i have a 2006 civic hybrid that i love and patiently waited three months for it to arrive. if i drive it on the highway the mileage is great, but 95% of my driving is in town. i am having a hard time getting the engine to shut off at stoplights - i thought i would get the hang of driving this car by now (3 months) but now i'm not sure what the deal is. i filled up yesterday. when i calculated the # of miles i drove (300 some) with the number of gallons i put in the tank - it came out to 33.36 mpg. i can go weeks without seeing the green "auto stop" flashing while i'm at a light. instead when i'm at a light, i watch the digital mpg calculation go down, down, down until i'm moving again. just about every time. this seems absurd to me. is it just me? i would like to learn how to get better mpg but i'm at a loss. any advice welcome.

 

What is the temp where you live?
Low temp makes everyone's MPG worse, hybrids and non-hybrids.

 

Your car won't do the autostop function until it's warmed up, so if you do a lot of short trips you could go awhile without seeing it. Also I don't think it will autostop if you have the automatic climate control unit set to blow on defrost (right?).

Try to accelerate so your mph on the speed rises by no more than 2mph under 20mph. From a stop, accelerate so it gradually builds speed and reads 2 then 4 then 6 then 8, 10, 12, ect. If the speedos jumping by 3 or 4 you're accelerating pretty fast. Above 20mph just accelerate so the speedo rises in 1mph increments. Usually I try not to accelerate faster than by 2mph increments under 10mph and anything after 10 in 1 mph increments.

Remember to coast/glide to stop lights/stop signs. Theres no need to hold the accelerator down as you approach a stop light or stop sign. Coasting/gliding REALLY improves your mpg because when you're doing that you are using NO GAS at all.

I think the recommend tire pressure is 32psi, bump it up to 35-40PSI...max PSI listed on the sidewall is at 44PSI.

On your next oil change buy a good 0W20 full synthetic, a full synthetic with "energy conserving" properties/additives might give you an extra mpg or two over convertional dino oil.

I seem to get better mpg intown than I do on the highway.

 

One possible reason is that you have the climate control system on Auto and it's set to defrost. This activates the A/C and prevents auto-stop from being activated. If you set A/C Off, then you can see auto-stop.

 

on 2006 hch ii, autostop now works with a/c on. this is due to the dual electric/ice compressor motor setup where the hch ii can run the a/c from electric only.

 

For those who are suffering from low mpg, I think maybe it would be a good idea to team up with someone who has "gotten the hang" of how to drive their HCH2 to learn some of the tricks.

I would be willing to share my time with someone in SoCal.

 

I don't know about you but when I first got the car (february 3rd) I was always keeping the auto climate on except when I needed to defrost my windows, and Auto Stop was working fine for me. But after reading some comment here saying that I could do better by not using the auto climate control, I started doing like that. But I found out I would get less "auto stop" than before. I switch back to auto climate control and I really get more "auto stop" this way.

Here right now it's cold, always around freezing temp.

I'm not sure but may be the ecu does a better analyse of condition when deciding if it autostop or not.

 

It has been pretty cold and I have a short commute so that might explain some of the problem getting AutoStop to do its thing. However... Here is something interesting regarding a couple suggestions - "on 2006 hch ii, autostop now works with a/c on. this is due to the dual electric/ice compressor motor setup where the hch ii can run the a/c from electric only." and "One possible reason is that you have the climate control system on Auto and it's set to defrost. This activates the A/C and prevents auto-stop from being activated. If you set A/C Off, then you can see auto-stop."

I turned the defrost and auto climate settings OFF and *immediately* the AutoStop starting working again. It's a 2006 so in theory I shouldn't need to, but it did the trick for me today. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!

 

I think when you put the auto climate control into defrost mode it puts the A/C into "MAX A/C" mode and takes it out of "econo A/C" mode. I thought I read on some hybrid models the auto stop would work with "econo A/C" but not if it was on "MAX A/C"??

 

It's the defrost. If you have the system set for defrost or even combo heat/defrost the autostop won't go. If you are using the auto climate control I would expect that it might be using the defrost at times - cancelling the auto-stop.

Having said that I have issues with my mileage on short trips - most of the time I'm driving my HCHII is freeway time (commute) but when I do do short trips it kills my mileage. I would second the suggestions to accelerate slowly and try to maximize your glide into stop signs / lights (just remember to look in the rear-view mirror so that you don't drive the person behind you to do something anti-social...). I have recently bumped my tire pressure up to 40 psi. Seems to help the glide but I've only done 10 miles on the hard tires so far - so I don't really know.