[Sailorman]

A friend asked what I paid for the Clarity I just bought. It was a touring model Plugin hybrid. Up here in Washington, it was the only Touring model within 500 miles according to KBB, and only 11 base models were available as well. The Honda website only lists what it thinks are my local dealers, as far as I could figure out. I bought from a great dealership, Honda Of Kirkland, they include allot of dealer only things for all the new cars they sell, all around great people from the receptionist on up, and I met them all.

I paid 36530 including the transportation and delivery, not so great compared to what some were paying in California a month or more ago,(or maybe even now?) but I feel I am getting allot of value for the money, and the dealerships have to make a profit to stay in business, and these are good people, and I bonded with the salesman, a retired Seattle police officer.

Anyway, back to my friends question, here is how I responded, maybe my logic or math is flawed, so feel free to advise:

The sales price was 36,530. 2,575 taken off the sales tax because of the new law up here, and the 7,500 federal tax credit, what I paid was really just 26,455 before tax. Except even less really, because if I bought a straight dinosaur juice car, I would have paid 2,725 in sales tax on 26,455, and I only paid 1188, so I am paying the same amount of money for the Clarity as I would have if I bought a gas car at a sales price of 25,055. Hard to get a base Camry or Accord for that, and this is Lexus luxury level in many ways. 😎 If I got it right, it would be a good sales tool for those selling them. It just blows my mind how good this car is, and how they have not and are not being promoted by Honda. I am wondering if there will be a 2020 model.

 

[Groves Cooke]

It just blows my mind how good this car is, and how they have not and are not being promoted by Honda. [/QUOTE]

Me too unless Honda loses money on the car.

 

[obermd]

Honda has used the "Clarity" nameplate over the years as a beta test vehicle. I suspect their real test for this car is the FCEV because that's what Japan's MITI wants. Personally, I'm not sure Honda is really all that interested in the BEV version, especially given it's very high price and short range relative to the Nissan Leaf. I'm not even sure why they released the PHEV, unless it was to go after Volt owners.

 

[4sallypat]

The 2019 Clarity in CA are being pushed out with a $6,000 discount off MSRP.

Then add in the the $7500 Fed credit, $1500 CVRP rebate check and your local utility company check ( mine was $1000).

Brings the car down to $18,000 for a base Clarity PHEV!

Much better than the FCV Clarity that is priced at $59K !!!!

 

[raymondleeus]

Thought many of you would like to know how much the Clarity would be after 16 months and 70K miles.
First of all, I live in SF Bay Area. Bought the 2018 Clarity in 2018/07 and paid 9% off MSRP. Out the door would be close to $37K. With various rebate of about $11K, the net cost is about $26K.
Drove the car for 70K miles (yes, 70K miles, not a typo) and had it totaled 3 weeks ago. Insurance paid me about $23K.
As far as the EV range, last time I had about 36 miles after a full charge.
I drove mostly on freeway at about 75 to 80 mph on ECO mode. And the gas mileage is about 40 mpg.
I want to try a different car so I bought a Camry Hybrid instead.
This is my last post since I don’t have the car anymore. Hope the info is helpful to someone.

 

[Clarity_newbie]

Thanks for the write up. Toyota hybrids are second to none. I have a 2017 Rav4 hybrid...very nice vehicle.

Good luck!

 

[Snowbird]

It just blows my mind how good this car is, and how they have not and are not being promoted by Honda

ME too. Up in Canada They do not push them at all.
Best deal for the money.(basicly the gov, paid the tax at $5000.00 rebate)
at _17 below yesterday, I love that with a click you can preheat the car while plugged in,, in a closed door garage.
Sure don't go far on elc, at that temp. thou!

 

[Htg_Clarity]

I have a couple of questions / observations on Sailorman's calculations:

WA State does exempt sales tax on the purchase of an EV qualified vehicle, but only for the first $25K of value, as I understand it. If so, then for a tax rate of 10.4% (roughly the correct rate for car sales in Kirkland) and a sales price of $36,350, tax would be applied to the difference over $25K, which is $11,350 * 0.104 = $1199 tax (this result is close enough to the actual $1188 tax reported by Sailorman to lend credence to the calculation).

Ignoring license and registration, the total cash due (whether from a financing company or directly from the buyer) at time of sale would then have been $36,350 + 1188 tax = $37,718, correct? But without the sales tax exemption the total would have been $40,293, so the $2575 off on sales tax, although real, is already reflected in the total cost paid of $37,718. Am I wrong about that?

At federal tax time the following year, the $7500 tax credit can be claimed. This reduces the total cost paid from $37,718 down to $30,218. Unfortunately, sales tax paid on that $7,500 rebate is a sunk cost and cannot be recovered, again as I understand it.

Bottom line, I just don't see how the claimed sales price of $25,055 (after all rebates) was realized, but I would certainly like to be convinced it is achievable, since I too am located in WA and am in the market for a new Clarity Touring edition .

Don't get me wrong - I think the Clarity is probably still a bargain at $30K, but I'm not going to turn down a better deal if available!

Here's to all those lucky (and smart) enough to purchase back when Honda was chipping in up to $6K for even better deals on Clarity sales! Unless one is living in CA, those offerings seem to be history.

 

[2002]

I have a couple of questions / observations on Sailorman's calculations:

WA State does exempt sales tax on the purchase of an EV qualified vehicle, but only for the first $25K of value, as I understand it. If so, then for a tax rate of 10.4% (roughly the correct rate for car sales in Kirkland) and a sales price of $36,350, tax would be applied to the difference over $25K, which is $11,350 * 0.104 = $1199 tax (this result is close enough to the actual $1188 tax reported by Sailorman to lend credence to the calculation).

Ignoring license and registration, the total cash due (whether from a financing company or directly from the buyer) at time of sale would then have been $36,350 + 1188 tax = $37,718, correct? But without the sales tax exemption the total would have been $40,293, so the $2575 off on sales tax, although real, is already reflected in the total cost paid of $37,718. Am I wrong about that?

At federal tax time the following year, the $7500 tax credit can be claimed. This reduces the total cost paid from $37,718 down to $30,218. Unfortunately, sales tax paid on that $7,500 rebate is a sunk cost and cannot be recovered, again as I understand it.

Bottom line, I just don't see how the claimed sales price of $25,055 (after all rebates) was realized, but I would certainly like to be convinced it is achievable, since I too am located in WA and am in the market for a new Clarity Touring edition .

Don't get me wrong - I think the Clarity is probably still a bargain at $30K, but I'm not going to turn down a better deal if available!

Here's to all those lucky (and smart) enough to purchase back when Honda was chipping in up to $6K for even better deals on Clarity sales! Unless one is living in CA, those offerings seem to be history.

It helps to keep the different pieces separate while comparing. First is what kind of deal is the dealer offering. They said the sale price was $36,530. MSRP on Touring is $37,520 so that's only a $990 discount. Although they said that included transportation from another dealer which we don't know what that charge was, but either way this is essentially a discount of just over $1,000 from MSRP. Although that may be about the best deal you can get in WA.

Next would be looking at taxes, but for comparisons that is only valid for comparing buying Clarity vs. a non-PHEV. Purchasing at $36,530 in WA at 10.4% tax is $3,800 tax, however a PHEV is exempt for the first $25,000 so the tax is only $1,200. That's a savings of $2,600 in sales tax. And assuming federal credit of $7,500 purchasing Clarity has a total tax savings of right at $10,000.

They then subtracted the $10,000 from the purchase price to come up with total discount of $11,000, which is one way of looking at it, but again now we are mixing dealer discount and tax discount, which is exactly what dealers want you to do so that they can get away with a higher price. So again best to put taxes aside while comparing prices from different dealers.

To compare with a non-PHEV you can calculate the equivalent selling price for a non-PHEV that is needed to get to the same end result out of pocket cost. Clarity is 36,530+3800-2600-7500=$30,230 out of pocket when it's all over. A non-PHEV priced at $27,400 would have the same out of pocket cost - 27,400+2850=$30,250.

To compare with purchasing in California, you first compare dealer quotes, which should be much lower in California. As discussed previously the Honda dealer incentive will not apply but deals can still be had for out of state purchases, just takes more legwork. $3,000 off of MSRP seems like a reasonable goal but you might do even better. Your only additional cost is shipping which really should be not much more than about $500 to ship from Southern California to Seattle. If you fly there to test drive the car that's another couple hundred dollars or so including Uber fees from LAX or SNA to the dealer. So lets say $3,000 discount - $1,000 overall out of state cost = $2,000 discount from MSRP. Compared to just over $1,000 MSRP in WA assuming you can find a car you want at that price. So that's a decision you can make if in fact you do have car buying options in WA and compare with prices you can get in California.

 

[Htg_Clarity]

I agree with 2002's estimates and analysis, with two caveats:

As a WA buyer the best discount on a Touring edition Clarity that I have been able to find among a half dozen CA dealers (in the last two weeks) has been $2,500 off MSRP. Second best was $2,000 off MSRP, and no other dealer came close to that - in fact 2 dealers offered nothing off. As it happens the highest discount offer was from the same So. CA dealer that is currently offering a base model for $6750 off MSRP, as noted in a separate thread on this forum. However, at least some of that $6,750 discount is only available to CA residents! No doubt a good negotiator might get another $500 off that "best" out of state price, but perhaps only face to face. A bit of travel is no big deal, but I do not think an out of state buyer, even in person, is in a position to negotiate as aggressively as a local resident could. Also, whatever extra discount is gained will be offset by travel expenses. On the other hand, the buyer would at least be able to touch and test drive the actual car being purchased.

I requested quotes to ship a Clarity Touring edition from San Francisco, CA to Port Angeles, WA, and the quotes were in the $1,200 to $1,300 range, well above $500. Admittedly I wasn't looking for the best possible price when I requested those quotes (just wanted to know ballpark prices), so there may well be cheaper carriers, but I can't confirm that. FWIW, I contacted companies that looked like they were reliable with good reviews (the quotes that I got were from Montway, and an equivalent shipper. YMMV).

The roughly $1000 off MSRP figure is right in line with the best offer I have received for purchasing a Clarity locally in WA State (by placing an order, not from stock).

 

[2002]

I think $2,500 in two weeks of searching is pretty good. I really think there are the little goldmine situations out there, some of it timing when a dealer needs to sell a car, it can take a couple of months or more to find the really great deals, but understandably not everyone wants to spend that much time trying to improve the deal.

Shipping should be much less than those quotes you got. You can go to sites that post your request on the national boards and you start getting quotes from individual companies. I did one yesterday out of curiously for shipping Clarity from Anaheim to Seattle and the quotes I glanced at in my mailbox were around $600. Prius Prime was in a situation a couple years ago where people were buying them from the east coast and shipping to midwest and that's about what they were paying for shipping.

But in the end, anyone who can purchase a car locally at at least some type of discount, there is no real reason to try and save additional money purchasing from California. But we keep hearing from people who cannot find a dealer who will order a Clarity no matter how hard they try. At least they have the option of purchasing from California, and at a discount that will more than offset the shipping and travel costs.