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Old 04-04-2018, 12:50 AM   #2 (permalink)
Natalya
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Join Date: Apr 2016
Location: Atlanta
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Red 2000 Insight (2017 through 2019) - '00 Honda Insight 5MT
90 day: 64.72 mpg (US)

Red 2000 Lithium Insight (2020) - '00 Honda Insight LTO
90 day: 71.76 mpg (US)
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This is the centre console just below the touch screen. I obviously left the car in ECON mode the whole time. You can turn off the EV mode by pressing that HV (hybrid vehicle) button any time, which is something that I had no interest in doing.




Anyone who has driven a G1 Honda Insight will recognize this display. It was all the way to the right at 199.9 in this photo because I was in EV mode. The car had a full charge when I got in to take it for the day. Hybrid battery level is on the left, fuel on the right. The car operates as a soft hybrid (like a G1 or G2 Insight for example) when you get down to 2 bars left on the battery gauge. The flower above the D indicates ECON mode just like the G2 Insight.




I liked the first display the most, but it had like 8 total, I took pics of a couple of the others. My dad liked this one the most, showing expected EV and total range.




This display was analogous to the flower display on the G2 Insight, basically it tries to persuade you not to brake hard or accelerate hard. But like, had I not driven a G2 Insight, it would have taken me a while to understand what this display is supposed to mean.



And this one, everyone's seen this inside the G2 and up Prius. (Maybe the G1 Prius had it too?)

Oh by the way, bottom right of the display in each of these pictures a green rectangle has been illuminated, it says Brake Hold inside the rectangle. This is a mode it has which is activated over by the gear selection, where what it does is if you come to a complete stop it will stay stopped even if your foot leaves the brakes, until you hit the accelerator. I liked this because it's similar to driving a stick shift and being stopped in Neutral.

What I didn't get a photo of, display-wise, was the indicators for the lane keeping assist system and the active cruise control. That was pretty cool, you could set the speed and set the follow distance, and as long as the lane markings were visible the car would semi-autonomously keep itself on the road. It would alert you to keep your hand on the wheel at all times if you tried to let go. It would also indicate when the lane markings were not sufficiently visible for it to do its job.

MPG...
The car, as mentioned in OP, has 47 EV miles according to the EPA. I was able to hypermile it and I got 75 miles out of the charge. But keep in mind I've been driving the same route for many months and hypermiling in my other Honda hybrids, so I had a home field advantage so to speak. In any case, this was really cool. The average commuter isn't going to travel much further than that in a day, so this absolutely murders your gasoline expenses. When the regular engine eventually did come on, it's rated for 45 MPG, but you can hypermile it and do better than that. Not much better though, it's already aerodynamically optimized and it has LRR tires and such. The main thing against it is it is very large and heavy. Older smaller lighter hybrids are going to eat this thing's lunch when it goes into HV mode. But that's why it's a plug-in.

The size of the car was uncomfortable to me, I'm used to sitting in a G1 or G2 Insight. I've only occasionally driven vehicles with a larger footprint than this car. It's wide and long. Not the right car for me, but it's not my car lol. But it was really cool. If you have like a family and you want to shell out for a plug-in hybrid this car is a good bet. Probably better than a Volt I would say because it's larger and has lots of room for stuff. Back seats even fold down and open to the trunk. It's very comfortable to sit in as a passenger, it's as nice as the 2017 Honda Accord Hybrid I rode around in one time, except larger.

Anyway, that's what I thought about the Clarity. If y'all need like detail photos of any aspect of the car, such as the aerodynamic features at the wheels, let me know, I can take pics any time.
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