Hi NASAgineer:

___The Prius’ strengths are in an all city environment where the IMA’s get taken to the woodshed. Because of the slow accelerations and coast downs in the FTP75, the Prius II is in its element. The Prius II’s ICE only runs ~ 46% of the time in that test if you can believe that! The HCH-I and II simply are not designed for this slow speed, ICE-Off Cruise, Accel, and Glide. At speeds below 41 miles per hour, a Prius II’s ICE really does shut down to run in a pure Glide/EV cruise/Regen mode depending on what you want out of it … You have to drive one on a warm day in a slow speed city/suburban environment sometime to see how good they really are in terms of outrageous FE department when driven in their element. The amount of time you will be driving ICE-Off will surprise you.

___A real world example would be to drive your HCH around Manhattan. Its FE would be destroyed in minutes by both a Ford Escape HEV and the Prius II due to their true EV capability. Drive the HCH-I and possibly the HCH-II at 55 + miles per hour and it will take down the Prius II although by only a small margin vs. the Prius II’s large % advantage in the inner city.

___MGBGT, the real world testing above was on an 06 HCH and they only come with a CVT. Honda knows what it is doing in some respects but they do not have the superior hybrid design. They do have the superior ICE design imho. In Honda’s own real world test, they had a lot of highway driving in the mix and this is the HCH-II’s strength over and above the Prius II. The Prius II is a larger and almost 200 # heavier automobile as well … It is to bad more people didn’t push it because it is so easy to bump up its FE when inside that city/suburban environment.

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes