After being told to expect delivery during the first week in December, I was thrilled to find out that the truck rolled up to my dealer (Menlo Honda, Redwood City; James Lee - great guy!) today! When CGameProgrammer reported his arrival last night, I started to wonder (hope) that mine might not be far behind since my build date (10/28) was only 4 days after his. My hopes ratcheted up another notch when I got a call from another dealer (Univeristy Honda, Davis that's farther away, I didn't put down a deposit, but was 'on the list') that he just got one on his lot. I figured that there can't be that many ships full of HCH's washing up on the shores of California, so these clustered sightings must be early indications of a fleet of car-carriers spreading across the state. I still resisted calling my dealer since A) he told me he would call me as soon as he knew anything, and B) he was probably sick of hearing from me. I finally caved by early afternoon and gave him a call. He said that he was about to call me because there was a car-carrier sitting in front of his dealership with 3 HCH's on board, but he still needed to verify that mine was one of them. Shortly thereafter, I got the confirmation call and arranged to pick it up after work. Indeed, the port of entry was San Diego; sorry I held up the boat CGP!

Look & Feel

It's opal silver blue, and it looks beautiful (haven't seen it during the day yet). It has very comfortable seating (more than my 99 Accord so far) and is ergonomic. I was worried about having to use the NAVI screen for controlling the audio, but there are physical controls (volume ****, AM/FM button, station preset buttons, etc.) around the periphery of the screen that make adjustments easy. That's in addition to the steering wheel controls, which I kept forgetting to use Of course, all of the climate controls (auto is cool!) are physical controls too. That's one of the things I didn't like about the Prius. The NAVI is going to be a great tool, I can already tell even though I haven't scratched the surface. One nice touch is that it switches from dark-colored streets on a light background to light-colored streets on a dark background when you turn on the headlights. It also displays the time and current radio station (or current street) in a semi-transparent font over the map. There's a 'voice command' button on the steering wheel that mutes the audio so it can listen to the driver. Having not yet read the manual, I guessed at some commands. It ignored me.

The gauges are laid out very well. I found that the speedometer was large enough that I could read it without taking my eyes off the road (peripheral vision). I had been hoping for a digital instant MPG gauge, but it changes often enough that the analog 'blocks' really works well. I'm gonna need some practice getting it to do what I want.

Performance

The car had 3 miles on it when I took delivery (which included a dealer test drive by a tech). My drive home from the dealer was 39.4 miles, which is close to my regular commute (dealer is near my work). Of that, all but 6 miles was freeway. I decided to see how it would do on its own without me trying any 'hypermiling' techniques, especially since I don't have any and I've never driven a hybrid before. I just eased up to 60 MPH and let it go the whole way on cruise control. The entire route is very slight rolling hills (which I never really noticed before this drive!). Here are the results:

CVT: steady 1800 RPM on the flats, +/- ~700 on hills since the cruise control was engaged
Outside Temp: 59 at the start, 53 when I got home.
Trip mileage: 51.4, which I thought was pretty good, since the car pretty much drove itself, and these were its first 39 miles.

I had a blast watching all the IMA gauges as it drove me up and down the hills towards home (I helped with steering). I usually drive 80, I had no idea driving slow could be so much fun! But, I look forward to putting all the great tips I have read here on GH to use and bumping that mileage up even more.

 

My girlfriend has a 2006 Hybrid in magnetic pearl. She bought it on 102905 and it now has over 2000 miles on it. The lowest tank was 47.8. The highest was today at 52.3
mpg.

This is filling the tank brim to brim not taken from the computer reading which by the way is pretty accurate. It drives like a dream, not a nightmare!!!
The mpg's continue to rise and we have yet to see another '06 civic hybrid in NW Oregon.

Safe driving...Alster

 

Congrats on the new cars!

 

hows does the car behave in stop and go traffic? oh and how are the noise levels is it quieter than a prius?

 

It's ironic yours came into San Diego, NASA, because mine came in from San Francisco. Interesting the so many people who are now getting this car are getting the Opal Silver, with a couple of Magnetics. I know the other colors are out there since I remember them from the build sheets... it'll be interesting seeing what a Galaxy Gray looks like.

 

On my commute this morning I got 49.1. It's the same stretch of freeway as my drive home from the dealer last night, but this time there was about 10 miles of stop-n-go (max 30 mph). It seemed to hold up well though, my average actually went up a couple of tenths over that part. My normal driving pattern is about 70/30 highway/city so I'm probably not a good use case for pure city driving.

The overall noise level is very low. I can barely hear the engine - I don't think I hear it at all, I just feel the slight vibration. It that regard it's similar to the Prius. My 99 Accord (4cyl, MT) engine noise is much more noticable. The road noise is much lower than the Prius, and than my Accord.

I am missing my MT though. This is my 5th car in 20 years of driving, and my first non-manual. My Accord has more pickup and is still funner to drive. Good thing is that my wife is now driving the Accord, so I can still get my occasional fix To be fair, I really haven't tried to open up the Civic yet, and don't want to until the break-in period is over. it just seems that with the same amount of accelerator pressure, the Accord jumps off the line quicker.

 

Heh, maybe our cars got mixed up On the sticker, mine says "Port of Entry: San Diego, Destination: San Francisco".

I originally told the dealer I didn't care about the color, anything but white. The Opal Blue was just the luck of the draw, but I'm liking it. I was worried that the ivory interior would be too light (secretly hoping for the blue two-tone), but the it's more of a two-tone beige/brown, and I'm liking that too.

 

I too am of the "anything but white" crowd, although after seeing Magnetic Pearl I think it's almost as bad. But then I also think the dark blue color of the previous HCH was also really ugly so I may be in the minority.

 

Ok, I used my lunch hour to do some stop-n-go tests I work at NASA Ames, and there are stop signs about every 500 feet all over the base, so there's lot's of stop-n-go here. I drove to get lunch, drove to the flight line to eat (saw a pair of F-14's take off in formation right in front of my parked HCH, what a contrast in FE!!! ), then just drove across the base a few times for a total of 9.3 miles, all stop-n-go. I got 46.3 for the trip, and the average was still going up, so it's not a whole lot different from what I have seen on the freeway @ 65 mph. The car auto-stopped at every stop sign.

 

I've been in what I consider "real" stop and go, where you're stopped at least half the time and can only crawl forward before stopping again. My car got around 25 mpg and I was being gentle, but this is to be expected. My time was spent either not moving but using no gas, accelerating slowly but then immediately having to stop, or using gas while not moving because I failed to reach 8 mph since the last time I had stopped.

That's just a worst-case scenario though. Most people would get 10 mpg on that crap.