I'm no car expert, but here are my unqualified impressions of the car. I love it! Lots of room in front and back seats for adults. Car is extremely quiet. The kids love it, the wife loves it...its all good.
My only complaint at the moment is the smell from the rust proofing we got at the time of purchase. Hopefully that'll go away soon.
We are still on the first tank of gas, so far we have about 700km on the car (Woohoo!) with a quarter tank remaining. It has a 47 litre tank.
There's no manual on how to drive a hybrid, so I did some research and found all kinds of stuff on maximizing the fuel economy (hypermiling seems to the be going term for it). Basically, try to keep the RPM's down below 2000 and all is good. I'll dig up some of the posts I ran into and link them here. (http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1306)
Driving from home to Kingston Ontario, I managed to get 4.8 l/100km (~59 mpg) taking the highway 2 with a top speed of 90 km/hr. Taking the 401 netted me about 6 l/100km range (~47 Mpg). My wife isn't too concerned about the technology behind the car and maximizing the fuel consumption, she drives it as we did our previous car and gets around 6.5 l/100 (~43 mpg) km on the 401.
By the way, the mpg - l/km display displays it's mpg's based on the US gallon, which is smaller then the Canadian gallon...which we don't use anymore...so I guess it doesn't matter anyway hehe.
The car doesn't have a regular automatic transmission. It has a electronic controlled continuously variable transmission (CVT) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuously_variable_transmission). Basically this means that there's no shifting gears like a normal vehicle. The car just accelerates smoothly until to get to the speed you want to go. The higher you rev, the quicker you accelerate. The higher you rev, the more gas you burn as well. So there's a trade off between how much you want to tick off drivers behind you, and how much gas you want to save hehe.
The motor isn't typical either. It has a 20 hp electric motor/generator bolted on. What does this mean? When you accelerate, the electric motor and the gas engine both kick in to get you going. The harder you press the gas, the more both motors kick in.
Whenever you coast, brake or go down a hill really neat things happen. The most common thing is that the battery pack (located between the rear passengers and the trunk) will get a charge. They get a huge boost whenever you use the brakes. You see, the car doesn't normally use the brakes to stop, it uses the generator to stop. The harder you press the brake, the more of a charge the battery gets. The technical term for this is called Regenerative Braking. I'm not sure of the ratio of regenerative braking / break pads are used when stopping, but I'm guessing that its mostly the generator braking you and the pads kick in when you want to stop fast.
Ever drive a manual transmission car, and shut off the engine going down hills? Works ok as long as you dont have power steering hehe. This car takes that to a new level. If the hill is steep enough, or you are travelling at lower speeds, the gas engine will 'coast'. It basically shuts off. Infinite gas mileage, 0 l/100 km....its awesome.
The motor also shuts off whenever you brake at a stop light or slow down for other cars turning etc. It's not burning any gas, its recharging the battery. When you stop or slow, the car is silent except for the vent fans. As soon as you take your foot off the brake, the gas engine fires up again and away you go.
At speeds less then 60km or so, when you are going down hill, or on a straightaway, the gas engine will sometimes shut off. There's a 3-4 km stretch of downhill road heading into town from work. If you time everything right, the motor will be off the whole time.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
New Car
This is our first brand spanking new car in years, plus its a hybrid, so instead of retelling everyone what I think of it, I thought I'd try this 8)
2007 Honda Civic Hybrid
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