I didn't elaborate very well on what I meant. Recently if you wanted a larger hybrid sedan than a Prius/Civic you had to go all the way to the Accord. The price difference between the HCH and HAH was significant - ~$21K and ~32-33K IIRC. That's a big jump. I'm guessing that folks who wanted a Camry/Accord sized hybrid but didn't want to pay that much only had the Civic/Prius to appeal to. Now there's something that fits very nicely in the middle. So I think you'll get a lot of folks who wanted an HAH sized vehicle but didn't want the price and were going to settle on a Civic/Prius, or your going to get folks who had their eye on a Prius/Civic but for ~4K more could get one size up. I suppose it will attract from both ends. It does, however, address the huge price gap between HCH and HAH. I expect it to be popular.

*** Retired after 65,000 outstanding miles ***

Road & Track drove a Camry Hybrid around a bunch of mountains near LA at 75-80 miles per hour and reported getting 38.3 mpg for that segment. They got 40.0 doing the same in a 2006 HCH, which I can attest is perfectly accurate. Yet 38.3 exceeds the predicted EPA highway estimate.

I would not make the assumption that all cars are equally able or unable to achieve EPA estimates. I used to drive a Jetta that I was extremely leadfooted with. I *always* floored it when accelerating, didn't coast, always drove fast (well, I still do that), and I averaged 23 mpg, which is 1 mpg less than the EPA combined estimate (or 95% of it). On pure highway drives at 80-90 miles per hour, I averaged 26 mpg, which was 2 mpg less than the EPA highway estimate (93% of it).

Oh, and I almost never inflated the tires so they were never over 32 mpg and probably weren't even that much of the time.

Right now with my HCH, driving FAR more gently, I average 39 mpg, which is 11 mpg less than the EPA estimate, or 78% of it. If I drove it like I did my Jetta, I'd average probably 34 mpg at best, or 68% of the EPA estimate.

On pure highway drives I get 42 mpg if the roads are fairly flat, but that's at 70-80 miles per hour; I haven't tried 90 miles per hour in this car. Anyway 42 mpg is 82% of the EPA highway estimate.

EDIT: Someone scanned in the results chart from R&T so you can see it for yourself. I also bought the issue in question but they didn't review the cars themselves, just talked about hybrids in general (although they did mention the Camry Hybrid was much more seamless in switching from gas and electric than the Civic or Escape hybrids).

Two factors never taken into account in any of the EPA estimates are :

Cold weather driving which will lower the 'annual' combined estimates by 7-12%;

Weighted averaging of Hwy vs City driving. EPA assumes 50/50 as a best guesstimate.

Now in mild weather which approximates the EPA testing criteria and driving 85% Hwy / 15% City, I'm just under the EPA 'weighted average' combined value of about 52.5 mpg. This I attribute to a somewhat heavy foot on the Hwy ( 60-65 avg ).

While I pay attention to driving methods I don't go to any special extremes. The technology does what it's supposed to do.

Regards the TCH, I'd feel very confident that any knowledgeable driver that wasnt seduced by what will likely be a more powerful drive will attain 36-40 mpg easily.

Lifetime fuel usage: 2.1 GPC ( 1.99 recent )

You'd think it wouldn't be hard to redesign the Accord to make it more competitive with the TCH. All Honda would have to do is give the HAH a 1.8L i4, and then add more batteries to the IMA so that the 20 HP electric motor will run longer in "low-speed cruise" mode.

Actually it's more complicated than that, Ashen. If the Accord were just given 'more batteries' there's still the matter of recharging them, which the car can only do through regenerative braking, and there's only so much energy that can be recovered from that. Also keep in mind the 2006 HCH, which is about 500-600 lbs lighter than the Accord, still does not have a real EV mode, because running the motor at full power would drain the battery too quickly, so it's limited to 30-40% power (or about 8 HP).

If you're wondering how the Prius gets to use 67 HP motors, or the Camry uses 140 HP motors, it's because the engine supplies the power directly to them. The maximum battery output of the Prius is 28 HP, and 40-45 HP for the Camry, but when cruising the car acts as a series hybrid, where the engine generates up to 67 or 140 HP worth of electricity for the electric motor. It sounds inefficient but it works well for technical reasons.

When the cars are in EV mode, then the motors are limited to the maximum output of the battery: 28 and 40 HP respectively. The battery does get used up but that's OK because the engine can be used to directly recharge it.

In order to compete with the TCH, Honda will simply have to give up on their inferior IMA system, but I don't see them doing that very soon.

I'm so happy I didn't get HCH in February. Just got back from SF Toyota.
Put a deposit on Camry Hybrid. Should be here mid May. Fully loaded it comes just a hair under 30k.

actually, this is an incorrect statement. the problem with ima is not that the system can only recharge from regenerative braking. both the hch and hah are capable of recharging through the ice and absolutely do not require braking to recharge. energy is sapped off the ice directly generally if your battery level falls below half and you're not braking. you will see the ecu kick in recharging.

ima only implements a single motor, the motor can't simultaneously act as a generator and a motor. but, ima could be reprogrammed to use a lot more of its battery power and then kick in regeneration to recharge it back up. that system however is less efficient than hsd because of losses inherent in energy recapture. the hsd system can directly power its generator which in turn can supply electrical energy to a second motor and therefore does not have the 20%-30% energy loss associated with converting mechanical energy into electrical.

basically, hsd has more power paths than ima. but it comes at the cost of a more complex system.

this is an unfair statement. there is no evidence that ima is inferior to hsd. taking into account cost/complexity and results, we see that ima is less costly, less complex and delivers relatively the same mpg results as hsd.

putting a 1.8l i4 into the accord alone would make it competitive mpg-wise with the camry. most of honda's mpg efficiencies come from their excellently designed ice's. i don't think the ima would need to be changed to get the same mpg.

It would make it competitive - yes. But it would also make it slow. 1.8l would simply not be able to generate sufficient torque to adequately propel 3400lbs. car.

Not in my experience, and not in the experience of anyone I know who has driven both vehicles. I get 7-8 mpg better in a Prius than a HCH, Consumer Reports got 7 mpg better, every publication I've read gets better results in a Prius than a HCH, and "xcel", who has achieved up to 70 mpg using extreme hypermiling techniques in a HCH, got 100+ mpg when doing the same in a Prius.

Now the HCH does have strengths over the Prius, which is why I bought it, but the IMA delivers neither the performance nor the economy of HSD.