My wife recently talked me into going to a Honda dealership to check out the Civic Hybrid. I was appalled to find that the darn thing can only manage about 50 mpg highway according to the window sticker. I recall that my old '76 Honda Civic could get 50 mpg highway on a bad day, sometimes 55 or 60. So I’m wondering, then, where’s the benefit of all this high-tech wizardry? If this is the best they can do, why not just start making the equivalent of '76 Civics again? They were good little cars, no frills but comfortable and zippy.
The Civic Hybrid certainly is a no-frills little car, so I don’t think it’s a matter of comparing apples to oranges. So why doesn’t the new car get better mileage? I could take a guess that it has to do with today’s presumably more stringent safety requirements, or maybe the EPA has just changed their fuel mileage testing protocols, but I’d like to get the dope from one who knows.
The Hybrid produces less pollution than the older Civic did, but that may or may not be of interest to you. The Hybrid also has a much smaller gasolene engine, so it needs less oil, which is no doubt a better benefit to the environment, and is cheaper for you when it comes time for the oil change.
I don’t have any stats handy, but I’d be willing to bet that the 76 Civic was smaller and lighter than the Hybrid. So you’re moving around more mass for the same amount of fuel, which is a good thing.
Also, you have to look at the automakers attitudes to the whole thing. It’s expensive to tool up for a new automobile design (some companies spend as much as $1 billion designing and prepping to manufacture a new model), a hybrid vehicle is a fairly radical design change, so this means that it’s going to be very expensive to start manufacturing and car makers are loathe to shell out that kind of money, so they’re going to skimp where they can. Honda probably took one of their existing small engines (like for a motorcycle or a generator) and bolted it to the electric motor and shoved it under the hood of a specially designed car, rather than designing the whole thing from scratch. So while the combination of technology is new, the technology which went into designing it isn’t. Car makers tend to be conservative when it comes to their mechanicals, I can remember seeing an interview with a Ford executive who was bitching about the emission regulations, claiming that if they were allowed a free hand in designing emission controls, cars would perform better. (Which leads me to ask, “Well, why the hell aren’t you doing it, instead of waiting for the government to force you into doing it?”)
FWIW, my mother works for a Honda dealership and according to her, unless you’re someone who puts a lot of miles on a car in a year’s time, you’re better off with an ordinary car.
The '76 Honda Civic (or “CCVC” as I recall) was a great little car but slower than a basset hound after a large meal; the 0-60 mph time was something on the order of 15 seconds, IIRC. The Civic Hybrid, on the other hand, has surprising pickup. A cow-orker (Hi, Ted) has one, and while I’ve never driven it I"ve been in it a few times and was suprised at how fast it moved. It seemed fairly solidly built, too; no rattles or shaking which was endimic to older Hondas. (Honda always made a great powertrain, but coming from a cycle background tended to skimp on the build quality of the interior fittings.)
The Hybrid really comes into its own in stop-and-go traffic. It’s fuel economy isn’t that much greater than any other small-four on the highway (since it is mostly using the gas engine) but in-town traffic makes better use of the hybrid configuration, so the highway milage may not reflect its best capabilities. If you want a car for in-town driving, the Hybrid may be a good option (though, looking a the numbers, you’d still be hard pressed to make a case based strictly on the increased cost of the car and maintainance versus efficiency) but for highway driving the inproved economy is marginal.
As for emissions, the emission levels on modern automobiles are already so low it is hard to call a Hybrid much of an improvement over a straight gas engine. I think even the standard Civid and Accord are rated as a ULEV or SULEV. The difference, though, between those and a '76 CCVC with carbouration is enormous; the Honda, the Bug, and other high economy runabouts of the Seventies are about as dirty as a V-12 Caddie of the same era, in comparison to modern vehicles. Even the modern gas-guzzling SUVs that everyone likes to complain are so polluting are far cleaner than the econoboxes of yesteryear.
And the old Civics were really a death-trap in a wreck with a larger car. Just not a lot of structure to survive an impact. Some of the other rice-burners–Subarus in particular–were far better about this, but suffered from correspondingly lower milage rates. There’s a tradeoff there.
If you really want a clean and efficient modern car, look at the SMART Car. Expensive, and limited in quantity and model (thanks to US/European homologation issues…can’t we come up with a global, or at least transAtlantic standard for safety and emissions?) but a good successor to the minibugs of old.
Yea I did not remember any 1970’s car getting anywhere near 50MPG, only the lowly Geo Metro seemes to have pulled that off.
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-but aside from that-
— it is very questionable if hybrids are any less expensive to operate or that they do any less damage to the environment overall than a regular petroleum-engined vehicle of comparable size would. The standard EPA tests tend to overestimate their real-world MPG performance, and the matter of their regular battery maintenance needs constitutes a significant amount of pollution introduced into the environment that regular vehicles would not produce.
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According to Honda, the batteries shouldn’t need to be replaced for “the life” of the car, 150k-200k miles. (I’ve seen Hondas roll over 300k, and I think that would definintely limit the resalability of the vehicle, but…okay.) As far as toxicity, the Hybrid uses NiMH batteries, which are the most environmentally friendly batteries commercially available. There are some mildly toxic products (powered nickel) in the battery, but these are easily and profitably recovered and recycled.
That being said, unless you drive predominantly in-town and in traffic, the Hybrid isn’t going to get exceptional milage compared with a similar size IC-only car, and you could get more economy out of a smaller engined car for that application. Their pollution efficiency is very good, but again, so is that of many economy cars, to a point that the difference is less dramatic than that between a car in-tune and one needing a new oxy-sensor or ring job. Honda and Toyota are primarily marketing hybrid vehicles to people on the largely falicious assumption that they are significantly (per person, not overall) reducing pollution and US demand for foreign (or any) oil. Like recycling glass, the cars don’t really make economic sense, but the losses are pretty small over the vehicle lifetime, and as a lifestyle choice it certainly is less obnoxious than ripping a Harley down your street at 2am and waking up the entire neighborhood, or parking your monster truck across four parking spaces at the Wal-Mart.
I feel compelled to point out that The 2004+ Toyota Prius (for sure) and The Civic Hybrid (probably) have a lot more room than an “econo-box” like a Festiva or Geo Metro.
Heck, the 2004+ Prius is a mid sized car according to the EPA. (with the fold down rear seats and hatch back, it makes a pretty good cargo hauler)
Show me a IC only car that gets 45+ MPG, 4 star or better safety rating, , 105+ ft^3 + of interior space, and SULEV or better rating.
I have an '04 Prius, my first Toyota, and it is certainly not an econo-box. Lot’s of room inside for four folks and reasonable for five.
I drive 75MPH or better for 25 miles of my 50 mile trip each way to work. Lot’s of power and pick up. I average 47-49 MPG per tank and have done better on occasion. I’ve had it for just over 1 year and have put 35K miles on it.
I don’t feel as though I’ve been taken in by Toyota’s advertising. I know five other folks with 2000, 2003 and 2004 models. All have the same good feeling when we gas up.
I have a Civic Hybrid that I drive mostly on the highway – rarely at all in stop-and-go traffic – and I’m averaging better than 52 mpg. I have the manual-transmission model. The automatic is supposed to get slightly better in-town mileage than freeway mileage, but not by much.
I doubt it is SULEV rated, but a VW Jetta TDI gets 50 mpg, has a 4 star safety rating ( 5 star frontal rating), and at least as much interior room as a Prius, considerably more if you get a wagon.
I was just going to mention that because I have one too.
Oh and as far as oil goes? These go 10,000 miles on a full synthetic. Although it costs twice as much, its better for the engine and goes twice as far. Sounds like a costless way to half your oil consumption.
Yes they are very safe too. I don’t know if the Prius or the Honda come with standard passenger, drivers and side airbags. Its roomy enough for anything I’ve needed it for too.
Also the interior materials have a nice high-quality feel to them. Nice plastics in them, I tell you.
They too are supposed to go 200+ miles.
But the market is strange. The high gas mileage crowd either want to do that because they want to consume less for lower consumptions sake, or because of cost’s sake.
Those that want an efficient car for the environmental impact, however don’t seem to want anything to do with a diesel. Its just ingrained in their minds that diesels are dirty. Tell that to the guy that buys a cheap converter to run a TDI on used vegetable oil from the local Chinese place. That’s free fuel buddy! All it does is switch from a diesel tank to a Veggie Oil tank when the engine is hot. Not good for stop and go, but useful for long-distance. They also emit lower ammounts of greenhouse gasses, but do emit larger ammounts of smog-causing particulates.
I personally think that people who buy a hybrid over a diesel based on environmental impact, haven’t done their homework, and simply reject diesels out of an old reflex.
There is “X” amount of potential pollution from fossil fuels. “X” will be realized whether we all drive hybrids or not.
Hybrids could help metro areas by reducing peak smog conditions. In other words, it -hybird technology- helps get the smog out of the cities, not out of the world.