Are you considering an electric or hybrid vehicle for your family? Do you want to save gas and save money?
Consider the Honda Clarity as an alternative to a fully electric vehicle. The beauty of the plug-in hybrid is that you can plug it in every night at home and have a full charge in the morning. With a full tank of gas and a full charge, your range in the Clarity is well over 900 KM. Compare that to a Tesla, for example, with a range of only approximately 400 KM.
I drove the Honda Clarity for a week and 280 KM and didn’t use one drop of gas!
That was even after I didn’t charge it one night. I made the mistake of plugging it into an extension cord in the garage, and it needs to be plugged in directly to a wall outlet, a dedicated 15V outlet (standard in homes here) to charge properly.
Now, as with a lot of electric or hybrid vehicles, I will say I don’t love the body style. The rear fender, for example, is odd looking. The rest is pretty nice with a typically-Honda looking front end.
When you decelerate, the odometer will show you that the braking and deceleration is charging the battery as well. If you accelerate hard, you will hear the motor kick in and it’s pretty noisy apparently but I didn’t have this experience in all the driving I did.
Honda’s infotainment system is intuitive and as with all Honda’s I’ve driven, I also like the steering wheel controls to control music. Of course, Apple CarPlay is included. The push-button gear shift takes some getting used to, but I do like it a lot (on all Honda vehicles, and some Acura).
The back row has 60/40 fold-down seats so that you could put longer items like skis in the vehicle if you’re not using all three passenger seats in the back row.
I loved the Honda Clarity, the drive, the responsiveness and the fuel economy.
- Please refer to the provincial incentive programs for details on rebates: Click here to learn more about Quebec’s Electric Vehicle Incentive Program. Click here to learn more about British Columbia’s Electric Vehicle Incentive program.
- Fuel consumption is 2.1 l/100 KM
- The Honda Link app can start the car, and control the interior temperature from your smartphone.
- It starts at $39,000 here in Canada.
*I drove the Honda Clarity for one week.