Medicalstudent, I rarely ever go to Houston anymore but let me know if you're headed up this way.

 

Wow, so I have 1200 miles on my HCHII, so it should be broken in. I think I understand now that for someone who lives in a northern climate where 5/8 of the year is cold, and usually makes a commute/other drives that are under 10 minutes, a hybrid will not do them much good. I thought that 38mpg earlier this summer was bad...now that it got colder I am averaging 30

I should have saved myself $5000 and just gotten a regular Civic.

 

hmmm, perhaps you should look at your driving habits? there are ways to improve, but you can't drive it like a sports car.

i am in a cold climate, too. i have averaged just about 60MPG all summer, and it always stay above 50 in the winter.

 

How did you get 800 miles on a tank if your best MPG is 60-something?

Listen, some of you might live in places where the conditions are always perfect but I can drive with a feather foot and get 45 MPG if it's 50 degrees out, 50 MPG if it's 70 degrees. I'm probably going to get 35 or lower in the winter. This is all after I pumped up my tires to higher than they should be.

My commute is about 15 miles and takes 35-45 minutes. If the car doesn't auto-stop I'm screwed. It took it a long time to warm up this morning and it wasn't even very cold.
--
Martin

 

my civic has a 13.2 gallon tank. that 800 mile tank averaged about 62MPG. i have gotten higher mileage on tanks that were not driven to 800 miles, perhaps just having better driving conditions on the tank which gave me 65+.

and my conditions are far from perfect, especially considering the snow in minnesota, and high winds a lot this summer.

do you coast when possible? how fast do you drive? do you speed up to lights, or coast along slowly taking advantage of the light changing before you get there. do you practice slow acceleration or use jack rabbit starts. all these things can affect your mileage. i maintained over 50 in the winter last year, so i know it can be done. it depends on how much effort you want to put into it.

 

This sounds fairly average to me, but you seem to be complaining. Getting 50 mpg when it's 70 degrees is good- many HCH owners are thrilled with that. I know I am. Really, I doubt very much that you will get 35 mpg in the winter, as well- but only time will tell and I must admit that one tank on my car did dip into that range (38--39ish) on a bitter cold day at 80 mph against high winds, with a heavily loaded car and my mother driving crazily during the first winter I owned it. However, absent those extreme conditions, I never get anywhere near 35 mpg, and I doubt that you will if you can get 50 when it's 70- your car seems fine.

 

On the subject of frivolous lawsuits, someone always mentions the McDonald's coffee case. It's funny the way that one case has become symbolic of frivolous litigation in this country, somehow. This is actually terribly ironic, because it wasn't a frivolous case at all. There are plenty of frivolous lawsuits out there (prisoners suing because they want chunky peanut butter served in the jails instead of creamy; things like that) but in the McDonald's coffee case, the woman ended up with third degree burns- that's a burn that goes all the way down to the bone. I don't know what kind of coffee you may drink, but restaurant coffee is NOT supposed to be that hot- in this case, the coffee machine was broken and had superheated the water. The management knew about the problem, didn't fix it, and kept serving people anyway until one woman was seriously hurt. To me, that's a reasonable lawsuit.

 

That's my beef exactly -- I paid 30% more for the Civic Hybrid over the Civic for one reason only: because the sticker said 47 mpg and the test drive (of another car) attained 45 mpg. Then they slipped me this car that gets 33 mpg and say, "tough luck, sucker."

So now I'm stuck with this car because I'm too ethical to sell a defective car to someone else and they won't fix the problem.

 

I see the person's point. If you are purchasing this car based on increased fuel savings then he has that right. I am not thrilled with the gas mileage I am getting either. I am not in a sue happy state of mind like this person is, but I could have saved my 2100.00 up front with the purchase of a EX-L model. It is rated to get 25/31. Anyway, you should not be jumping all over this person. My Mercedes states 17/21, I got 23mpg on it. I am happy with that. My Hybrid Civic states 41/51, I should be getting at least that. No coasting, or Hypermillings, or getting out and push, It should get 41/51 when I step on the gas period!

Thanks

 

I really think my driving is good - like i have said before, the rpm counter is almost always at or below 1500, and rarely goes above 2000.

i think the problem is i do almost all city and no highway