. Starting charge 82% (on Honda App), charge remaining after return 50%. I think the key here is that the battery was already warmish when I started and probably stayed warm as it dispensed power. I remain impressed.

 

Drove this morning, temp close to 0F. I noticed that my driver side window is operating a lot more slower than the passenger side. It might be a bad motor or might be the temp idk. I'll try again next week when it hits the 50's.

 

I use a Blue Driver scan tool in the OBDII port with their software. It logs and I can send the .csv file to my email.

 

From experiences posted here so far, I'm impressed. Although no one apparently ran their Clarity below the 22F temp threshold in the upper midwest record-breaking cold the last 2 days, it looks like there were extremely few glitches. Most of the reports are analogous to what one might see in ICE-run vehicles at Arctic temps. I realize that members here are a non-representative sample of Clarity owners, but certainly anyone of us with severe issues would have posted up. I'm not going to attempt to summarize details in this thread, but overall, I think it's reasonable to say the Clarity works fine in extreme cold. Of course the ICE runs more and the battery doesn't have as much poop (technical term). But *&^$ it was cold!

 

US Clarity
Garage Temp 15 degrees F. Outside Temp -15 degrees. Precondition on 240v for about 10 minutes. Auto Climate Control set to 62 degrees F with driver seat warmer set to one. EV GOM 28.8 miles HV GOM 174 miles. Vehicle in EV mode. Commute to work about 25 miles.
- Car started in EV for just about 1/2 mile until outside temp drop took effect and engine fired up.
- At about mile 14 car engine off and car ran EV
- Engine on briefly (about a min) at mile 20 then back to EV
- Commute was 24.4 miles EV GOM 7.0 HV GOM 167
Commute home about 8 hours later outside temp -2 degrees. Vehicle in EV mode
- Engine came on at start and continued on / off for the entire commute home. Initial power flow was mostly engine providing power with a little from the battery, the kind of like normal HV mode.
- Commute was 24.9 miles EV GOM 0.7 HV GOM 141.

So it seem like when the car starts out colder (commute home) it uses the engine more than when it was at the warmer garage temp. Really happy with the cold performance, because other that my great interest on how it would handle, I really could drove oblivious to the details and notices nothing unusual other than the engine runs more frequently when it's cold out. Really satisfied.

 

This morning I started the day in the detached garage at -5F. 30 minutes of preconditioning on 240v, plus a little extra time of charging. Temperatures fell to as low as -23F on the drive into town. The vehicle switched to EV mode twice for less than 30 seconds at a time until the last mile when I reduced fan speed on the climate control. Regen was very limited, and I found myself using the brakes much more.

Spending some of the battery to preheat before hopping back in later in the day has allowed for electric driving as the temperatures climbed back towards zero. And charging takes forever at 1.3 Kw...

 

2018 clarity touring Canadian car 15,000 km on it. Drove to work in the morning with a full battery and 3/4 tank gas. After work it’s that I had a range of 28 km with half a battery. As I started to drive away I got a warning on the dash telling me about power failure and to pull over and seek assistance as I have no engine power. At that time it was -20 Celsius. The EV part of the car seem to work but the gas part was in fault mode.
Called Canadian Honda roadside assistance and was immediately put on hold for about 20 minutes and then she was of no use saying that they couldn’t assist me till the next day. I decided to drive 25 km to home with the heat off and seat warmers off.I made it to the outskirts of my town and promptly put the car into the parking lot called my wife and she came and picked me up. All the while the engine would try and start but would turn itself off. When I parked the car I had zero range electric. I called roadside assistance again but after 20 minutes on hold I gave up. I called my local dealer as they were open till nine pm and they told me to call Assistance in the morning. I went over to the parking lot this morning and the car started and the engine started and the fault codes or the fault displays on the dash were completely gone. I put it in a hibrid charge and let it run for about 10 minutes and then when I went back out I had 5 km of range.I was able to drive it normally over to the Honda dealership. They’re looking at it now .

Any thoughts would be appreciated

 

I'm in Markham, ON (Canada) where temps have been in range of -15C to -23C recently. My Clarity runs fine but at these low temperatures the gas engine seems to be doing most of the work. When I was out yesterday the gas engine ran for most of my 20 minute trip.

 

Anecdote: used our old ('01) CRV to park in transit lot overnight Monday & Tuesday until Wed evening since 4" of snow came in on Tues and then temp plunged on Wed. Figured the CRV would do better for the 16mi windy country road home. Got to car Wed evening and couldn't get into it! It was close to zero degrees already and the doors/locks were all frozen. Lock de-icer didn't work. My spouse drove the Clarity (it had been in unheated, unattached garage during this time so still below 10 degrees F) the 16 miles to get me on full charge, EV econ, reporting a slight fishtailing only once (windblown snow coated many of the back roads in zero degrees F). Drove about 40mph or less on the windy, hilly back roads in both directions. I don't believe the ICE came on until I put it in HV for the last few miles (charge down to 1.5mi when I needed at least 4 mi of charge to get up the steep mile-long hill just before the house). Normally we can do that roundtrip on a full charge without the ICE, and with 2+ mi of range to spare, depending on climate. Charged Clarity overnight on Wed outdoors in -5F, no issues...didn't seem to take longer than normal (level 1). Used the car this morning all electric to go about 5mi RT in 7 degree F weather, no issue. Will use it again this evening to go about 10mi RT and will see what the charge is down to. Yes, we've been using heat in this weather (not pre-conditioning).

 

My thought? How bizarre. Obviously the ICE was unable to start, and then the problem resolved overnight in a cold parking lot. Not what I would have expected.

Please share what your dealership tells you. I hope they find something. I bet they won't.

 

Here's one thought.......this episode is a HUGE black mark on Honda Roadside Assistance. Stranded in -20C and they couldn't offer any help until the next day? That is awful, to put it mildly. And the dealer? Why were they so helpless, literally? What an incompetent and uncaring attitude on the part of Honda. Rant over, but it's still festering.........

 

My gas engine was on almost all the time in the extreme cold (it would come on as soon as I hit the "START" button), but then, as I mentioned in another thread, at the recommendation of @MNSteve , I stopped putting my climate on AUTO and just turned the fan down low (keeping the temp at 69F) and now the gas engine stays off as long as I have battery power. Try turning down the fan to a much lower setting and see if you can avoid turning on the gas engine.

 

Charging the car has become painfully slow.

Under normal conditions, my car fully charges in about 2.5 hours on my Siemens 32A Level 2 charger at home. I normally set the car to start charging at about 2 AM.

Last couple of days, I've been surprised to find the charge at about 78-85% when I get in at about 7:30 or 7:40 am. It took me a while to realize that it is now taking 6+ hours to fully charge.

 

Temps on Wed were a low of -5 F. Engine ran more and at higher rpm and regen braking was greatly reduced. Everything back to normal today. High temp was in the 50's.

 

This is why people should not rely on such marketing ploys during weather events. AAA no different. It’s not like Honda or any other mfr or AAA own their own trucks (OK AAA has a few in big metro areas...but not many other places). There are only so many tow trucks to go around. And during events like snowstorms and extreme cold snaps the tow operators are overwhelmed, but making a killer profit, thus they prioritize as follows: 1. Police impound calls from non-drivable accidents (because they can set their own rates...cars are held hostage in their storage lots so they can charge the owner or insurance company high tow rate and daily storage fees later. $50+/day is not uncommon...super easy money...during my insurance career it was very common for me to pay $500+ to a tow company to retrieve a customers car and move it to a repair shop only 2 days after it was towed out a ditch). Priority #2. Private tows....again they are setting their own rates for people willing to pay cash or credit card on the spot. Then, priority #3. Eventually they will get around to their low negotiated rate contract tows like AAA, Honda and other mfrs roadside programs, insurance company contract tows, etc... maybe tomorrow.

This is how capitalism works.

Anyone’s best insurance during weather events is to carry a lot of cash and offer to pay it. You’ll be bumped higher on the list and less likely to wait an unreasonable amount of time.

During non weather events the services work well. But during weather events it’s a serious roll of the dice. NEVER truly count on them. Have a backup plan and save yourself.

 

If this situation had been the reverse-- electric side giving you grief, gas side working fine, I would of suggested removing the negative terminal on the battery, then re-attach to "reboot" the car. i.e. this may address some 'electronics' issues should they arise.

gas side going off-line falls into the crap, gotta get some help here-- which you tried to do.

Anyway, very sorry to hear it. And please do report back if the dealer finds out what the deal was.

-Dan

 

I wasn't able to drive Clarity in the super cold, but driving today after it was parked in cold garage charging was slowed dramatically. My wife had to suffer L1 charging rate of 1.4 kW for some time before the battery warmed enough to charge higher rate. This meant my wife was driving gas much of today instead of EV.

To show the difference, about the same amount of time, 5x as fast on normal L2.

 

I will take full credit for that. I finally decided to spring for a level-2 charger, only to find that the temperature is so cold that it charges at the same rate as my level-1 charger.

This too will pass. I wonder how long it will be, now that the temperatures are only normal for Winter rather than absurd, that the battery will actually warm up enough to start taking a charge at the normal rate.

And the good news is . . . the reason I bought the L2 charger was to be able to take advantage of preconditioning that works, and the cold temps have made that feature even more attractive. There really is a world of difference between L1 and L2 preconditioning.

 

I remember someone posted a maintenance mode to force gas engine start (for normal conditions). It was complicated enough I wouldn't remember but it would be interesting to know if helpful in an emergency. i.e. print out the procedure and throw in the glove box.