Hey everyone, I am brand new to this board, but have been on several others for past vechicles. I bought my new Accord Hybrid on Friday and live about 200 miles from the dealer where I purchased it. I traded in a 5 month old Nissan Titan Crew Cab 4x4 with about 5500 miles, only because of it's 15-17 highway mpg. Otherwise, it was an excellent truck.

I was car shopping and hadn't even thought about a hybrid vehicle. I stopped at the Honda dealer wanting to look at a loaded up Accord. The salesman pointed out the hybrid and asked me if I'd ever considered one. At that point, it struck me as an excellent idea. I especially liked the appearance of the Accord and was really impressed by the test drive.

After taking delivery, I drove around town for a couple of hours putting on about 115 miles. Then I headed home. I was eager to see the mpg indicate some big numbers and show me what a great choice I'd made. Over the course of the 3 hour drive home, I never saw it climb above 31.9 and that was during extended hiway stretches. Needless to say, I was very disappointed and thought about taking it back to the dealer the next day.

In order to get my facts together first, I went to my gas station and decided to do a real mileage check before I claimed it wasn't delivering what I'd paid for. I was very surprised to find that despite what the indicator was saying, I'd actually averaged just over 32mpg for the total 315 miles. I didn't think that was bad at all for the combined city/hiway driving.

Yesterday I decided to go for a drive and see if I could learn a little more about what sort of driving conditions the car liked best and to see if I could get the numbers up on the mpg indicator. I drove about 80 miles of mostly highway driving and actually got the mpg indicator up to 38 by the end of the trip. I stopped and filled the tank again to see how it really figured out. Sure enough, I had used just slightly over 2 gallons.

So, the point of all of this is that I'm realizing the car will do what's advertised if you learn how to drive it and give it the opportunity to do so. Having a lead foot won't get big mpg numbers, although the performance of the car does make that a real temptation!

I'm looking forward to learning about the HAH here, and I'm already seeing threads on a real mirror that have me thinking about some baubles.

Thanks - a 400 mile newbie!