2009 Civic Hybrid for my daughter, Problems during googling
 

Hello all, my first post here... I hope this is the right place.

Long story short, my daughter lives in CA and is not having luck finding a car and they seem to be more expensive there (used anyway). So I found a 2009 Civic Hybrid, clean CarFax, history of oil changes and brakes only. I started to google and saw many hits about Battery issues and even called the Honda dealer here and they said that this may be a firmware update, etc. The car would have 2 years left on the warranty for the batter, it is just under 40,000 miles. The cost is $12,000 and would cost me an additional (approximate, $1000 to ship). I do not want her to buy into a car that may become problematic and cost a large sum of money to fix.. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks for any input.

JRS

Re: 2009 Civic Hybrid for my daughter, Problems during googling
 

I own 2X 2006 HCH2 and am very happy with them, but I'm big into DIY including messing about with the battery. Many of the worst issues with the batteries were corrected in the 2009 version. I can't comment on price, but I wouldn't be concerned about battery. If the battery fails outside warranty, there are excellent replacement options OUTSIDE of Honda for $2,000-2,200 with 3 year warranties.

IMHO, the cost of the IMA battery replacement almost perfectly offsets the fuel savings without efforts to extend battery life. :)

Re: 2009 Civic Hybrid for my daughter, Problems during googling
 

These Honda Civic Hybrid's actually seem to get better with miles and age (at least in my experience). Once I fixed a couple minor issues, I haven't had any problems. Almost 155K miles now

Re: 2009 Civic Hybrid for my daughter, Problems during googling
 

First, I would not dismiss the battery issue lightly.

That being said, I believe if the car is registered in California, the warranty on the battery is 150,000 / 10 years, but you should confirm that with Honda.