Another point to consider before you decide whether the hybrid upgrade is a farse or not. Will ANY OTHER car upgrade EVER pay you back financially? No, so why should the hybrid upgrade fall under that scrutiny when no other upgrade does? So it might take a while to pay you back if it ever does, but hey, it's the ONLY upgrade that even has that potential.

And, doing things the right way usually costs more. Building a car that uses fuel more efficiently is more expensive, and that's what it costs to use less gas. "Better" and "cheaper" do not always go together, in fact they rarely do, cheaper is just cheaper in my book. Regardless, a honda is built to do hundreds of thousands of miles. It will pay you back, it may take a while but no other car upgrade will do that, so easy on the bellyaching and enjoy your 'green' car.

Cityscapex5 says it all for me in his post below! I am not a hypermiler but I do accelerate gently and watch my revs and consistently average over 40 mpg. I also believe that the value of the unseen but incredible engineering and technology fully explains any price differential!

A simple criticism of this poitn woudl be that most other add-ons have some other payoff, either in improving ride quality, performance, comfort, or some other non-monetary benefit. When doing cost/benefit analysis on say, adding on air conditioning, the purchaser must evaluate if the added comfort is worth the initial cost and extra fuel overhead. The main benefit of hybrid technology is reduced fuel consumption, and by extension, savings in fuel cost, so the question there is if fuel savings will eventually outweight the initial capital cost.

Reduced fuel consumption does have a secondary benefit of enabling longer driving range on a single tank, but the same thing could also be accomplished easier by using a larger tank. Another benefit is the fact that there is less reduced emissions, but this is an externality, so the purchaser of the vehicle does not see a direct, tangible benefit from this either, aside from government subsidies designed to reward this (which can be a significant financial incentive, or time-saver in the case of the HOV stickers).

Based on the above reasons (fuel savings, and kickbacks) I decided getting the Hybrid over the non-hybrid was about a break-even deal long-term, what pushed me over the edge though is the fact I'd like to support the technology as I believe it has more potential in the future, if it can get early market acceptance.

when doing cost/benefit analysis of hybrid technology, one should factor into the savings the inevitable increases in fuel prices. 15,000 miles per year at 50mpg and gas at $2.50 a gallon vs. a non-hybrid at 35 mpg yields a cost savings of about $321/year. the same calculation at $5/gallon yields $650/year savings. also, it is well known that brake wear is considerably less on hybrids b/c of regenerative braking. it is probably feasible to include one less brake and rotor replacement during the lifetime of the car. this might equate out to around $500 - $600 dollars. there are other ancillary savings that are harder to calculate: the electric motor takes a significant load off the engine. this, combined with vcm probably means that the engine is wearing less over the lifetime. this may translate into fewer engine problems requiring costly maintenance. factor in the the tax *credit* (not a deduction) of $2k and i believe that the total cost of ownership of a hybrid is less than a non-hybrid civic. also, as long at honda keeps manufacturing capacity low, the depreciation in a year alone will cancel out any added cost associated with the hybrid. of course, that won't be for long hopefully ;-)

You ignore the fact that the additional add-on benefit of the hybrid (other than financial payback) is earth friendly operation. This is no less significant than driver comfort, performance, etc. Just like you say the owner must weigh the value of this benefit against the cost. No difference, except that wich this one, and this one only, there's a synergetic benefit of the payback potential which none of the others have. You can't just assume nobody cares about anything but the money and then judge it specially by that criteria alone.

If you doubt that the environmental concern is as valid a practical upgrade as ride quality, comfort, or performance, then think about this web site. It's proof positive that you're mistaken. Just like any web site dedicated to engine tweaking, car audio , custom paint jobs, etc. This site (and others like it) is dedicated to and frequented by a large group of people for whom the environmental element is not simply a silly impractical tree-hugger concern. Very few of us bought a hybrid for the financial payoff, we bought it for ecological comfort. For me there is no more important upgrade, and many here share my position, so passing that off as an unimportant benefit is definitely not accurate.

Instead of seeing this car as something like "well it's supposed to be cheaper and it's not so it's not worth it unless you're whacky about that environmental stuff", this car should be treated like this, "It uses less gas than regular cars and it's got great environmental performance, PLUS it has the potential to pay back it's cost premium in gas savings like no other kind of car can, it's a no-brainer".

As other's have said, your dealer is full of crap. 87 is all you need.

Dealers never say "sorry I don't know" so they make up an answer. We know more about the HCH's than they do! I found I was telling my sales guy things he had never heard of such as how the three stages of the 1.4 i-VTEC engine work.

I'll have to try to find the article I'm referring to. Had a copy but I can't put my hands on it - may have thrown it away in disgust. I could be wrong - I'll look for it.
Thanks.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/c...rchTerm=hybrid

2006 HCH Alabaster Silver w/Navi
2003 Honda Accord LX

Elan,
Well, I checked the libraries today and could not come up with a copy of the CR article. I'm pretty sure it was in the February copy of CR. I could probably find it online, but I'm not payin' the 26 bucks! But I did find something similar on the CR web site that appears to be excerpted from the February article.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/c...civic%20hybrid

And, I should have been more specific, my rant was about the 18 mpg CITY that they gave the EX w/automatic. At least, that's the number I remember (but remember, I was ranting, and it's hard to be specific when ranting ).

You can see that in this listing they gave the HCH a 26 mpg city rating, and the MT EX a 22 mpg. I believe they gave the automatic an 18 in this same article, at least my memory tells me so. But the web post does not exactly match the article, so I'll continue my search for a paper copy.

The 26 mpg city for the hybrid is not mentioned in the site you referenced. But I remember reading the article shortly before buying my HCH II. I had been monitoring GH, and my mind said, "whoa! something IS NOT right here... "