Civic Hybrid And Prius MPG

Green Hornet

Was listening to the wet dishcloth (Matt Cooper) this evening on the way home and I heard a discussion with regards to "Green Cars". I'm a big fan of Honda but according to the contributor from Auto Express (at least I think it was Auto Express) the new Civic Hybrid only gives 38 mpg. How can that be? The 1.8 iVTEC provides 40+ mpg and I think the hybrid uses a 1.5L petrol engine with electric backup (not too well up on the technology but I hope you know what I mean?). Can the figure of 38mpg be real? I assume they are not just basing the figure on urban figures. Incidentally, the Prius did not fare very much better.

E92

It's fairly well known at this stage that several hybrid owners have difficulty in getting their cars to do the quoted figures.

I have read articles in all sorts of British publications from Top Gear, to What Car?, Autocar, the Sunday Times, Auto Express and the one thing they all have in common is that they never seem to get anywhere near the official mpg figures. It should be pointed out that very few cars get near the official mpg figures anyway, but hybrids have more difficulty than most. The whole point of a hybrid is that it is thriftier than diesel, and in theory(the official tests) this is true but as has been shown be various magazines on many different occasions this is rarely true, and often the diesels beat hybrids hands down.

It's rather damming of hybrid technology when you find that even when you do a test that 80% of the time favours the hybrid, a diesel BMW 520d is found to be more economical than a hybrid Prius, and btw the 520d is officially 10.3 mpg less economical than the Prius.

BMW for instance has not yet released a hybrid because they reckon their diesels are more economical in the real world than a petrol electric hybrid, and they said that until such time as they can get hybrids to use less fuel in the real world than diesels, then they won't be selling them.

All the German car markers seem to be of the same opinion and will tell you that diesel is a better way of cutting down on fuel consumption.

Look at this test, the Civic IMA did 38.2 mpg(offical figure 61.4), the Prius did 41.5(offical figure 65.7), while the MINI Cooper Clubman D which officially does 68.9 mpg was found to have done 57 mpg. The Ford Focus ECOnetic has a virtually identical official mpg to the Prius at 65.5 mpg, but it actually did 45.8 mpg compared to the 41.5 mpg of the Prius.


Now don't get confused into thinking that diesel is all hunky dory, diesel is severely flawed compared to petrol for virtually all emissions that are not CO2 related, and I'm by no means a diesel lover(in any of the petrol vs diesel threads I'll always be found staunchly defending petrol because it is better), but on the other hand hybrids have batteries shipped half way around the world, so you can make of that what you will and supposed greenness. On the other hand, by 2014 diesel will have cleaned up in all non CO2 related emissions hugely(though by then petrols will have been of the same cleanliness since 2004).

At the end of the day, since Carbon Dioxide is all the rage thesedays, and it is related to fuel consumption, and given that as mentioned before diesel will be lower on fuel consumption, diesel therefore continues to be the best way of reducing your "carbon footprint". Compared to non hybrid petrol, diesel is expensive, but hybrids are expensive compared to diesel, so that means that diesel hybrids when they arrive will either lose a lot of money for car manufacturers or they will cost a small fortune, so that is why we won't be seeing diesel hybrids on anything small for sometime yet. The proof of how expensive a diesel hybrid is nowhere more evident than Merc's S-class diesel hybrid, it has only 4 cylinders, now what kind of a "luxury" car has only 4 cylinders as standard? Diesel hybrids are only really viable on these type of cars, or the big and expensive SUVs, and as the Merc shows, there will be compromises made even to get them to be commercially viable.

not1ie

Well diesel is dirtier than petrol for every litre burnt. They are more particles emitted and other nasties. So if you can get a petrol car to match the fuel economy of a diesel then the petrol would be greener. Due to the efficiencies of the diesel engine and the extra energy that can be extracted from the diesel fuel then without the use of a hybrid or other system then the diesel will always be more efficient.
I have a Prius now for 3 days and the fuel economy is showing 55mpg and getting better the more I drive it (motorways and some city). So I don't know how people can say they don't get the mileage claimed. I don't drive it like an old granny either, my other car is a Celica GT4 and I can get 30mpg out of that easily without trying and that is a fast car. I carry a lot of speed into corners and drive right up to the speed limits.
One thing I did find is that the Prius has to warm up before it gives its best fuel economy, short runs like any other car will kill the economy.

JHMEG

Simple: Negative stories get jumped on by the media (and E92), positive ones don't. That Auto Express article doesn't even tell us how they did the tests, so we have to assume they drove around in 1st gear for the whole test.

Otoh, real people in the real world by and large do well. I have a Civic IMA and typically get 65mpg without trying. I get 89mpg if I try hard enough.

DemonOfTheFall

To be honest I'd say there's a lot of eejits running out and buying Priuses / Diesels / whatever to be eco-friendly or to cut down on their mileage or whatever, but all they really need to do is ease off on the throttle a bit and learn what gear to be in.