I'm coming up on 2 months of having the Honda Civic Hybrid. So far I have been extremely happy with the car. We've put on almost 3600 kms on it already. The overall FE for the life of the car has been 4.59 litres / 100 kms (51.18 mpg). The display says 4.7 but I'm calculating it based on distance travelled and litres of gasoline filled. So both numbers are pretty close.
All my driving so far has been in the city. Absolutely no long distance trips on the highways. The city rating for the car is 4.7 litres / 100 kms. I'm getting 4.59 overall. And the last tank was a super 4.12. So obviously I'm super pleased :)
The car has remained fairly reliable so far. (knock on wood). The only time I had to take it in to the dealership was to fix the windshield wipers. They replaced the blades and things have been good since. I have noticed a slight hiss sound when I press the brake pedal at times. It hasn't really affected braking or anything else. I'll still take it in for a check up in the next couple of weeks.
I am currently on the 6th tank of gas. Not all fill ups were after the tank was empty. Twice I filled up when the tank was only half empty. Most people prefer to wait till the fuel gauge shows E or worse. I tend to fill up as soon as I see cheap gas (well relatively cheap :)). I'd rather fill up 25 litres when the gas prices are $1.03 a litre than filling up 45 litres when its $1.11.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Friday, June 1, 2007
Best tank so far ...
The previous tank was my experiment tank ... and the results while pretty good were definitely not as spectacular as when using hybrid techniques. But the following tank has more than made up for that experiment.
Distance travelled on tank - 857.4 kms
Litres of Fuel used - 35.315
FE on tank - 4.12 l / 100 kms (57.11 mpg)
Gas prices had dipped just a bit so I decided to fill up rather than wait till the tank emptied. I still had 3 bars left on the Fuel gauge and the low fuel light hadn't yet come on. If I had waited it out ... I am pretty sure I could have hit 1000 kms on this tank.
Oh well ... hopefully I'll get more chances in the future.
Distance travelled on tank - 857.4 kms
Litres of Fuel used - 35.315
FE on tank - 4.12 l / 100 kms (57.11 mpg)
Gas prices had dipped just a bit so I decided to fill up rather than wait till the tank emptied. I still had 3 bars left on the Fuel gauge and the low fuel light hadn't yet come on. If I had waited it out ... I am pretty sure I could have hit 1000 kms on this tank.
Oh well ... hopefully I'll get more chances in the future.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Lower EPA numbers
Ever since cars started advertising the EPA mileage numbers there have been complaints that those numbers are ridiculous and no one can ever achieve them in real world situations. So the EPA standards were re-done and the 2008 model year cars will have new numbers. Obviously ratings are lower for all cars including Hybrids.
And that has started this silly argument amongst people that hybrids are no longer worth it. And that it will take much much longer for people to even out the hybrid premiums with the gas savings.
My 2 cents ... that's all crap. The cars are not changing. They're not suddenly using up more fuel. All that has happened is that the new EPA specs bring the fuel economy numbers for most cars closer to what the average person gets. It is essentially a PR exercise so that less people bitch about their cars only getting half the claimed fuel economy.
In my case ... the 2007 Honda Civic Hybrid (using the old specs) is rated at 4.7 (city) and 4.3 (highway) litres / 100 kms. My use of the car has been purely city driving so far. The lifetime FE that i have achieved is around 4.7. Except for the initial dealer supplied tank and my driving experiment tank, I have been getting between 4.2 and 4.7. So I am already achieving better than EPA fuel economy.
What FE people actually achieve depends entirely on their individual situations - climate, terrain, distance travelled per trip, driving habits etc. So the likely hood of exactly hitting the EPA ratings is very very slim.
Instead of using these numbers in isolation ... what people need to do is use them for comparative purposes. So if Car A is rated at 4.5 and car B is at 9.0 ... most people will find that car B uses twice as much fuel as car A. And this will hold true even if you're a crazy speed demon or the guy that's holding up a huge line of cars on a single lane highway driving at half the posted speed limit.
If everyone uses these ratings for comparative purposes only ... there are going to be very few angry drivers (well ideally there would be none but I'm sure someone would find something to complain about). Most of the people would be satisfied with the information they receive and there would be less issues.
And that has started this silly argument amongst people that hybrids are no longer worth it. And that it will take much much longer for people to even out the hybrid premiums with the gas savings.
My 2 cents ... that's all crap. The cars are not changing. They're not suddenly using up more fuel. All that has happened is that the new EPA specs bring the fuel economy numbers for most cars closer to what the average person gets. It is essentially a PR exercise so that less people bitch about their cars only getting half the claimed fuel economy.
In my case ... the 2007 Honda Civic Hybrid (using the old specs) is rated at 4.7 (city) and 4.3 (highway) litres / 100 kms. My use of the car has been purely city driving so far. The lifetime FE that i have achieved is around 4.7. Except for the initial dealer supplied tank and my driving experiment tank, I have been getting between 4.2 and 4.7. So I am already achieving better than EPA fuel economy.
What FE people actually achieve depends entirely on their individual situations - climate, terrain, distance travelled per trip, driving habits etc. So the likely hood of exactly hitting the EPA ratings is very very slim.
Instead of using these numbers in isolation ... what people need to do is use them for comparative purposes. So if Car A is rated at 4.5 and car B is at 9.0 ... most people will find that car B uses twice as much fuel as car A. And this will hold true even if you're a crazy speed demon or the guy that's holding up a huge line of cars on a single lane highway driving at half the posted speed limit.
If everyone uses these ratings for comparative purposes only ... there are going to be very few angry drivers (well ideally there would be none but I'm sure someone would find something to complain about). Most of the people would be satisfied with the information they receive and there would be less issues.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Color
As I've mentioned before ... I love the exterior color of our Civic Hybrid - Fluorite Silver. And apparently so do a lot of other people. A bunch of my friends have commented on the "niceness" of the color. Based on the angle and the sunlight ... you see either a plain silver car or silver with a hint of blue.
Last weekend I was in downtown and had to park my car on the street. As I was coming back I noticed a few people walking by the car and looking a it. As I walked by them (they didn't yet know that the car was mine) ... I overheard them exclaim that its a lovely color and the blue makes it really start out from the other silvers. And then I unlocked the car ... slid inside and drove away with a smile :)
Last weekend I was in downtown and had to park my car on the street. As I was coming back I noticed a few people walking by the car and looking a it. As I walked by them (they didn't yet know that the car was mine) ... I overheard them exclaim that its a lovely color and the blue makes it really start out from the other silvers. And then I unlocked the car ... slid inside and drove away with a smile :)
Final Results
As I mentioned earlier, I was experimenting a bit with the hybrid. I was driving it as I used to drive my previous car(s) while ignoring the iFCD and avoiding hybrid driving techniques. It wasn't easy doing it because a lot of the habits seemed counter-intuitive. That's funny coz just a couple of months ago that used to be "normal" driving.
Anyways, the experiment lasted a week. I didn't end up using the whole tank because the it seemed pretty obvious where the results were heading. I used 25.87 litres of fuel to drive 536.9 kms. That gave me an FE of 4.82 litres / 100 kms (48.82 mpg).
Comparing that with the previous tank which gave me 4.47 litres / 100 kms (52.6 mpg), it appears that my "non-hybrid" driving techniques give me about a 7 - 10 % hit in FE. Had I completed the entire tank ... I suspect that me FE would've been close to 5.0 litres / 100 kms.
So what does this mean ... driving carefully will save me about 10% in fuel costs. That translates to roughly 1000 litres of gasoline over the life of the car. Definitely not insignificant. So I have gone back to my regular hybrid techniques with one slight change ... I no longer use EV glide. i.e. I don't try to use the battery-only mode to maintain or increase speed. I dropped that because I think it'll help reduce the strain on my battery. And so far I am not seeing much negative impact from that change. More details on the new tank in the next post.
Anyways, the experiment lasted a week. I didn't end up using the whole tank because the it seemed pretty obvious where the results were heading. I used 25.87 litres of fuel to drive 536.9 kms. That gave me an FE of 4.82 litres / 100 kms (48.82 mpg).
Comparing that with the previous tank which gave me 4.47 litres / 100 kms (52.6 mpg), it appears that my "non-hybrid" driving techniques give me about a 7 - 10 % hit in FE. Had I completed the entire tank ... I suspect that me FE would've been close to 5.0 litres / 100 kms.
So what does this mean ... driving carefully will save me about 10% in fuel costs. That translates to roughly 1000 litres of gasoline over the life of the car. Definitely not insignificant. So I have gone back to my regular hybrid techniques with one slight change ... I no longer use EV glide. i.e. I don't try to use the battery-only mode to maintain or increase speed. I dropped that because I think it'll help reduce the strain on my battery. And so far I am not seeing much negative impact from that change. More details on the new tank in the next post.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Early Results
As I mentioned earlier ... I've started a mini-experiment to see what kind of fuel economy (FE) I can achieve with my old driving habits. I have some very preliminary results.
So far I have driven about 60 kms using this style and have been pleasantly surprised. I have made 3 trips ... a very short trip of about 5 kms on a residential streets, the second one driving about 16 kms away and back mostly 80 km/hr streets. I was driving roughly 5 km/hr over the limit. The 3rd trip has been a 25 km drive again on mostly 80 km/hr streets.
FE seems to vary between 4.3 and 4.6. If this holds up till the end of the experiment ... that'll be a real surprise. My observations so far ...
Over the next week or so I should have a result on this experiment. Stay tuned.
So far I have driven about 60 kms using this style and have been pleasantly surprised. I have made 3 trips ... a very short trip of about 5 kms on a residential streets, the second one driving about 16 kms away and back mostly 80 km/hr streets. I was driving roughly 5 km/hr over the limit. The 3rd trip has been a 25 km drive again on mostly 80 km/hr streets.
FE seems to vary between 4.3 and 4.6. If this holds up till the end of the experiment ... that'll be a real surprise. My observations so far ...
- Battery charge level stays pretty high if you avoid Glide / EV Glide. Since the fill up it has start pretty close to maximum charge for the most part.
- FE obviously degrades when accelerating from a stop but it appears to catch up when driving at a consistent speed (so far its mostly been between 65 and 85 km/hr).
- The Civic Hybrid's fuel management system seems pretty efficient in that even though I am not trying to coast / glide ... it is able to give me good FE.
Over the next week or so I should have a result on this experiment. Stay tuned.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Driving Style Experiment
I expect gas prices to go up tomorrow (more on how I know ... later) so I filled up even though the tank was not yet empty. The car took a bit over 20 litres (I don't have the actual numbers right now... will post them when i get home) and we'd driven about 550 kms on the tank. Based on the calculations ... we got about 4.47 litres / 100 kms. Again ... excellent as far as I am concerned. The FED indicated 4.5 for the tank and 4.9 overall.
I am starting a mini-experiment with the car. So far we've tried to drive the car "carefully". No speeding. Gentle acceleration. Coast and glide as much as possible. And obviously the FE has been great. But I wanted to switch back to our pre-hybrid driving habits and see where we land. We aren't aggressive drivers. Mostly I used to drive at or slightly above the speed limit ex 110 or 120 (km/hr) on the highways (speed limit of 100). But I was rarely the guy holding up all the traffic. I would go with the flow of traffic. Sometimes speed up to avoid getting caught on a red light. I used to accelerate a bit more aggressively than now. So now I am going back to that ... for the near future. I hope to figure out how much of an impact "careful" driving has on FE.
Over the last couple of tanks we've got between 4.4 and 4.5. I wanna see if using the old habits I get anywhere near that. Coz that would be a truer test of how much more efficient the Civic Hybrid is compared to our previous cars.
My driving style is going to be ...
I am starting a mini-experiment with the car. So far we've tried to drive the car "carefully". No speeding. Gentle acceleration. Coast and glide as much as possible. And obviously the FE has been great. But I wanted to switch back to our pre-hybrid driving habits and see where we land. We aren't aggressive drivers. Mostly I used to drive at or slightly above the speed limit ex 110 or 120 (km/hr) on the highways (speed limit of 100). But I was rarely the guy holding up all the traffic. I would go with the flow of traffic. Sometimes speed up to avoid getting caught on a red light. I used to accelerate a bit more aggressively than now. So now I am going back to that ... for the near future. I hope to figure out how much of an impact "careful" driving has on FE.
Over the last couple of tanks we've got between 4.4 and 4.5. I wanna see if using the old habits I get anywhere near that. Coz that would be a truer test of how much more efficient the Civic Hybrid is compared to our previous cars.
My driving style is going to be ...
- Do not drive based on the iFCD ... well the occasional glance is allowed but I will not stop accelerating because of what I see on the iFCD.
- Drive with the flow of traffic ... no lagging behind at 52 on a 60 zone. Drive at or slightly above the speed limit. Accelerate "normally" rather than "painfully slowly". Don't start coasting a mile away from a stop sign hoping that momentum will carry me that far.
- No conscious attempt to Coast, Glide or EV glide. No conscious attempt to manage battery charge level. And no conscious attempt to change driving style to get lower (or higher) FE.
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