I presently have a HCH 04 and was interested in the 06 but..............I noticed on their website that the o6 is epa at 49/51 mpg city/highway....my 04 was epa at 47 highway/ 48 city. It looks like the new Honda only gets one mile better in the city!!!!!!! Not to good I would say for all the new innovations they are claiming. The jump from 47 highway to 51 is nice however. Any comments? Also has anyone noticed a change in performance when using gas with 10% ethanol in it?

 

Forget EPA. What are you realy getting. I think the 06 is designed to get better mileage for the average user. Also, the car is biger and has a little more power.

As far as gas with 10% ethanol goes you will get lower FE.

 

Yeup ethonal not only gives you terrible performance it can also damage your car. Since it's only 10% blend, the damage is not noticeble, but higher blends require that your car be a "flex" fuel car.

I have yet to hear anything positive about ethonol, all the data suggest that it cost more to make and polutes just as much, not to mention it requires about a gallon of fuel to make it.

I stay far away from anything that has an E on it at the pumps.

 

livvie,the old' it takes a gallon to make a gallon" is absolute BS".The Brazilians run about 1/2 their cars on ethanol,and have been for 10+ years.If it was energy negative they probably would have noticed that by now.Almost all fuels take some energy to make them "car usable".With petro oil the amount of energy to transport-refine-deliver is pretty low-it is certainly higher with ethanol.However WE CAN GROW ETHANOL,AND IT ADDS NO CO2 TO THE ATM.We can't grow petro oil in fact we have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to assure the flow and it adds lots of CO2.
Yes,petro make great car fuel,but we are running out,and it might be raising the average temp of the planet,and that probably isn't a good thing(how bad is it,I don't know).
All current cars car use 105 ethanol with no problems at all-once again BS to say it"hurts cars".
Hurts performance-BS!Yes it does decrease fuel economy per gallon-so what-you can grow more!No we couldn't grow enough ethanol(wood,corn whatever) to replace all our car fuel-we use waaay too much-but we might be able to replace 20-50%,and maybe conservation-hybrids-lighter vehicles can improve that number.
Ethanol is a great fuel-considering $3 gas and Iraq-middle east.Luck,Charlie
PS No I don't care that ADM gets a big subsidy-tax break-look what Big Oil gets!

 

Hehe, that's because they have a huge sugar market, try making Ethonal here in NE... and it will cost you more than a gallon to produce.

The only study that I have read about bio fuels that makes sense is BioDiesel made from algae. And only algae, not soy bean.

Ethonal ranks as one of the worst. Show me a study otherwise.

 

I think that the major difference is that you can achieve that mileage driving more "normally" than what you have to do with our 04s.

 

This is my understanding as well. Highway mileage should be greatly improved; people with the gasoline-only 2006 Civics report 40+ mpg even at high speeds. City driving I expect to be similar -- not Prius quality. It helps that there's an electric A/C unit which is only used when the engine is off so it can stay off (no more "econo-mode" hack) and the car can run on the motors only if driven gently and below 35 mph, according to Honda.

 

Yeah, econ mode is a real pain... definitely envious of that electric A/C.

 

repost:

https://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/...esel.3676.html

relevant post:

 

-Yeah, about Brazil producing EtOH at a square cost, is because of the infrastructure (read sugar industry) in place, and the fact that the labor force is DIRT CHEAP.

-Ethanol is destructive to all vehicles not designed as flexible fuel vehicles because among other reasons it attracts water like white on rice. As we all know water is good for engines.

-Currently, as of my writing this post, it requires more energy (READ PETROLEUM) to generate EtOH than it does to drill, process and transport petrol. Hopefully, at some point in the future, EtOH will be much cheaper to produce, and more vehicles will be able to handle this energy-poor molecule.

-Keep your dirty subsidized booze out of my Hybrid.