I just drove home a new 05HAH yesterday and whoever was test driving the car really must have flogged it pretty hard because the MPG was listed as 18.3. I zeroed that out after the dealer filled the tank and was pushing 30 with it by the time I got home (but I "cheat" - I already own an 03 HCH so I know how to drive for better MPG anyway.)


The big thing I noticed offhand about the Accord is that it's VERY quick off the the starting block, so the "secret" is to get it up to your "cruising altitude" as quickly as you can without punching it, like you would a regular car (this is very easy to learn to do with highway on-ramps.) That, and keeping it in Eco as much as possible (very easy to do when driving on flat-ish terrain.)

I notice that the auto-stop on the Accord is MUCH more active than it is on the Civic so that will help too (though I found the constant on-and-off while doing "stoplight creep" in heavy traffic to be a little annoying.)

The "light show" (the charge/assist lights) aren't as big and bright as they are in the Civic, but that's a good way to regulate your driving too. You can't ALWAYS avoid the blue side of the dial, but see what you can do to keep the thing on the green side, or neutral, as much as possible. The more Eco you see, the better your mileage.

Short trips in cold weather will KILL your MPGs because the tranny is designed to cycle through the first 3 gears (when the car's moving forward) at first, to get the engine warmed up, and then slips into using all five. So if you do VERY short hops that don't give the engine a chance to warm up, you're basically in an old skool 3-speed transmission, in stead of 5 speed.

The BIG diff with the Accord that I've found is that the engine has enough oomph to pull the car along (in city driving) on a flat street, without a lot of additional acceleration. You just need to re-learn that the hybrid's accelerator is a lot like the clutch in a manual tranny: don't let your foot rest there when it doesn't need to.

Definitely use the cruise control as much as you possibly can, unless you have extremely hilly highways around where you live (but I found that the cc on the Accord is verrrrrry smooth, and I didn't get a lot of neck snapping behavior from going up a steep hill on a highway, with the cc activated.)


A colleague picked up a new HCH a couple of weeks ago and was immediately dispondent with his MPG as he was barely seeing 35, but sounds like that's improving with his second tank, AND learning the little "secret hanshakes" of driving the car for better mileage.