I'd owned my 2006 Civic Hybrid for 6 months and driven it a bit under 12400 miles. Now it's gone, so here are my thoughts on the car.

GOOD:

Displays. All the buttons are lit well. The speedometer and tach are clearly legible and very cool-looking. All LCD displays have adjustable brightness. It's easy to cycle through the display options (outside temp, mileage, odometer, etc.). Two tripmeters, each with their own MPG reading, theoretically anyhow (there was that 63-mile bug, but there's a recall for it now).

Interior. The two cupholders are huge, durable, easy to use, and out of the way. The AUX input and one of the two 12V outlets are easy to reach. The sun visors are deep and block the sun well. Seats are comfortable and easily adjusted. Good amount of storage.

Steering at moderate speeds. The wheel is not overly mushy, there's no real dead zone, and the steering ratio is pretty tight, so you don't need to turn the steering wheel alot to steer the car. Also, the controls on it are very easy to reach and use.

Fuel economy when cruising. At a fixed speed on a level surface, the car can get very good fuel economy between 30-70 mph. A/C does not appear to affect it.

Large side-view mirrors.

Decent visibility.

Quiet. Surprisingly so, even at high speeds. The engine can get loud, especially when going uphill, but wind noise is not alot.

Looks. I like it. It looks far better than the previous Civic.

BAD:

Mileage at no speed. Does not auto-stop when the engine is cold. Does not auto-stop within 30 seconds of the car being started (even with fully warmed engine). Does not auto-stop if it auto-stopped recently and the car hasn't reached 9 mph, except once. Sometimes it auto-stops when the car slows to a stop, but when it finally hits 0 mph the engine inexplicably starts up again (highly irritating). The engine runs when the car is in reverse or even in Park (I suspect because you have to move past R to shift into P).

Mileage at high speeds. I have seen 36-42 mpg at 75-80 mph at various times. 40-42 is fine, though not great, but it doesn't always get even that. It depends on hills, I think. And on a 82-88 mph drive over 900 miles, the car got 32-34 mpg. That's with tires at 50 PSI by the way.

Steering at highway speeds. The steering seems very wobbly at higher speeds, which can be really annoying.

Acceleration. It's slow. And if the battery is less than half full, it's REALLY slow.

Hill-climbing. The engine needs to rev very high to go over hills, making it very loud, high-pitched, and somewhat distressing. 4000-6000 rpm to climb a hill at 70 mph?

Jerkiness. Regenerative braking made my car very jerky, both when it engaged and when it disengaged. Each time I tap the gas pedal, there's a jolt. Releasing it also causes a jolt. Auto-stop is even worse as you can't even move forward until about a second after releasing the brake pedal.

Electric-only mode. N/A. The car can coast while using no gas, and sometimes it can do this without even slowing down, while using little or no gas. If, in this mode, you press the gas pedal very lightly, it might even add some assist. And voila, that's your electric-only mode: an assisted coast. It doesn't have much more of an impact than just coasting regularly or without regeneration (by pressing the gas pedal lightly to cancel regen but not use assist). And if you're going 25 mph and want to go 27 mph, you have to use the engine, since you cannot accelerate at all using the electric motor alone.

Here is my favorite picture of it:

Goodbye, car!

 

Why did you sell and what did you replace it with?

I agree with the positives and find that the negatives, while I do agree to a certain degree, are not big enough issues to make owning my '06 HCH at all unpleasant, nor am I at all dissapointed with mine. I had the '04 first and find this to be a huge improvement.

 

I'm certain you got a good deal on your 2006 HCH.

Are you going to find a car that does everything you want?

 

In the corner under location it indicates he has the new hybrid Camary......Good luck with your new ride.

 

Oops, I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out. I didn't even think to look there.

 

Clyde, I totally agree with your observations. We now have 2 HCH'06s at home and have never been happier with any other cars.

I would not pump-up my tires to 50 PSI and then drive it 88 MPH ... and then complain that the steering is "woobly".

There is some feed-back from the car, but I actually like it.

I am not concerned about how many times it goes into auto-stop or if the 2 spark plugs on each cylinder are firing, or if the valves are closing to reduce drag when they should.

I now get 4 L/100km, instead of 11.7 L/100km. I used to pay $65cdn to fill my tank, for the same distance I now pay around $25. That and the comfortable ride is all I wanted and got.

I feel safer in my new car, mainly because I drive safer now.

Good look CGameProgrammer with your new Camry !

 

Great review. I agree with many of the things you stated...both positives and negatives.

If I can ask, what did you get for your trade?

 

I believe he traded in for a Camry Hybrid, which seems to have solved most of the design drawbacks associated with both the Gen-1 and Gen-2 HCH. My family got our HCH when it was the only hybrid option in a somewhat normal looking 4-door, in 2002, but if I were to make that decision now I'd definitely go with the Camry.

this has always bugged me, they should have programmed the Reverse position to only restart the engine if the brake is released, problem solved. Auto-stop kicking in at inappropriate times is my biggest gripe about the car. The most alarming is when I roll up to a stop sign, pause to check cross-traffic, auto-stop kicks in, and I hit the gas to turn onto a busy intersection. Unfortunately, I have to wait for the RPMs to drop THEN restart, THEN for the clutch to engage. By the time the cltuch engages, the engine is revved up so much the wheels start spinning if it's wet! (no longer the case with my non-LRR tires) By the time the car starts moving, I'm cutting it close to make a turn that should have already been made. To get around this dangerous flaw, I have to do a wacky "double-tap" of the brakes at stop lights where I'll be turning.

These are both related, and the same applies with driving moderate speeds with lots of accessory load. They should have gone with a 1.5-1.8l displacement to be able to comfortably handle higher sustained loads IMHO. (See Camry Hybrid)

This could be improved with a slightly larger electric motor. (Camry Hybrid again)

In-gear coasting should incur no regenerative charging unless explicitly requested by a switch on the transmissoin lever, or when braking (Camry...)

This seems to be an improvement over the Gen-1 HCH. Mine is quite noisy. Much of this is because I need to replace some rubber on the drivers-side window (passenger side is much quieter at the same speeds... I discovered this when I let someone else drive my car recently), but even aside from that I got lots of road noise stock. I'm actually in the process of improving this greatly by lining some of the sheet metal, and the plastic underbody paneling with foam to deaden the resonance.

Anyway, enough complaints, on the whole I like my car very much. Here are a few things I like about my HCH-1:

• Body style and Paint (Titanium Metallic) -- which are in my opinion the nicest of any hybrid I've seen, HCH-2 in dark blue being a close second.
• Handling -- It was good before, but with my newest tire replacement, my car handles amazingly around turns, provides excellent steering feedback, and the electric power steering is crisp and smooth.
• CVT Transmission -- Though this is on just about every hybrid, I love how my car doesn't need to gear-hunt when climbing the many hills up to my house like an automatic. For climbing slow-speed hills, RPMs are pegged squarely in the low-mid 2000RPM range the whole time.
• Available parts/accessories -- since the body is a typical Civic, there's a wide selection of 3rd party parts and accessories available. The Camry should have this advantage as well.

 

Good summation, good luck with the TCH! Post photos.


I wouldn't say getting 32-34 mpg at a 900 mile trip of 82-88 mph is bad. Any car would will decrease mileage dramatically at this speed because of the high amount of wind resistance and friction. The hybrid powertrain has no advantage over a standard gas powertrain at high cruising speeds. I am curious to see how the TCH compaires at highway speeds however, as its gearing and extra power probably is much better suited to higher speeds.

For the record when I drive on the local highways I typically maintain about 74-76 mph and get 42-44 mpg, so you can see that FE drops off drastically at these speeds.

As far as jerkiness goes when regenerative breaking kicks in, Mine has a very mild tug, but I definitely wouldn't refer to it as a 'jolt' or 'jerkiness'. I wonder if yours was malfunctioning somehow.

 

I recently drove in a '06 Nissan Sentra SE 1.8L on I-40 with a friend of mine where even the 18-wheel trucks exceeded 90mph in some places. At an average speed of just under 90mph we averaged about 27.5mpg by display -- the same as his lifetime average with similar commute and similar driving style as mine. In the 82-88 range on I-15 we averaged about 28.5mpg.

The Civic Hybrid would still save some fuel at those speeds though in terms of gas, and at least it won't get worse on all-day road trips. but having the enging winding way out is loud/annoying, and doesn't leave much power in reserve for mountain climbing. However, when you get into my friend's similar day-to-day city/highway driving, my Civic Hybrid delivers about 42-44 as compared to 28, a massive difference.

The advantage of the Camry seems to be is that it gets almost the same mileage across the whole range as the Civic, except for hypermile driving, despite being a larger vehicle and having much more power in reserve. Dumping the Camry Hybrid motor into the smaller Civic Body, then adding a plug-in LiIon booster pack would probably be my ideal car -- good, cheap (fuel cost at least...) and fast.