My last tank I drove 350 miles on 10gal in 100% New York City driving. It was way below 32*F for most part too. Traffic kills my MPGs.

 

Mendel, Jettage, you are not getting my point. All you see are negative comments, the hch II is a great little car, some may have problems, I feel bad for them...some may have problem of their own making trying to make the car something it is not...all I am saying is here is a positive post by a group member who has been around a while, not a post by someone who joined to complain and leave.

 

Glad you are loving your car! It is a great little car. Some of us have come here to "complain", but have not moved on because we are actually looking for some solutions. Its stories like yours that remind me the car is great and I should soldier on to try to make my experience great...

 

Hey guys - I've been following this thread and need reminding of the difference between Imperial gallons and US gallons.
You seem to be happy with 44 to 46 mpg average.
I get anywhere from 48.5 to 53.5 mpg regularly depending upon how gently I have been driving and this is day to day, back and forth to work and short runs at the weekend. If I take a longer trip of say a couple of hundred miles I get nearer the Honda official figure with average going up to 58 mpg and travelling between 60 to 70 mph (British).
My wife and I both like our 2008 car very much and have only had a couple of niggles. The first was a software fault that would make the car hesitate unexpectedly. This was cured by a software update for the transmission and has been no bother in the last 20 months. The other fault was with both front windows stopping before they travelled all the way up. The garage cleared the window channels to cure this saying they were dirty (I clean the car regularly so maybe there is a problem with the seals). It has not happened this last year.
Now Honda have asked me to take the car to the dealer to have the MCU checked for a possible fault if the software has not been upgraded lately. It doesn't sound like a big deal and I will be going along in a couple of weeks to have the work done.
I'll be posting any problems.
Nice reading the posts again... till next time.
Oh, and we will most likely be moving away from Honda for our next car to a small 4 x 4 as the winters are taking a turn for the worst over here in Scotland and the Civic is having real problems moving in deep snow preventing us from getting to work and going for provisions. It is a pity that Honda are not going the whole hog with hybrids and making a small hybrid 4 x 4 - that would definitely make us stay with them. The dealer is very helpful and pleasant to deal with and providing we give enough notice at service time we always have a courtesy car available whilst ours is in the shop.
Till next time...

 

Have you tried snow tires? This is the first winter that I've run snow tires on my HCH, and I've been really impressed. I have a steep, long gravel driveway, and I'm able to get up and down it in 6" of fresh, unplowed snow. The brand I'm using are Kuhmo HW 22s (studded), but there are a lot of great tires out there for winter driving. Unless the snow is over 8", I would rather drive my HCH with snow tires than our Mariner Hybrid (AWD) with regular All Season tires--the HCH stops a lot better. However, if you're driving through more than 8" of unplowed snow, having more ground clearance is a good thing.

 

Kristian - thanks for the input. I have recently changed to Nokians as suggested elsewhere in the forum but, this winter we saw 15 to 18 inches over just a few days. If I could have made it to the main road I might have been able to travel but, no go...

 

Just for fun, did a conversion from US to Imperial, our 44 is 52.84 so, we are all in the same ballpark. (Rugby match? :-)) http://www.sciencemadesimple.net/fuel_economy.php

 

In Canada the car companies post advertise fuel consumption in liters per 100 km (the official method), and miles per imperial gallon. The latter always looks pretty rosy: 5/4 better than US miles per gallon, to get technical.

Now, you haven't been able to purchase a gallon (of any description) of gas up here for maybe 35 years, but for some odd reason there's some diehard imperialists up here.

Also, I'd concur with Dougal, the HCHII's 4" of groundclearance isn't very good once the snow get's deep. It doesn't matter much what your rubber is if it can't reach the ground.

 

Mendel, if you have just 4" of ground clearance, you must be driving with no air in your tires!

Quick online research for HCH ground clearance gave conflicting reports of 5.5", 6.1", and 165mm (nearly 6.5"). Oddly, Honda's own website doesn't list ground clearance in its specifications page. YGCMV.

 

Honestly, I'm not sure if my Mariner would go through that much snow--I've never had the opportunity to try it. I got my old Subaru Outback stuck in 18" of untracked snow once (again, All Season tires), so I'm guessing that the Mariner would have a hard time.