So what's the catch? Why isn't everyone driving hybrids? Why does Honda only expect to sell 1,000 of these in the UK in the next year? After all, the demand for such cars has rocketed in the US, spurred by the growing numbers of celebrities keen to advertise their eco-friendly credentials by buying a 'green' car. Are British buyers more ignorant, or are we just, perhaps, a bit cynical?
It's probably a bit of both: there is still much work to be done raising awareness of alternative powertrains like this, but a healthy dose of scepticism is also necessary to cut through the slightly hysterical hype often surrounding hybrid launches.
Like the Prius, this car isn't quite the cure for all automotive evils its supporters claim it to be. The official fuel economy figures may be impressive, for a start (54.3mpg in urban conditions and 65.7mpg on the extra-urban cycle) but in real life, they may well not match up, particularly if much driving is done on motorways or fast highways.
The Civic Hybrid runs in engine-only mode at high speeds and that tiny four-cylinder unit is going to struggle on the motorway, or when quicker acceleration is needed and economy will thus suffer. We experienced this with the Prius we ran here at 4Car for six months: in anything other than city driving (when it was excellent) its fuel economy was little or no better than our larger diesel-powered Peugeot 407 1.6 HDi estate, generally lagging a good 20mpg under the official figures. Similar findings have been reported by other hybrid owners, and demonstrated in a well-documented experiment by
Road and Track magazine in the US, which did a coast-to-coast economy run with a Lexus RX400h hybrid and a similarly-powered diesel Mercedes-Benz ML-Class. The Merc used less fuel.
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| The Hybrid runs for two minutes electric-only |
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The Honda hybrid system, less complex than Toyota's, also has one fewer trump card to play. The Prius has a limited range in fully-electric mode, but is capable of running for some time on battery power with its engine completely disengaged. It can at least hum its way along a slow-moving traffic queue without burning any fuel or releasing any emissions.
The Civic's powertrain was designed to be simpler and cheaper to produce (and thus more commercially viable and flexible to fit in a variety of vehicles); its engine never completely disengages and, while combustion can shut down in up to all four cylinders, it keeps turning. This gives good efficiency thanks to reduced frictional losses, but in combination with its small batteries, it has an even more limited range motor-powered. In theory, it can run in electric mode for low-speed cruising (up to 30kph), but only for up to two minutes - and not even that, if the batteries are not well-charged and there are other demands on the electrical system, such as air conditioning, ventilation and audio.
In an hour or so driving around London, we couldn't get it to run in fully-electric mode at all. The stop-start system, which cuts wasteful and polluting idling, was doing more to aid urban air quality.
