I believe there are a few people out here who have an HCH on order like I do and hopefully several of you might have some input on a situation I've heard about.

In speaking with a local Honda dealer they said that all Honda dealers have been notified of a production delay regarding HCH2s. Apparently they (in Japan) are having some issues obtaining enough of the battery components and this has or is causing a delay in the production of new cars. It could be that the production could be delayed by a month (or more) but they have no way of knowing the exact impact of the situation. This dealer has said though, that they have stopped taking orders for HCH2s until they hear through Corporate channels that the situation been corrected. They don't want to take an order for a car and tell a customer it will be 3 months and then have it end-up being 4 months or more.

When I asked my first dealer about this he said they were unaware of any situation regarding batteries causing a delay. And in short the dealer said, "All we know is they're making them as fast as they can...". Well....yeah....and if that includes an unexpected delay then the dealer's statement is technically correct, although not entirely illuminating.

The second dealer said that this type of information is distributed to all Honda dealerships and that it's no secret. So either the first dealer truly doesn't know about it (which seems unlikely, assuming it's true) or they are simply 'playing dumb' with the assumption that there's no way I would ever be able to find out what the true story is. Either way - that's just not an ideal situation.

This same salesperson told me when we ordered the hybrid that it's not the kind of car you buy to try and save money with but rather it's a lifestyle statement. He said it would take about 100,000 miles to break even by buying a hybrid (depending on the price of gas). And today when we were there he somehow changed his tune to say, "You'll never get your money out of an Accord Hybrid - that will take 100,000 to break even, but with the Civic Hybrid you'll break even at about 20,000 miles....". I think he'd say whatever he needs to in order to save the deal.

Has anyone else heard about a shortage of batteries in the production of new Civic hybrids?