We love the Honda Clarity, but for 2021 Canadian buyers will notice a $3,515.00 increase on top a $590.00 increase from the 2019 we drove. Is the 2021 Honda Clarity Hybrid Touring still worth it?
This episode of test drive is brought to you by lmec and their ev duty smart home charger there really is no debate i love the honda clarity we drove it twice in 2019 and it even won some of our awards including the best plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that we featured in 2019 but here we are now two model years later as we wrap up 2020 looking at the 2021 and
There has been zero change with the clarity hybrid touring and not only has there been no change in terms of features design or anything hasn’t even seen a small change on the inside it has gotten a significant price increase now if you were to buy a 2020 here in canada you would have been paying an extra 590 over the 2019 that we featured okay inflation and
Whatnot certainly can make that price go up we see it across the board with pretty much every vehicle usually they go up by a couple hundred dollars every year but this year for 2021 the price has increased three thousand five hundred and fifteen dollars that is a four thousand dollar price increase over the last two years and why well i guess because honda can
Because chevrolet no longer makes the volt the plug-in hybrid extended range vehicle that we featured back in 2018 it means that the honda clarity is the only long-range plug-in hybrid vehicle sold in canada now we’ve talked about the clarity before as i mentioned it was our number one vehicle in the plug-in hybrid segment for 2019 so it makes sense that we would
Still like it here but that price increase that is changing things a little bit it does qualify for the provincial and federal tax rebates here in quebec so you would be saving 13 000 but still i mean it is a lot of money for this car the only other thing that’s different for 2021 aside from the astronomical price increase moonlit forest pearl paint is no longer
Available so if you like green you’re out of luck you can get this burgundy though and that’s about it there is nothing new about the clarity so then why is it that i have one why am i spending an entire week with a car that i featured before let’s go find out i’ve talked before that there isn’t a perfect car nothing exists out there that a would work for every
Single person on the planet but b i haven’t come across a car that works perfectly for me everything tries to get there but obviously the perfect car does not exist and that’s where the honda clarity comes in this is as far as i’m concerned the best plug-in hybrid electric vehicle it’s definitely not the best car but i do like it a whole lot now i might be the
Only person on this planet that actually likes the design of it which is a really strange and maybe part of the reason why i like it so much is because i’m the only person that likes it but i do like it it’s different still reminds me of that accord cross tour or the acura zdx two cars that honestly i can’t remember the last time i’ve seen one but one that i
Would buy i was actually really really tempted to get across tour a few years back but aside from the looks what is it about this car that i like why do i keep wanting to drive this despite the fact that i’ve done it already twice well i don’t know i mean it just it speaks to me i love electrics and even though i could get away with something like the hyundai
Ioniq that we featured a little while ago that only has a official range of 274 kilometers i can get everything done that i need to in that range but i do like the plug-ins because you know should i decide to go on a road trip i could do it because the infrastructure here in quebec is decent enough that i could get away with charging it up often but there is no
Level three charger on this so you’re out of luck if you want to actually supercharge this thing you’re stuck for a couple hours and b you know you only have to buy one car when you have a plug-in hybrid like this and this really is the range that we should be seeing across the board for plug-in hybrids honda says 76 kilometers we know that we’ve done about 80
Fully electric we’re in fall so it’s a little bit cooler now we’re seeing an estimated range closer to 65. at this point but that’s a good range for what i would imagine most people can do on a single charge even for me to go back and forth to pick up this car is about 90 kilometers but i’m an exception here in quebec most people don’t live as far as i do and
Commute into montreal every day so for a lot of people a 70 kilometer range can be done in one direction you get to your office you get to wherever you’re going you can plug it in for a couple hours and when you come home it’s fully electric the thing is there is nothing else to compare this to now that the chevrolet volt is gone this is it that likely is why
The price has gone up for this because honda can they’ve got the only car on the market so they can charge a little bit more but if i were engineering a plug-in hybrid electric car today this is the range minimum that i should be going for a 17 kilowatt hour battery is easy enough to fit in a vehicle like this battery technology has changed in the last several
Years i mean this came out in 2017 as a 2018 model year so there should be no reason why you could fit a slightly bigger battery in this vehicle but also why other vehicles in this size segment couldn’t go plug-in hybrid with more range that’s been not really a complaint but when i drive some of the other plug-ins that limited range of about 30 kilometers just
Doesn’t get the job done for me in my situation but 76 absolutely does but the rumor that i keep hearing and i’ve heard it essentially since we featured the first clarity that we did last year is the clarity might not exist in north america they might just kill it off which is a bummer because a electric cars are the future whether you want to believe it or not
But b this is such a good car if honda invested time and money into it it could be even better similar to what we talked about when we featured the ford fusion plug-in hybrid i really liked that car and if the range was just a little bit better on it if it had the same range as this i would definitely take the ford fusion because the fusion looks just like any
Other car it’s got a little bit more features than you get with the honda clarity and the price is astronomically better but when it comes to this because honda’s essentially just forgotten about it you’re not getting the best of the best that’s a bit of a bummer what does the honda clarity do well space in here is good it’s comfortable even though i do find the
Seats are just slanted a little too forward it would be nice to have a little bit more support with my legs but space is good trunk size is decent even looking out the rear is better than it was on the ionic i can see out that upper rear window much better than i did with the hyune ionic negatives on this car again infotainment and the overall hybrid information
Is pretty limited for what we’d like to see the design might not be everybody’s cup of tea but that’ll always be subjective and then the real pain in the butt this year is the price a 3 500 price increase at least if they added more they added some features to this and maybe bumped up the range a little bit i could justify the price change but they’re really just
Pricing it higher because honda can i think that’s a big disappointment the problem is i could tell you just go and buy a 2020 but good luck finding one here in quebec they are really hard to come by and i imagine it’s the same in other jurisdictions where the honda clarity is sold it’s just impossible to find them so you can go and find a 2020 you can save that
3 500 but good luck because the supply is limited the demand for this is still pretty high you
Transcribed from video
Major Price Increase Still Worth Buying? | 2021 Honda Clarity Hybrid Touring Review By PRN_TestDrive