Runnermaniac & leahbeatle nailed it pretty well.

While the autostop does play a measurable role it does not account to the greatest losses at all - if anything, it is more like the "cherry on the FE cake".

As runnermaniac said, until the engine reaches a temperature of 60C (140F) the gas engine is going to be running a richer mixture and at a higher RPM. It is during this time that all hybrids get their worst FE. To make matters worse, gliding is also not available until the engine reaches this magic temperature either.

Also to add a little content: While a Prius II is the better car for urban driving, it still suffers pretty badly in the FE department at least until the ICE reaches the proper temperature. That is reality, even for the Prius II.


Also as leahbeatle said, accelerations have a large bearing as well. The proper rate of acceleration is something that most of us nail on our own, or by simply reading carefully what others have written in this department. Tarabell's article has quite a bit of information on this subject and great advice to everybody regardless of whether they want to drive like "grandma" or not.

The HCH-II is a pretty impressive FE car - especially on the highway. It is pretty hard for any other 4 or 5 door automobile to beat it at this. However, the key to great FE still remains the following:

1. A properly setup vehicle (set you tire pressures at 40psi or higher , reduce the 12V drains, and so on)
2. Set a steady state of speed if at all possible. This also means avoiding the use of cruise control for hilly terrain. This will kill your FE. Again use the DWL technique instead of the Cruise Control where appropriate.
3. Accelerate at a rate of 2500 RPM or less. Best results occur when keeping the RPM well below 2000.
4. Glide, glide, glide. The HCH-II is a gliding monster. Often, there is no reason not to glide - especially when the car is warmed up and the opportunities exist. Gliding is perhaps the primary tool I would use in your conditions.

Cheers;

MSantos

 

I just bought the car at the beginning of this month and I notice that I am averaging "only" 40 mpg in SoCal. Mainly driving 91/71/210 or 91/15/10 and streets.

Even though I have owned the car less than a month, I am on my 5th tank!!!! yeah I drive a lot I guess. Also, I went to Vegas.

Vegas was a surprise for me....I average 40mpg...I thought I would average 45+. Apparently, Vegas is all hill climbing and going down. Anyone done better?

I have learnt that CC doesn't work well in uphill climbs. I do also drive 70+ most of the time. I am hardly below that on highway. I like speed. So, 40mpg is not that bad at those speeds.

Arbittan, why are you getting sooo low mileage? Even in short drives, I have seen I average more. And that is without doing anything out of the ordinary.

 

@ WildViper,

I don't know. I know it is colder now here than in September when I bought the car but even back then I was getting 34. I don't tailgate and drive under the speed limit it is just too dangerous to perform those type of tricks to improve mpg, but I do glide when I can.

I am not disappointed in the car but having owned a 1994 manual Civic DX in the past and averaging 40+ on a car that didn't advertise that type of mileage is. My previous MB also got around 20mpg and that was a SUV, but it had a state of the art 7 speed transmission which was smoother then the CVT used in the Civic.

Overall it's a Honda, in the past they have been reliable and today they are still. I might not get the mpg some people here are getting but I have learned to get over that. Not worth moaning over if you get what I mean

 

The "half street" part of the commute is going to hurt the mileage, regardless. When I was commuting to Santa Monica, the Lincoln Blvd. stretch would just kill all the MPG goodness from the freeway stretch.

Plus, generally, you know the 405 is slightly uphill heading north and slightly downhill heading south?

I average right around 49 mpg on the daily commute to Downtown L.A. now - and almost always better heading home at night (south) than in the morning (north) - but, as you can see from the overall #'s, it's the short trips around town that bring the MPG down.

 

Much good advice here
My commute is considerably longer than yours (75 miles round-trip). I get 50+ MPG pretty regularly in the summer on my commutes, but you can see that my overall average is 46.4. The drop comes mainly from the lower city MPG, and some from lower winter MPG.
Over time, better MPG will probably become a more "natural" thing for you. Try resetting one of your trip-meters for each "leg" of your commute, and for other little errands. You'll learn lots about YOUR driving area and its complexities, and you can really see driver improvement (especially in the early months of ownership). If you do that, and pay MUCH attention to the instant MPG meter, you'll see what works and what doesn't.
Also, 65 MPH is about the upper limit before taking a big hit in MPG. Try dropping it just to 62 and see what happens. I average probably 60-65 MPH on my commutes, and I can get 50+ MPG (sometimes even 60 MPG). And I never use cruise-control. I used it ONCE to make sure it worked, but that's it.

 

"Also, 65 miles per hour is about the upper limit before taking a big hit in MPG. Try dropping it just to 62 and see what happens."


If most HCH owners would do this, they'd get the mpg they desire. On a 70 mile trip, dropping from 65 mph to 60 would make a difference of 5 minutes, but would yield the magic 50+ mpg.

That's what I do for drives of 1 hour or less -- act like grandma and watch the mpg soar. But on road trips time is of the essence, so I sacrifice the gas.

I just made a round trip from Dallas to Kansas City over xmas. 500 miles each way, and I averaged 70 mph both times with a mpg reading of 42. Certainly not ideal, but 7 hours is a long time to spend in any car. I took the mpg hit to save an extra hour.


"I went to Vegas .... I average 40mpg...I thought I would average 45+. Apparently, Vegas is all hill climbing and going down. Anyone done better?"


I'm surprised you did that well. The Cajon Pass and the Baker Grade are mpg killers. Plus you have to keep your speed up as a matter of survival. Trucks will run you off the road if you're doing less than 60 mph.

Unfortunately, the HCH just doesn't do well on hills. It has 110 hp and weighs 3,000 lbs. That's fine for cruising around the suburbs with electric assist, but it takes a lot of horsepower (read: rpm) to climb desert mountains.

Folks in the western states have a tough time getting high mpg from the Civic Hybrid. In north TX, and for trips around the midwest, it's ideal -- few hills and sparse traffic. My lifetime mpg is 47, and, as you've seen, I don't baby my car.

It just goes to show that hybrid cars aren't "THE ANSWER." They're a step in the right direction with limited appeal. I hope they continue to improve them, but battery weight will always be an obstacle.

I'm more optimistic about Honda's upcoming hydrogen car. I really hope that succeeds and sees mass production. Zero pollution and cutting OPEC out of my life -- yeah, I'd pay extra for that.

I know we'll still need petro for trucking, aviation and military use. But if the consumer side of transport could tell the oil industry bye-bye, we'd all be better off.

.

 

Also, a few more observations from here in MA. Most states have switched over to 10% ethanol fuel mixtures and eliminated MTBE. This caused a noticable drop in FE, 5-10%. Combine that with cooler/colder weather and your FE will take a significant hit. I don't believe that any newer HCH's have lean burn technology anymore especially if you live in a "clean" state. It produces too much NOx... My mpg in the HCH I has been averaging from high 30's to mid 40's when it used to be around 50. Take heart though, the non hybrids are taking a big hit as well with the ethanol switch and colder weather. The car mfg's should label the FE on the sticker taking into account the 10% ethanol fuel mix. Public is being misled on all makes and models. THe more ethanol they add, the higher the cost and the lower the FE. Can't win, but at least the emissions are better.

 

Actually, ethanol is cheaper so the more they add, the less it should cost. As far as emmissions go, e10 pollutes about the same amount, but some of that is offset by the plant that was used to grow the ethanol.

 

I don't typically do the extreme steps to maximize the FE (in the NE, it's hard to, without being run off the road). I still manage to get in the low to mid 40s regardless. I'm quite happy with this, as I've learned over the years that normal driving will never give you the MPG that the car is advertised to achieve. The only car I had come close, was my Geo Metro and it was only highway doing 65 and under, and only shifting out of 5th gear when it was absolutely necessary.

However, I feel that if Honda hadn't scaled the ICE down quite as much, the car would do much better for those with highway driving and hills/mountains. 1.3L is just too small for that, and if they'd up it just a hair to around 1.5L it would do a lot better. The standard civic is 1.8L so it would still be scaled down, but would be a slightly safer car for those of us in the "faster" worlds.

As far as Hydrogen, it will never work with the demand that we have in the USA. For us to convert solely to Hydrogen, would require somewhere in the range of double the nuclear plants we have in the world today just to produce enough hydrogen for the auto world. Then you have the issue of capacity storage, location for fill ups, etc. I don't see hydrogen becoming a viable option. What we will evolve towards to become less dependant on fossil fuels, I have no idea and think there is a multitude of possibilities. In the end, it will probably have some sort of battery, and be plug-in electric. Then again, I'm planning on doing the solar thing for my house, to reduce my carbon footprint and not be a slave to the electric company.

 

I've had the car for about a year (still <9000 miles), and I struggle to get 40 MPG. Mainly, it is the shorter commute (14 miles each way) in mostly awful traffic in the SF bay area. Lifetime, I'm at 39.3 MPG, but that is helped a lot by a trip to Reno where I got great mileage.