Not an intake, there is no real estate under hood for a true intake. Just a drop in replacement filter that flows more air.
No eyebrows will be raised thanks to the Magnusson/Moss act.
http://www.sema.org/main/semaorghome.aspx?ID=8124
Without going into too great of detail and explaining things everyone here is painfully aware of, Fire needs 2 things to be present in order to burn. Fuel and air. Fuel is no good without air. The more air present, the more efficient the burn. The addition of air to any internal combustion engine (intakes, turbo, supercharging) generates horsepower and torque. The more Horsepower and Torque available to a small engine such as ours should result in the engine not needing to work as hard to accelerate or maintain speed. The less effort needed to do these things (in theory) should result in better fuel economy.
As for why manufacturers do not engineer these types of things into the system to get even better fuel economy are too numerous to list but here are the basics...
Cost - As stated in my previous post, a regular drop in (Wix or Autolite) air filter costs the general public roughly $5.00. A good aftermarket air filter (K&N) costs a minimum of $35 depending on the design. I have paid as much as $60 for one. If Honda were to put a regular air filter in 100,000 cars, you could say that they would pay the difference of $500,000 VS $3,000,000.
Warranty - Where as this filter cannot void your warranty, it is not a simple "use once and throw away" type of filter. It requires maintenance on the part of the user in the form of a simple solution cleaning and "oiling". This would become a time and cost consuming issue for dealerships based on the amount of time it takes to actually clean one of these style filters as it requires removal from the car, cleaning with soap and water, air drying, re-oiling, and finally replacement. On a normal day, it could take the majority of the day just to let this item air dry prior to placing it back in the car. Would you (as a service department customer) wait an entire business day without a car for a simple air filter replacement? Would you pay the hourly rate to replace a filter that went from 1 hour to 8 hours of labor that the dealer service department WILL CHARGE EVERY PENNY for?
Conpiracy Theories - We are all aware (or should be by now) of the gentleman who is selling modifications to the Honda Insite called the MIMA-c. This little goodie when installed in an Insite is allowing users to get more than 100 MPG. Now, he is an extremely intelligent man but likely not more intelligent than a whole group of engineers at Honda. So the question is, why would Honda not do this in the first place? It has proven effective and safe to use. It is also extremely inexpensive ($675 at the most and under $500 if you build it yourself). There are a lot of things auto companies COULD do but choose not to. I will let the conspiracy theorists have their fun with this one.
I have noticed a trend when it comes to the typical (not all) hybrid owner. It would appear as though at least 75% of them are afraid of what lies under the hood of their little gas savers. But just like the original "hot rodders" of the 20's and 30's, we stand at the threshold of a new era. We can either sit here and let Honda work on our cars and be content with how they built the cars or we can strive for better. Most horsepower applications work just as well towards fuel economy. I am not saying we need to put fart can mufflers on our cars to get more MPG, but there are minor (not scary) things that can be done in the interest of power/MPG.
As I stated before, I have personally seen gains of 15% increased fuel economy in my previous vehicle with a simple $40 air filter. It paid for istelf after the first 3 tanks of gas and then saved me money ever since. Granted, this was a V8 that was obviously not as efficient as it could be. If we could realize a third of that (5% increase) I would personally see a difference of 47.5 MPG to just shy of 50 MPG. Keep in mind, my car has 3000 miles on it and has not even had its first oil change. If I were to get the advertised average of 50 MPG I could see up to 52.5 to 53 MPG.
Time to go out to the garage and pull that filter out. K&N does not advertise that they produce a replacement for the 2006 Civic or the HCH. But I am willing to bet that they produce one that is 99.9% perfect for the replacement size dimensionally. I will post my findings for all who are interested.