Hi,

I guess I forgot to mention why for my family, the Prius is a better fit:

Higher above ground - my wife has had two back surguries and spondelosthsis (sp?), which means squatting down to get in a lower car is more painful. The Prius is taller, like our Echo, and that helps her a lot. For the same reason, climbing up into an Escape is a problem but this is unique to our family.

Electric only mode - for this engineer, the ability to run only on battery-motor is very attractive. Future, larger batteries could provide short range, 2-5 mile, electric only trips with the potential for grid charging. This would solve the short-trip, warm-up inefficiency problem.

You might look at the fleet performance data to see what happened to both the HCH and Prius after 160,000 miles (see "Fleet Performance" thread.) It includes a maintenance summary but most impressive was after 160,000 miles, they were both getting excellent MPG. We don't really know the real "end of life" since 160,000 miles was arbitrarily choosen.

The Honda Civic Hybrid is a fine car and the manual transmission version has gotten exceptionally high MPG (See mileage database.) Although I love manual transmission cars, my wife has told me "NO" due to a knee problem.

Bob Wilson

Operation Iraqi Oil Freedom:

Automatic, stock, project car.

My other 1500 cc car:

Automatic, stock, backup car.
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