Just picked up a 2009 Civic Hybrid 2 weeks ago. I took it out for some testing this week. About 80% highway and 20% city driving. Watching the MPG gauges and the LED bar that tells you how you are doing, I felt I had done great. MY MPG digital gauge never dropped below 39, and it was consistently in the 44 range. I pulled into a gas station to fill it up just to compare miles driven against actual fuel consumption and after driving only 150 miles, the car took 7.9 gallons. 19MPG!! I was using all the techniques described in the forum. 55 MPH on average. I utilized the dash gauges to maximize my efficiency. I also noticed that in local city driving, the all electric mode only kicked in when the car came to a full stop, not when the car was moving at all. Any ideas??

 

Likely the tank wasn't full to begin with. Plus, if this was the tank of gas from the dealership, it more than likely had a few test drives, plus possible extended idling. In short, regardless of your good behaviour, that first tank is a write-off.

Whenever you fill up, reset the odometer and keep it displayed as you drive: it will show your accumulated mileage from time of reset. It will fluctuate wildly immediately after reset, and then settle down and get increasingly difficult to budge as you consume the tankful. In our experience the '06 Civic Hybrid, the trip odometer tends to be slightly pessimistic, but close. In other words, if you calculate, you will find you did slightly better.

Addendum: there's actually two trip odometers (A & B) you can utilize. I'd suggest use A, and just let B accumulate, to give your overall average. I believe B will still (self) reset, at some very long interval, maybe 10,000km or similar.

Addendum2, regarding the electric mode: You're probably noticing "Auto Stop", which shuts the engine down at stops, if certain conditions are met (full warmed engine, no defog, CVT transmission not in Sport mode, sufficient state-of charge, etc). The car (if it's working normally) is actually using the electric motor for assists very frequently, but mainly in conjunction with the gasoline engine. Every time you pull away from a stop and see white bars (on the Integrated Motor Assist state-of-charge bar graph in-dash) that indicates the electric motor is helping. When you see green bars (usually during deceleration) the motor is taking over some of the braking function, and charging the main IMA battery.

Very occasionally, the electric motor alone will impel the car. This typically occurs when the car is fully warmed up, on level (or slight downgrade) road, with extremely light pedal pressure, and at lower speeds. You will see the IMA state-of-charge bar graph showing anywhere up to 4 bars (more typically just 1 or two), while the realtime fuel consumption shows zero (for metric) or infinite (for imperial). Depress the gas pedal a little more and the gasoline engine will kick back in, as evidenced by realtime fuel consumption gauge returning to showing fuel consumption values.

These electric motor only moments tend to be transitory and infrequent, and it's likely best to just take them as they come, don't go looking for them. It actually eats up the IMA battery charge quite quickly.

 

Mendel is spot-on.

This is a very different setup than the Prius, which is the typical hybrid-car thought of - and for good reason - they've sold a million of 'em.

The Prius electric motor IS powerful enough AND the hybrid battery big enough that the car can be propelled silently like a golf cart for upwards of 35 MPH for a little while. The Civic's electric motor and battery are much smaller. Therefore, the battery management and usage parameters are very different. The Honda system uses the hybrid components to ASSIST the underpowered gas engine, when necessary. The Toyota system uses the hybrid components much more for low-speed driving - partly because they can, and partly because the Prius' gas engine is really small and really underpowered.

The designs are just different, but they both work quite well. The Prius really shines around town in low-speed driving, and they are both quite good on the highway (with a potential edge to the Civic).

 

Don't worry too much about your mileage. It will improve. The dealer probably had driven it and trashed the mpg before you got it!

 

My French dealer tells me that the Honda Civic Hybrid has a bad mpg when it's new, because the new motor has a lot of friction (he said exactly "tight"). I don't know if it's real or not, but my mileage is better now than when it was just out of the assembly plant !