2003 Honda Civic Hybrid
 

We just bought a 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid with a manual transmission for my wife. The car has 94,000 miles on it, and is replacing a 2001 Civic LX with 240,000 miles.

It has been fun for me to learn about how the hybrid system works and try to drive as efficiently as I can. It's interesting because the car is so similar to our old Civic, but so different mechanically (and significantly slower).

Old car (silver) and new car (white)
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Immediately after buying the car my wife drove it 3 hours to beach in the dark. She said the headlights were horrible (I must have put upgraded bulbs in the old Civic at some point). Since we are planning on having the car for at least a few years, and I've always wanted to do a projector retrofit, I jumped on the internet and bought a Morimoto mini H1 HID retrofit kit, some new housings, and LED bulbs for the front parking lights.

I'm hoping that 40W less draw (maybe a little more counting the LED parking lights) on the battery when the lights are on will help eek out a little bit more gas mileage. I'd like to replace most or all of the other bulbs with LEDs too sometime soon.

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So far I've been really impressed by the light output.

Congrats on the new wheels. They're a lot of fun to play with IMO. I recently put my Insight on the road and I'm loving it so far.

I think about trading my Miata for an Insight all the time. Seems like all the cars I want to own only have 2 seats...

I have an HCH1 as well, it's been delivering considerably above the EPA combined rating for me.

I think those people who brought lawsuits for it not meeting the expectations weren't trying at all.

With you 100%.

EDIT: Subscribed, let me know if you want help building a simple grid charger. I'm working on figuring out how spoof the PWM signal.

How does the steering feel on your HCH1?

I have the 04 MT, and the PS rack is just awful (some nasty stiction in neutral makes it hard to keep going down the center of the lane)

It's stiff in mine. It might feel exactly the same in yours, but I wouldn't call it awful, maybe a bit fatiguing to drive for great distances. It seems that as speed increases, the steering becomes stiffer and has more resistance to when power engages.

This is something that I definitely want to do more research on. I may reach out to you at some point.

I actually really like the feel of the PS rack. It seems to track straight with no issues, but the assist doesn't feel overpowered like our 2001 Civic does.

Disclaimer: I depowered my Miata steering rack, so my frame of reference is different than most. Once the car is moving more than a few MPH I don't want much assistance anyway.

After 2 fill-ups the average is about even with the EPA rating, but my wife has done most of the driving. I managed to get 60mpg on a 13 mile round trip, so I know the car is capable of doing much better than the rating. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to teach my wife how to beat it though (and not because I haven't tried).

That 60 indicated is pretty good, but be advised that in my experience that gauge reads about 10% high.

I've noticed the deadness on center in the steering too. It's just another quirk of the car, like needing to lift up on a door when closing, or learning to disregard the blurriness of the rearview mirror.

In mine, I've found the disparity between pump gallons + tachometer miles, and FCD is always less than 5%, and usually less than 2%.

I noticed while doing some driving today that fan stays running for a long time after the car is turned off. It is only 59F out today. Is this normal? This seems like a poor use of the power stored up in my batteries.

Happens every time with mine, it keeps running for 2 minutes regardless of the weather.

Mine keeps running for a few minutes after shutting down. I never gave it a second thought; I've had other cars that did that too that weren't hybrids.

The fan running seems to be based on the intake air temperature sensor reading at shutoff. I can't remember from the top of my head exactly how many degrees C that is.

You can make it stay off kludgily by shutting the car off, then fully restarting the car, then immediately shutting it off again, but I don't usually do that, because I assume the difference in behavior from the gas-only version of the same car must have something to do with heat soak in the extra electronics under the hood.

The HCH is my wife's car, but she didn't need it yesterday. I was able to take the car to work to see what kind of mileage I could get on my commute. I was hoping to get close to 60MPG, but was a little disappointed that I only got 50.7 according to the cars computer. I'm sure if it had been warmer and not raining that would have helped. Some LRR tires would probably help too.

On my way home from work, there is a 6 mile stretch with a 45 MPH speed limit. On a good day I will get to drive for several miles on this road without anyone behind me. If there is no one behind me then I pulse and glide from 50-25 MPH with EOC. This seems to be a big improvement over driving steady state at 45 or 50, but this is in my Miata. In the Civic I wasn't sure what to do. I had the opportunity to pulse and glide yesterday, but I wasn't sure what the right technique was in a hybrid. My normal style involves accelerating from 25 to 50 at maybe 75% throttle, if I did this in the Civic and then shut the car off for my coast the IMA battery would be completely drained after a few miles. How should I approach a 45 MPH road for ideal mileage?

TL;DR How do I (or should I even) P & G in an HCH1?

The Civic Hybrid has lean burn and tall gearing, so the gains from pulse and glide are much smaller. You can get nearly the same fuel economy just driving at the same average speed, which would probably be around 40mph.

At 45mph steady, my HCH shows 60+ mpg on the readout. That's with three of us aboard; if I'm riding by myself it gets even better. Of course that readout is 10% optimistic but still - that's really good. For the small gains PNG offers as Ecky pointed out, and the very real possibility of screwing up a pulse and blowing all the gains out, I wouldn't bother.

Yeah, with my 93 CX/VX trans and aeromods and liht weight, kn a freeway I do lihter Pulse and Glide, less of it. It makes less difference, even though I do not have lean burn.