I decided to skip the 159 dollar brake service. I have never lubed my sliders and pins on any of my cars and with the costs of pads and rotors, so low, I don't think the extra mileage will pay for itself in the long run. They call for this every 6 moths which I think is crazy! Does anyone do this and if so, how many more miles do you think you get? With front pads at 40 bucks, I can buy four sets of front pads for one brake service job!

Considering that MOST of the braking is handled by regen, there should be almost no wear on the pads or damage to the rotors...

My dealer has never advised this. Owned my 2018 Clarity Touring for over 18 months now. Have had car to the same dealer 3-4 times for oil changes and other services.

Was this an independent or Honda dealer that wanted to slim your wallet ?

Sounds like a scam or scare tactic...

I agree. My first service did that and 6 months later I was prompted to do that and other things including cabin air filter. I declined. The dealer tried to look into it for me with Honda, and so did I, but got the run around..."Just do what the maintenance minder recommends" was the reply. I looked everywhere to find a printed maintenance manual attempting to find if there was a problem with the maintenance minder. Can't find that info......but I did find a line in the owners manual about the interval for changing the cabin air filter. I was no where near that!! Honda Canada did not provide a satisfactory reply to my concern, and that was not the first time they failed to do so.

As far as I can tell the Honda maintenance minder is designed to pad dealership bottom lines and not actually take care of the car. Because it doesn't break down the specific services we, the vehicle owners, end up paying too much for service.

That is definitely the impression I am left with. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I cannot understand why the Clarity PHEV has not flooded the market....or rather why the company has not promoted, advertised, and made more vehicles available. I took delivery of my 2018 Clarity in June of 2018. I have only seen one or two other Claritys on the roads. With the exception of what has been going on with the maintenance minder telling me I am due for various services (which are certainly NOT required), this car costs very little to operate. I have used very little gas. I recently took a fairly long highway trip, meaning it ran as a hybrid all the way. Prior to that my fuel economy indicator read 1.7 litres / 100 km. At the end of the trip it registered 2.5 L/100 km. Excellent. Why would anyone who drives a vehicle of this size / class not want that???

So I can only think of a couple reasons why the company is not mass producing a vehicle that the public clearly wants.
1. The dealers have to invest in special tools and equipment and training to be able to service this vehicle.....a vehicle that requires less servicing and so less income. They don't want that.
2. The oil industry is somehow dissuading the company from ramping up production of the Clarity, and encouraging continued production of vehicles that must use gas. No doubt this has been going on for decades. Even so, although I do not see many Claritys on the roads, I do see more and more electric vehicles.....Tesla, Volt, Leaf, Ioniq, prius and others. Surely this will continue and I believe Honda is making a mistake in not becoming a leader in the field. They certainly are capable of it. At this time in history, in my opinion, the PHEV is the best option. If at all possible, I will never buy a single fuel (i.e. gas or electric) again. I enjoy the choice and ability to not have to pay for gas at whatever price the oil companies chose to gouge at. I am very surprised that Toyota has not introduced a car to rival the Clarity.

Honda is a Japanese manufacturer. As a result they have to push the MITI design of a hydrogen economy, which outside Japan has simply not taken off. The other, and possibly bigger issue is Honda hasn't figured out how to make an EV that will make them money. Tesla has spent billions on battery technology and production. Honda hasn't.

A PHEV also has the added expense (and complexity) of all the ICE systems and components as well as those needed for an EV.

No conspiracy theory needed. They flat out do not make enough money on any of the Clarity versions for them to be self supporting. They need the ZEV credits (and to a lesser extent the TZEV credits from the PHEV) in order to justify selling them. They will make and sell them very near the minimum quantities required to garner the type and number of credits they need in the Section 177 states. Some other states will have spotty availability on the PHEV if excess inventory exists.

I still think Honda went nationwide with Clarity in 2018 hoping that the big tax credits that many people get would be enough to sell it without factory incentives. That turned out not to be the case, the car only really seems to sell when Honda kicks in $4,000 or so, which they aren't willing to do in states where they don't need the credits that badly. My guess is that whatever little profit they make on Clarity vaporizes once there are any factory incentives. The smattering of cars they now release outside of California is probably about what will sell without incentives. If those get snapped up pretty quickly they might increase it a little, but probably not by much.

I think Honda also may have realized that at least for the U.S. market the styling was a big flop. Not much they could do about some of it since it was based on the FCV. But I wonder sometimes how many more they would sell if they simply didn't have the odd fender skirts. No one wants to hear about air curtains, it's too late as they are already turned off. Clarity owners all say they like the styling or aren't bothered by it much. Well yeah, that's why we are Clarity owners. But probably one reason others aren't. Prius gen 4 (2016-) styling is universally hated and probably one reason it hasn't sold. Meanwhile Prius Prime looks a lot better especially the front and rear lighting, which was one of the main objections to the new Prius. I think that is one thing that has helped Prime sell pretty well for a PHEV.