Well, I finally got my Alabaster Silver no Nav HCH yesterday. I've put 64 miles on it and the trip A mpg is sitting at 40.0. Not too shabby considering my 50 mile round trip commute includes 2100' of elevation loss on the way in and gain on the way home. Oh, and it was raining for my morning commute. And I haven't checked the tire pressure yet, either. I'm pretty happy with the mileage already.

Here are a few things I've noticed:

-AM radio reception is OK, but sound quality is not good. No big deal, I just listen for traffic reports/news.
-Steering wheel controls are great.
-A/C controls are not intuitive. I've got it figured out now, but I wish they'd just left these old school.
-Ride is tight a pretty quiet. Handling is really good.
-I got into EV mode a couple times in ~20-30mph creeping traffic this morning and did the 100mpg glide a few times, too. Love it!

Questions:

-Can the mp3 player handle VBR encoding?
-My house is at 2150' elevation. The first mile of my commute is relatively flat (slight elevation loss) and curvy, so I'm cruising in the 15-25mph range. Then the big downhill starts. For about 2.5-3 miles I'm on 5-10% downgrades to get to the freeway at about 500' elevation. This road is 30-40mph territory. The problem is that going home I use some assist getting up the hill, but when I get to the flat, the car wants to charge using the ICE. I'd really like to delay the charge so I can get more regen on the way back down in the morning. Regen cut out after only a mile of downhill this morning, so I was wasting all that energy and wearing my brakes. What's the best strategy for mileage here?

This is a cool forum. I've learned a lot during my interminably long wait for my car. It's nice to have a community to help learn all the secrets of hybrid driving.

Packrat

Welcome aboard! Like you (and many others) I too used this website to learn such a lot! I too love the smooth quiet comfort and definite air of superiority which the HCHII exudes! Value for money!

Thanks, Tulip. Glad to be here.

I forgot to mention that my car does not appear to have the 63 mile bug. I'll keep an eye on it for the next go 'round, but this morning I watched for it and saw nothing unusual.

Packrat

"Me too"! Or should I say "me neither" No bugs - just a quality package. To deliver such an excellent product from far away Japan speaks of a major quality program. I am most impressed and very happy!

Congrats on the new car!

If you want to try to prevent regen you could try PnG on the flat,
meaning get up to speed, or a little over, coast in neutral, repeat.
PnG is a perfect pack drainer if you use assist on the 'P' part.

If the flat is a high-speed area then shifting into neutral may not
be practical since shifting back into drive might reduce CVT life.
If there is a jerk when you shift then you know that wear-and-tear happened.

I have a 2000' ft climb I do frequently, and I doubt you will ever get the pack
low enough to avoid it going full on the downhills. :-)

Best round trip mileage I ever got on that hill was 45 on a hot summer day.

I have the same issue. I live 800 feet above the freeway and the batteries get fully charged half way down. It's also annoying that the IMA tries very hard to prevent the batteries from ever going below half charge (four bars). When it gets down to that level on the way uphill, I get almost no more assist.

I don't know of any way around this. The solution for people like us would be to double the size of the battery pack. I wish Honda offered that as an option.

2006 HCH Alabaster Silver w/Navi
2003 Honda Accord LX

Packrat,

Yes the HCH II can handle Variable Bit Rate Encoding. All modern stereo's do, and I know the HCH II does because I have files that are VBR. Enjoy and congrats !!!!

Congrats on the new car...I agree that the ride is pretty good, but I have to disagree on the handling.

Obviously this is all relative, but my wife's 98 civic sedan handled better than her 06 hch. The 06 just feels like a boat.

06 HCH Mag. Pearl w/o Nav
05 wrx STi

Thanks, everyone. I'll try some PnG on the flat area tomorrow. Problem is that I can't get going too fast--it's basically a one lane road with hairpins. The good thing is that the car isn't warmed up at that point, so it's not trying to charge the pack yet.

Good news on the VBR! I'll have to burn myself a commute CD tonight!

Here's my $1E6 idea regarding the big elevation change problem. Maybe it's already out there and patented or something. Anyway, the root cause of the issue is that our cars have only short term memory and look-ahead. IMA (or HSD) don't have any larger scale context (in time or space) in which to operate. So, what if the Nav system were to include topological data plus some basic AI which would allow the car to make more intelligent choices about battery state, Regen, ICE vs. Electric, etc.

For instance, imagine that over time my car learns my commute route and manages the tradeoffs for even better FE. It would allow the battery to discharge more on the way home because pretty much no matter where I go from there it will be flat or downhill where regen is available. There are plenty of other scenarios where such a system could improve FE.

Packrat

That would be very nice. Or to make it simpler, if we could just tune a couple of parameters in the control software we could adapt the IMA's behavior to different conditions.

But I believe Honda has another agenda in mind. They provide a ten year warranty on the batteries, so they'll do everything possible to extend their life. This means that their logic is heavily averse to draining the batteries too deeply.

2006 HCH Alabaster Silver w/Navi
2003 Honda Accord LX