Right. Basically, the electric drive is more of a technique to extend the "coasting" range of the car, rather than a replacement for the gasoline engine drive. There are a lot of situations where I would find that very nice though, such as going on gradual declines where I lose speed while coasting down, I could use the EV mode to maintain my speed without having to deal with engine-on at low throttle creating tons of pumping losses. If used strategically, even this fairly low-powered electric drive could dramatically cut fuel consumption.

I would also be interested in seeing if the '06 Civic Hybrid could be set up with the Manual-IMA mod that a lot of the Insight drivers have installed, where the electric can be controlled independently of the regular throttle. On the '06, I presume in certain situations, you could go into a valves-sealed coast, then manually run full-out electric drive, which might be good for getting rolling from a stop, or accelerating on a slight decline as well. Applying this mod, plus a larger battery pack could also enable a Plug-in hybrid optoin as well.