Lexus Battery Million Kilometer Warranty

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 5/9/2020 at 8:08 PM, BradleyPNW said:

I have a 2019 Honda Clarity, the red headed step child of EVs. 40 mile range, takes 2 hrs to charge on 220V. I believe 9 hours on 110V. 40 miles is more than my commute. It also happens to be a PHEV which means it has a gasoline engine that will take over if I run out of charge. I very rarely fill the 7 gallon gasoline tank. Tesla owners despise it because it isn't full EV and it isn't a 3.9 second rocket ship. 

In a city you don't need to have a lot of range. You are stop and go, few miles driven at a pop. What people don't think about is how we actually use our cars. When you get home you plug it in. It's habit. It's easy. 

 

That sounds like a good compromise, but I would prefer a larger gasoline tank. Does it have the regenerative braking? 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

10 hours ago, NickW said:

Gasoline is rather good at igniting in accidents too. 

At least the Lithium is kept in one place. A cracked fuel tank has the habit of spreading out underneath the vehicle. 

So what you are saying is that because gasoline is flammable and fuel tanks can rupture in competitive vehicles, we should not pay attention to the potential issue of lithium ignition?

Like a 5 year old saying, “Mine will, but so will yours!” Not a very constructive argument.

[BradleyPNW + 282]

3 hours ago, ronwagn said:

That sounds like a good compromise, but I would prefer a larger gasoline tank. Does it have the regenerative braking? 

You get 340 miles of range in a Honda Clarity. On electric only, you get 40 miles of range. So you wind up with 300 miles of gasoline range. Depending on how many miles you drive a day you can get into a situation where you hardly ever refill your gasoline tank. If you take a long trip you have enough range that you'd want to pull over to pee before you'd pull over for gas anyway. More than 5 hours in a car without pulling over to stretch your legs is marathon driving. 

Yes, it has regenerative braking. You can control the level with a paddle control on the steering wheel. I think that was a mistake. Steering wheel paddle controls are usually for shifting and performance not braking. The sport/eco performance controls are located just above the shift buttons on the console. I feel like they reversed those two conventions. They should have used the steering wheel paddle controls to switch between sport and eco and the console buttons to choose braking level. Maybe they decided hyper-miling is "performance"? 

The parking brake button is confusing too. They used a parking brake stick lever convention rather than a push-push floor style or a pull-to-release convention. When I sit in the car I have to imagine the button is a parking stick so I activate it correctly: pull up to apply brake, push down to release brake. I think a push-push convention would have been more intuitive. But maybe they were worried the parking brake light might fail and you wouldn't know if it was applied or not with a push-push. 

[NickW + 2,714]

5 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

So what you are saying is that because gasoline is flammable and fuel tanks can rupture in competitive vehicles, we should not pay attention to the potential issue of lithium ignition?

Like a 5 year old saying, “Mine will, but so will yours!” Not a very constructive argument.

Not at all but risk is relative. I agree there is a risk associated with large LI-ION batteries as there is with liquid fuels. 

[BradleyPNW + 282]

14 hours ago, BradleyPNW said:

The parking brake button is confusing too. They used a parking brake stick lever convention rather than a push-push floor style or a pull-to-release convention. When I sit in the car I have to imagine the button is a parking stick so I activate it correctly: pull up to apply brake, push down to release brake. I think a push-push convention would have been more intuitive. But maybe they were worried the parking brake light might fail and you wouldn't know if it was applied or not with a push-push. 

Here's a video on how the emergency brake works. I forgot about the brake hold button. I never use it because I never think about it. Obviously, this bugs me a little about the Clarity.