We still need a new car and, except for the broken Apple CarPlay, are happy with our Honda Odyssey. So I went down to the local dealer and drove a base Clarity plug-in hybrid and an Accord EX.
(Why not keep having the old car fixed when it fails? Americans are no longer willing or able to work as automobile mechanics (see nytimes). Actually I wonder if there could be a good business exporting seriously broken cars to Eastern Europe or some other part of the world where there are a lot of skilled craftspeople. If a car needs more than 15 hours of labor to repair, ship it out!)
A lease on the stripped Clarity has come down in price a bit, but stripped is pretty stripped, e.g., there are no power seats. The worst part of the Clarity is a bizarre touch-screen slider volume control. Considering that the touch screen on our Odyssey freezes up every three or four drives, having it be the primary means of controlling audio volume wouldn’t be my first design choice. Given that a car is often in motion (well, maybe not in a U.S. populated by 327 million people using a road network designed for 150 million), how could it ever be the case, for a frequently-used control, that a touch screen is better than a knob that can be adjusted by feel?
If Honda’s brilliant engineering minds had in fact settled on this interface for all of their cars I would be prepared to consider the possibility that they were right and I am wrong. But the Accord EX has the same touch screen…. surrounded by physical buttons and two knobs (one for volume, one for tuning). Does Honda expect a different species of animal to be behind the wheels of these two cars? If not, why wouldn’t one design choice be considered optimum by the engineers at the same car company?
[Honda’s 2018 line-up seems to embrace the idea of at least three different types of human brains, actually. The Odyssey EX-L has the touch screen and, unlike either the Clarity or the Accord, a single physical knob (power/volume). It lacks the physical button surround of the Accord. Maybe this design harlequinade will stop aviation nerds from complaining about the deep menu structure of the Garmin G1000?]
Similarly, Honda can’t seem to make up its collective mind regarding what safety systems should be included in a car. The Clarity lacks the blind spot monitoring system that is on the Odyssey and the Accord. The Accord lacks the “beep if you’re about to back into something” feature of the Odyssey. It seems like a bad idea for a multi-car family to have one car with features A, B, C, and D while the other car has only A and C. The driver will get complacent in the car with more safety systems and then be rudely surprised in the less intelligent car.
The Clarity has current capacity stamped right next to its USB outlets. The Accord does not. Interestingly, Honda has chosen capacities of 1.5A and 1A for the front USB outlets of the Clarity. The machine has a powerful enough electrical system to push a car 50 miles down the highway, but it can’t charge an iPad with 2.1 amps? Maybe it would be too much to ask for USB-C quick charging in a 2018 car, but why not a full power USB outlet if they are going to bother with one at all?
The Accord EX is not as nice a highway cruiser as the vault-like Odyssey EX-L. There is no acoustic glass and consequently there is plainly a lot more road noise. The Accord has power seats, like in the Odyssey, but no memories!
Readers: What’s a good sedan that can be leased for $300-400/month and has at least comparable driver idiot-proofing to the latest Honda Odyssey? Also, one member of our household is an animal-lover and would prefer not to sit on the dead skin of an unfortunate cow (i.e., she prefers cloth upholstery, as featured in luxury Robinson R44 helicopters).
Why are you comparing features in the Accord EX to the Odyssey EX-L? The Accord EX-L has seat position memory too.
Marc: Why put in the heavy and expensive seat motors and then not the $2 worth of electronics to remember a seat position? I can understand Honda making a car with manual seats (significant cost and weight savings) or a car with power seats and a bit of microprocessor intelligence. I can’t understand why they would go to the trouble of building something with all of the heavy and expensive stuff, but not the cheap and lightweight stuff to make it user-friendly. (In this particular case, why lose a customer who wants normal (i.e., with memory) power seats, but not leather?)
Why buy a Honda? Honda reliability ranking is dropping, they do not make them like they used to.
Kia is now ahead of Honda in reliability ranking. The Kia Optima, also available in Hybrid, or Plug-In Hybrid, with a 10 year 100,000 mile warranty could be a good option.
If you want something faster the Kia Stinger 2.0L RWD base model should be in your budget. The Stinger was engineered by former BMW M Vice President of Engineering Albert Biermann.
With Kia, if the car has a problem, your dealership will make a phone call to Korea and the executive responsible will jump from a window.
if there could be a good business exporting seriously broken cars to Eastern Europe or some other part of the world where there are a lot of skilled craftspeople. If a car needs more than 15 hours of labor to repair, ship it out!)
From the downfall of Communism until the time that Putin put Russia on a isolationist course, there was a thriving business in exporting used Japanese cars to the Russian Far East (despite the fact that the steering wheel is on the wrong side). Japan also requires cars to undergo a highly thorough inspection after a few years (to encourage people to buy new cars – car mfrs in bed with govmnt) so at that point it is cheaper to scrap the car or export it rather than pay the cost of the inspection and restoring the car to “like new” condition. In the US you can’t get JDM (Japan domestic market) cars but you can buy low mileage JDM engines from cars that have been scrapped in this way. If the engine in your Japanese car needs major work (e.g. valve replacement) it is often cheaper to just swap in a JDM engine.
Pavel: Thanks for the Kia RWD tip, but I don’t think that would interface well with the Boston springtime weather (looking outside right now at about a foot of filthy snow on the ground and an addition 6″ of snow is forecast to fall this evening). I guess RWD with traction control is not that much worse in the snow than FWD? The FWD Odyssey minivan is awesome in the snow, despite the lack of AWD, but I think part of that is the monstrous weight.
Reliability? We’re going to lease it for three years so that we don’t get stuck with obsolete technology (the self-driving car will be here any day now, according to WIRED!). Shouldn’t almost any modern car be able to go 20,000 miles in three years without a major meltdown?
Maybe it would be too much to ask for USB-C quick charging in a 2018 car, but why not a full power USB outlet if they are going to bother with one at all?
This shows the foolishness of offering ANY kind of built in tech in a car that will be on the road for 15 years. Consider what cellphones were like in 2003. You replace your phone every 2 years but the nav and entertainment system on a car are pretty much fixed. I think what they should do is just give you a nice big high res screen and some control knobs and rely on Android Auto/Apple Car Play for the rest.
Ditto on the usb – just include some extra cigarette lighter sockets and you can stick whatever charger you want in there.
“I can’t understand why they would go to the trouble of building something with all of the heavy and expensive stuff, but not the cheap and lightweight stuff to make it user-friendly.”
Second degree price discrimination. Same as Tesla intentionally downrating the batteries on some of their cars to sell them cheaper.
“In this particular case, why lose a customer who wants normal (i.e., with memory) power seats, but not leather?”
There are evidently not enough people with the money for power seats, but the scruples for the non leather option. Incidentally back when people knew luxury, leather seats were reserved for the front (chaffeur) seat. The back row with the money was decked out in velvet.
But for $299.99 I can produce a fake Honda brochure swearing that those seats are made of a new synthetic leather simulant ([really fast] taxes and shipping not included, terms and conditions may apply [/really fast]
I have a sister car to the Kia – a Genesis G80 with AWD. It’s great in the snow.
philg: You can get the Kia Stinger base with AWD, for an extra $2200.
With good winter tires, this should easily handle any snow storm in Boston 🙂
Here are some tests of the Kia Stinger with AWD in snow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McAWqtj3oMg
Re: not many people repair their own cars. Since my youth in the 60’s, I have always repaired my own cars. My philosophy is if I fix it, I know that it is done properly, learn more about my vehicle, and save some money. If I break it fixing it, then I chalk it up to an educational experience. Over time I have come out way ahead, and rarely has the effort gone sour. But in the past 15 years I have seen home repair get get harder and harder. It’s not the mechanical components that are an issue. The problem is readily getting information on the operation of the electronics control systems, and being able to diagnose electrical and computer controlled issues without resorting to expensive, custom tools. So far I have been able to succeed in repairs thanks to YouTube and the internet, but I have spend lots of time having to pre-research this stuff. I doubt whether the foreign mechanics are having a much easier time, though they have more resources to Easter egg components.
Andrea: Your price discrimination idea sort of makes sense, but can it be consistent with a competitive market? If the cost of adding memory is $2, why wouldn’t Honda throw it in so as to take customers away from Toyota, or vice versa? Does Econ 101 allow this kind of intentional value-destruction to be done if there is no collusion among a handful of manufacturers?
In other words, if Honda were the only car maker it makes sense that Honda would try to get people to pay up for the EX-L by withholding almost-free features. But if competitors are out there and there is no collusion wouldn’t one of them break ranks and put all of the cheap-to-build features into a cheap-to-buy car?
Subaru Legacy with Eyesight . . .
The Clarity is $8,000 more than a comparable Accord. For that you get a combined 42 mpg vs 32 mpg in the Accord. With that you are burning 297 gallons of fuel per year vs 390 gallons (driving the average 12,500 miles per year). If you don’t take the trouble to plug it in, you’ll save 93 gallons a year. At $3 a gallon for rip off California gasoline you’ll recover that $8000 in 28.6 years. At $2 Texas gas prices you’ll break even in a whopping 43 years. Let’s say you plug it in every night and drive no more than 47 miles a day. That 266 recharges of 17 KWh at 18 cents per kilowatt hour for California’s Renewables Inflated Residential electricity to cover the same 12,500 miles will cost you $813 a year. This saves you $359 vs the $1172 you’ll pay for Gasoline to go the same distance in the Accord. If you drive exclusively on plug-in electricity you’ll break even on the Hybrid investment in 22.3 years. I’ll bet you that battery is not going to last you 22 to 43 years, hence the simple truth is that YOU WILL NEVER RECOVER YOUR INVESTMENT.
Hybrids and Electrics do not make economic sense at today’s oil prices. Unless you believe in the Global Warming Rubbish and gets a lot of utility from driving a “green” car you shouldn’t buy one. But, hey, it’s a free country and you should be able to spend your money on whatever you like. What makes me fume every time I pay my taxes is the realization that $3000 to $10,000 of my taxes are going towards subsidizing some environmental zealot’s feel good experience every time a “green” car is sold.
Here you go. Clean and low priced.
https://yubabikes.com/product-category/electric-cargo-bikes
Bonus: few digital controls (which I agree are pretty much ergonomic fails).
G C: Thanks. I’m not sure about the “low-priced” part. The dealer says that the 2007 Infiniti, with 87,000 miles on it, is worth $4,000. That cargo bike is $4,500. The cargo bike has a 250W motor (1/3 hp?). The Infiniti has 275 hp (more than a four-seat Robinson R44 helicopter or a 180 mph Cirrus SR20).
Here’s an interesting article about price reductions in the forthcoming 2018 Honda Accord Hybrid: https://www.autoblog.com/2018/03/19/2018-honda-accord-hybrid-price-pricing/
RE: leather seats, most non-premium cars with alleged leather seats are actually using some kind of synthetic – variously called bonded leather, PU leather, or some other abuse of the language. Even some lower end German cars are in on this scam. I’m not sure whether Honda does this too, but I’d suspect so.
Phil, there are two overlaid economic concepts here: monopolistic competition and price discrimination.
If all sedans were identical except for options you would be right, and Honda could only cover the cost of manufacturing, capital etc. But of course Honda and the other companies put a lot of effort into differentiating their product, so the accord has some features which distinguish it from competitors, e.g. some people just like the looks more.
That creates some monopolistic profits for Honda to exploit, since it is after all a Monopolist in the market for Accords. It will therefore produce somewhat fewer than in the perfect competition example, and price them somewhat higher than marginal cost (thus making a profit).
The next step is how does Honda maximize these monopoly profits? They know that some of its customers are willing to pay a lot more than others (they might already have a Honda car and want to have just one dealer, or whatever). Effectively they would like their customers to sort themselves into groups “all those who REALLY love our cars, please move to the right, you will get a SPECIAL price”. Note that they don’t really care if the customers in question really like the cars themselves, or just have a lot of money and are willing to pay a lot extra for things they like just a bit more than the alternatives.
They can’t be as overt as calling them out, but they can design accessories (and BUNDLES an other form of price discrimination), and price them so that their users will self segregate.
I’ll be teaching this stuff at Chapman next fall, you’re welcome to come around 😀
The Clarity has a volume control on the steering wheel and the low end model does not have leather seats but they are heated. Although the Clarity is a 2018 model, it actually only has the 2017 version of the touchscreen so that is why it is different.
So far this winter I have found that the roads in my town (near Happy Valley) are cleared of snow before my driveway is so what is the problem with snow. This has been true for quite a few years so even snow tires are not really needed. The only snow seems to be in the store parking lots.
I am the only one who drives the car so power seats add nothing. The thing I dislike is that there is no analog speedometer but I use the digital cruise control with the low speed following feature almost all the time (unless the speed limit is less than 25 mph and there is nobody to follow). I have fun just trying to use only the EV mode (yes I know it costs more).
I also enjoy getting my $7,500 in taxes to the IRS back in the form of a lower lease price and $2,500 from the state as well as a, no extra cost, 4 digit EV license plate. Thanks everyone!
Also keep in mind that the volume knob is almost certainly not an actual physical pot, but just a sensor that feeds into the same computer that drive the touchscreen. If it can freeze up, the volume control can become unresponsive as well (unless it is the actual touchscreen sensing unit that is giving you the trouble).
I previously owned a Acura TL and now have a Chevy Volt, which I enjoy driving even more. Love the slight sound of an accelerating electric motor.
Not a big car though, so if that’s important, it’s not the car for you. Nice screen (Carplay) with an appropriate and logical collection of knobs.
Yes, the touch-screen slider volume control on the Clarity is awful. Thankfully, there is a volume control on the steering wheel that works great and is much more convenient to access, so the slider is almost a non-issue.
philg, you don’t seem to realize that different models from a manufacturer are on different production cycles. The 2018 Accord just came out and has a newer radio/nav head. The Clarity is using last year’s. Changing/updating those items is a pretty big manufacturing change, and only happens with a model refresh or update.
Same thing with the blind-spot monitoring. The Clarity has the older version, which is a camera located in the right side-view mirror, that turns on when the right turn signal is activated. The 2017 Accord had the same version as the Clarity. The 2018 Accord has the newer (current) version, which is blind-spot monitoring for both sides of the car. The Clarity will most certainly be updated to this at some point. When the feature set for the Clarity was finalized, the newer version wasn’t available for production yet.
Mike: Thanks for the explanation. When I’m driving, though, I’m not usually allowed to control the volume. That is a decision for Senior Management and therefore it is done by my supervisor sitting in the front right seat.
Ha, I understand completely. The good news is that Honda apparently read the innumerable bad reviews/complaints over the years about the lack of knobs and finally rectified the situation. The bad news is that it didn’t happen quickly enough to make it into this generation of the Clarity.
Wouldn’t many of those “controller” issues be resolved by using voice commands? Why cannot a technology like Siri or Alexa or Google Home be applied in a car? The set of commands is limited and I do not think background noise would be an issue because I have seen Siri used in a car with the radio playing.
My Commander in Chief had a stern talk with me and I was informed in no uncertain terms that apart from being happy with the old Highlander, the only acceptable upgrade is another Highlander. My pleas about lack of CarPlay and at least test driving Hondas, Volvos and Audis were rejected.
We test drove the current Highlander with all the options, and it’s pretty sweet. Then incompetent at the dealership failed to sell it to me when I called them on the phone and told them that I’m going to buy one this morning. So now I have to call another one of 17 dealerships in the area and see if they employ somebody competent.