Hi,

I just registered and have some questions.

I am looking to purchase a HCH this weekend. It looks like I have been offered a good deal (close to invoice) on a 2008.

I am going to have a 120 mile a day commute, 95% highway driving from NJ to CT.

The numbers seem to support a HCH over a gas civic so here are my q's:

- is this a comfortable car for at least an hour drive each way, each day?

- should I have any battery concerns with putting 30k miles on the car each year?

- there may be a fair amount of stop and go traffic (depending on my hours), would that mean a regular civic would be better than the HCH?

- are oil changes easy to do? By that I mean is the filter easily accessible?

Thanks


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Hi eradicator,

I can only answer 2 of your questions but thought I would give you my thoughts as a new owner myself.

-- The comfort level of this car on long drives is VERY good. We have taken it on 4 hr trips and been very pleased with it.

-- My route to work every day has a good amount of stop and go traffic (we go to work just as the school buses are getting started) and we are averaging 45mpg so far.

As to the other questions, I have not had it long enough to answer them.

Hope this helps a little,

Dwayne

 

Thanks for that feedback.

Were you considering a gas alternative? What drew you to the HCH? Did you consider the Prius?

It is as I would expect for most people a toss up between the HCH and the Prius but the HCH comes out ahead on economics as I can get one at about invoice where the Prius in my area is at sticker.

 

I was looking for a car that gets over 40 mpg. I looked at both the Prius and HCH. What drew me to the HCH was 1) design (don't really like the look of the Prius) 2) Horse Power, we live in the NE Georgia mountains. My reasoning was the 110 HP I.C.E. in the HCH would do better than the 79 HP I.C.E. in the Prius. 3) I was able to get a better deal at the Honda dealer than the Toyota.

 

My legs start to fall asleep after about an hour in the seat. I'm 6'3" 218lbs.

Search on seat comfort here. There are several discussions.

Cheers, Ian

 

I find the HCH to be pretty comfortable for 1-2 hour drives. If you're used to a Lexus or something, will be less comfortable than you are used to, but still better than most compacts I've driven.

The HCH uses the battery power pretty aggressively when you start out from a dead stop, but it doesn't use the battery much on the highway unless you are going up a big hill. I wouldn't worry in the slightest about putting 30k of highway miles on the car a year from a battery perspective.

Getting at the oil filter is cake because of the huge opening around it. The only difficulty changing the oil is that you need to take the bottom fairing off which is kinda awkward. I'm going to get a Fumoto valve for next time which should make this a lot easier. If you are putting lots of miles on quickly, the oil change interval seems to be 9,000-10,000 miles based on what I've seen people report here.

Regarding an HCH vs. a gas Civic, you could see a huge mileage improvement, or you could see very little improvement at all--it all boils down to how you drive. If you drive 80mph or faster, you won't see much difference between the two cars as the little 1.3L engine really needs to work pretty hard to get to those speeds. If you drive 60, you will see a large improvement vs. the gas car.

My last highway drive got me 64mpg round trip (160 miles) driving 60mph on the open road and 50mph in Denver. I think I could have gotten high 40mpgs in a gas Civic if I had driven in a similar style so that would be a 15mpg (30%) improvement for the HCH.

We also own a Mariner which uses a similar Aisin-based hybrid system as the Prius. I find that the HCH is much easier to get GREAT mileage on the highway than the Mariner, but it's pretty easy to get GOOD mileage in either system on the highway if you don't drive super fast.

The Aisin system really shines in stop and go traffic though, whereas the HCH behaves more like a normal car. If you hit stop and go in the HCH, your engine will shut off the first time you stop. If you crawl a little, hitting more than 10mph, it will autostop again each time. If you crawl WITHOUT hitting 10mph, you only get two autostops before the engine decides to just keep running (until you get up to >10mph again). A car like the Prius will just shut off and allow you to crawl on electric power for up to a mile before the battery goes low, and the recharge is pretty quick when the engine is idleing in traffic. If you spend 25% or more of your time in true stop and go, the Prius would be a better car--otherwise my vote would be for the HCH.

 

I just took delivery of my 08 HCH this week. It has been an awesome car so far!

I have a 60mi/day commute with 60% highway/40% city. The 45 mins it takes each way is pretty comfortable for a 6 footer. I came from an Infiniti which was more comfortable, but for more than double the mpg, I'm ok with it!

Like the previous post said, it depends on how you drive it. I've driven/owned other cars which had the instant mpg as a numeric digital readout, but the Civic's bar graph is much easier for a person to see how their driving is affecting mpg. I have the non-navigation version so not sure how the navigation one depicts it.

With only 120 miles on the car, I'm averaging 47.5 mpg. So much for needing a break-in period

If you're getting close to invoice, that's pretty good for these days, where most places are not budging from msrp. Plus you're getting a $1050 credit if you buy before July 1.

Good luck with your decision! You won't be disappointed if you buy it.

 

If I were you, a hybrid car would be my second choice. The first would be to move closer to work, or find a job closer to home.

That may not be practical. I know that CT is an expensive place to live, and NJ may not offer the same opportunities. But just consider all the options.

I'm in the opposite situation to yours. I live in a small town north of Dallas, where houses are so cheap that it's never a question of IF you can buy one, but simply whether you want to buy one really nice house, or one to live in and a few others to rent out. Anyway, I live in this small town because it's the closest city to my employer. My daily commute is 10 miles each way.

I work with dozens of people in the same job who refuse to live in this town because it's not the "cool" place to be. Instead, they live in the "cool" DFW suburbs and commute 60-80 miles each way. The price of gas is killing them now, and suddenly my small town is looking better to them. I recommend it, but not just because of gas prices.

I tell them to consider the time they're spending going to and from work, and how much of their lives they're giving up in the name of living "cool." Their commute is one hour each way. Mine is 15 minutes. That means their 8-hour shifts require 10 hours out of their days. Mine only requires 8.5 hours.

That's almost an 8-hour per week difference between me and them. They're essentially working one extra shift per week more than I am, but getting the same pay. That's gotta suck!

Anyway, the point is to keep the bigger picture in mind. Don't feel that you "have to" live one place while you "have to" work another, and that you "have to" buy a hybrid to compensate for the inconvenience.

But if you buy a hybrid, you won't regret the HCH.
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Wow, I certainly do not envy you your commute. That's a tough one. I live in CT, and have in-laws in Jersey, so have seen the difference between a good commute and a bad one. On a good day, we can make the trip in an hour-and-a-half, on a bad one...eek.
Anyway, I have an older HCH, and the newer model has seen some improvements in technology, in particular having increased horsepower and better autostop capabilities.
You can check out my mileage logs to see my best/worst tank averages (click on "more" to see details for each tank):

https://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/.../car/5679.html

After owning my car for nearly a year, it seems to me the things that affect the mpg's most severely were cold weather and short commutes. I have gotten into some bad I-95 gridlock on occasion. See the second tank from the bottom of the list. I was stuck on I-95 for 45 minutes, and that tank still averaged 41.7 mpg. My current tank will have the same thing factored in; we got stuck in another jam. I was driving alongside a guy from Jersey in a Prius, wondering what kind of success he was having. Best you can do in that situation is leave space between yourself and the car ahead of you. Coast without braking to keep a steady flow. If you can get up to about 10 mph like Kristian said, you will be able to achieve autostop when the traffic comes to a dead stop again, so you won't be sitting there wasting gas.
I'm sure you know to buy your gas in NJ because it will be far cheaper than any station in NY or CT.
Overall, I am sure the mpg in the hybrid will be higher than you could get in the gas-only Civic. When you're stuck in gridlock, there's no way the gas version is going to be able to do any better than the hybrid. At least with the hybrid you can get the autostop to help out some of the way. When the highway opens up, the gas-only car will do good, the hybrid will do better.

Other than that...depending on where you live/work, there's always the option of taking the train, at least part of the way. (Although with that comes the price of your ticket, possible parking charges, and fitting it into your schedule.)

Good luck with your decision. Let us know how it goes.

 

I agree with 1st Pick on this one. If you think you're going to work for this company for quite some time I would consider moving closer. My wife and I use to live 50 miles from work just to live in a "cool" town and after two years of commuting we've racked up some serious miles on our HCHII and visited the pump at least 1 to 2 times a week. Now, we have moved closer to work and now our commutes are less than 10 min and we're at the pump 1 to 2 times a month and putting less wear and tear and spending more time at home than in the car.

If you think about it...if you purchase the car and do the commute for xx amt of years. You'll be just saving hundreds of $$$ in the long run while you will be putting down thousands of $$$ at the time of purchase. At the same time your a$$ will get fatter while living closer you can spend that time you use to commute and exercise instead. And the fact that oil won't be getting cheaper for the years to come will only add to your debt you own on your car.

Reality BITES!!