Civic Hybrid MPG class action lawsuit settled... now heading to small claims court
 

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/sc/313524...overview-1.gif

For those who haven't seen this yet, Honda was sued in 2007 in the US by two Civic Hybrid owners who weren't getting the mileage their cars were advertised to get:

• 49 city / 51 highway (by the old, pre-2008 ratings method)

They were getting 31 mpg.

Honda has reportedly settled the lawsuit, and has agreed to take a number of actions as a result of it, including:

• rebates to dissatisfied owners on other (non-hybrid) new / used Hondas

• sending "eco-driver's ed" DVD's to all Honda hybrid owners

• changing their advertising from "mileage may vary" to "mileage will vary"

• and a few other things.

See this article for more info: Civic Hybrid Mileage Brouhaha Continues | Hybrid Cars

What a mess!

It would have been interesting to know exactly what those two owners were doing to get such crappy mileage from their cars (or if it was in fact their fault).

The case does raise some interesting issues, eg. the implications of marketing vehicles based on fuel economy.

I know one hybrid owner who has never been happy with his car because he never gets the advertised numbers. Now, he's probably never gotten the advertised numbers in ANY car he's owned, but he never bought those cars with fuel economy in mind. And none of them had MPG displays in the middle of the dashboard to show him how badly they were doing.

Another Civic Hybrid got 68MPG.
World Record Attempt
It sounds like the drivers need to learn from the professionals...

Shouldn't their problem be with the EPA who makes the ratings and not the company that has no control over what the ratings will be.

Idiots.

how does "millage may vary" not cover the eventuality that perhaps the millage might not be what it was said to be?

Ha. Found an interview ABG did with the driver.

AutoblogGreen Q&A: Civic Hybrid owner John True (he's the guy suing Honda) — Autoblog Green

Says he didn't do anything unusual, but also didn't try to save.

Some of the comments are interesting. There's a good story by a Honda salesman who would get similar complaints from hybrid owners, and then he'd show up the complainers with their own cars, then give them tips.

I can't believe they won. Ben is right, Honda doesn't claim that MPG, the EPA does.

Also, someone should have driven the car to verify these idiots were in fact just idiots who don't know how to drive... stuff like this makes me mad.

Funny how everyone is ready to blame the victim. Why makes you so sure it was the driver's fault rather than a problem with the car?

Honda would offer to fix the car before getting sued. If the 'victim' declined, they obviously wouldn't have won.

Honda to used the EPA numbers in it's adverising. If honda didn't believe those numbers to be accurate, then they shouldn't appear anywhere other than the gov mandated window sticker. I hope more people take manufacuturers to task on this point. I'm tired I seeing inflated FE claims in every car ad. GM is pushing 7 seat SUVs that get 32mpg. If that's not false advertising I don't know what is.

I wonder how stupid they really are? Would they be able to figure out how to get better mileage if gasoline were $10 a gallon? $15 dollars a gallon? Or would they just sue the gas companies?

At some point along the way even stupid people can figure out that modifying their own behavior has something to do with the results.

(Your results may vary. We accept no responsibility for your own stupidity. By reading this you accept these terms. By not reading this, you accept your own stupidity and are responsible for it.)

:D(serious):D

These numbers are nowhere near inflated in my opinion. Inflated would be Toyota using the Japanese government rating of 89 mpg or whatever it is. That's pretty out of reach for almost everyone.

As Tim said, if the cars we broken, Honda would have fixed them. Clearly these drivers just bought a toy, broke it, then complained about how it was someone else's fault it broke. We're not blaming the victim, we're asking people to take responsibility for themselves. Honda made a car nearly everyone was happy with. If a few weren't, perhaps they should consider they bought the wrong car or mistreated it, rather than getting all sue-happy.

my 2004 civic hybrid consistently got 53mpg.
in a class-action lawsuit the product users are not the winners.
the attorney's are more interested in the lawsuit than the users... for good reason.

i think i was in the milli vanilli CD lawsuit... they offered me my money back if i still had the receipt...

Hi,

One of the reasons I plot 'mph vs MPG' is to determine if the problem is vehicle or something else. My first fill-up in the 2003 Prius was the first car data point in this chart:
http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/epa.jpg
The first data point was the airplane trip out to get the car and drive back. My first fill-up was the 39 MPG mark at 75 mph.

The first thing I do is ask the complainer to drive a circular route, a by-pass, that is relatively flat at a cruise control speed. Do one warm-up pass and then reset the trip meter. Once they realize the vehicle CAN achieve the predicted mileage, they start listening and to a greater or lessor extent, following good advice.

This is the detailed chart for the NHW11 Prius:
http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/ca..._MPG_Rev_B.jpg

This is my ZVW30, 2010 Prius, chart:
http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/pri_2010_800.jpg

Bob Wilson

...unfortunately, not everyone is so inclined to document what's going on with their vehicles (good & bad).

...I'm from the Lord Byron / Jerry McGuire school: "...show me the NUMBERS (money)!" so appreciate the detail you provide, other's, however, will never understand *why* you'd want to do it in the first place.

The complainants didn't actually win. If Honda settled it, nobody won or lost. The settlement means that there was never a judgement entered, and it was probably in Honda's best interests fiscally and legally to settle out of court than have to pay the legal team's bills.

Given those facts, this never would have held a coin in court. Whether or not Honda used those figures in advertising, they were given to Honda by the EPA, who would cause legal trouble for Honda by using any other set of numbers. The EPA requires that their numbers be used, as a matter of fair testing procedures and fair advertising between all companies.

If the drivers were not capable of operating their vehicles in such a way that they could get within 15% of the EPA registered values (which are a joke, I think), they should be re-tested for knowledge and application of proper operation of a motor vehicle.

I think this story is somewhat related (and good for a chuckle):

My buddy Ivan (ForkenSwift co-conspirator) is an electrician. He recently had a service call from a woman who was concerned about the very high electricity bills at her home. She was convinced there was something wrong with her electrical service. ("It wasn't always like this!")

Ivan audited the house and gave her the bad news: "There's nothing wrong with your service, but I'm afraid your SIX refrigerators are a big part of the problem." (Several full size fridges, bar fridges, water cooler, wine cooler, deep freeze...)

"Well what am I supposed to do?"

Apparently she wasn't very happy with him when he suggested changing behaviour to save energy: Consolidating fridges, giving up a few of them, turning off lights, cutting back on other phantom loads. People want magic bullets.

So, assuming there was nothing wrong with the guy's Civic, we can take heart in the fact that at least most people who aren't willing to take responsibility for their energy use don't sue the companies whose products they use!

The 2008 EPA estimates for my '07 Mustang V6 are 17MPG city and 25MPG highway. I've only had ONE fill-up in that range. What am I doing wrong?:confused::D

You're bending your right leg too far, and using the left one far too soon.

Huh?:confused:

Right leg bent = not on the gas

Left one too soon = shifting "too early".

Along with avoiding the middle (brake) pedal as much as possible. :)

I was afraid I'd make an immature reference to "middle leg" if I mentioned the brake, so I left it out. :P

whoa! dave has 3 legs.

http://www.hybridcars.com/files/decicco-mpg.gif

Hybridcars.com has a good response to the lawsuit story by a U of Michigan lecturer who had the unique opportunity to directly compare the fuel economy of both the hybrid and non-hybrid Civic - he and his wife own 5-speed versions of each.

The graph shows a couple of things: 1) they're not hypermilers - neither car meeting its original EPA ratings.

2) Their hybrid gets 30% better fuel economy than the regular Civic, which is what Honda advertised in one of its brochures.

Worth a look: Green Car Expert Gets Real about Honda Civic Hybrid MPG | Hybrid Cars

The saga continues ...

The lawyers' bills are the subject of the latest chapter of this story.

The settlement included "nearly $3 million in fees for the plaintiffs' attorneys", while the plaintiffs (Honda hybrid owners) got a "coupon" good for relatively small rebates or a discount on another Honda (see post 1).

The settlement is on hold while a judge reviews a challenge (brought by one of the plaintiffs) under the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 which aims to address outcomes where (among other things) the lawyers benefit more than the plaintiffs!

See: Judge Questions Coupon Settlement in Honda Class Action - Law Blog - WSJ

...Desraeli appropriate: "...lawyers, lawyers and damn lawyers!"

Back from Yosemite for Christmas, and here's an update to this old thread:
Car owner takes legal fight away from lawyers - latimes.com

HUH? I thought the left was only for stop signs? Ya'll use it to shift :truck grin: ?

/off topic

I have two friends with identical Prii. One beats the EPA (manually cuts the AC when accellerating!) the other does 75-80 and gripes he 'got took'.

Everyone is in a blame-the-victim mode here. From the latest article "Honda said the Civic would get about 50 miles per gallon, but because of technical problems the car gets closer to 30 mpg."
I believe the "technical problems" refers to:
"Honda has acknowledged that the battery on 2006 through 2008 Civic hybrids "may deteriorate and eventually fail" earlier than expected. When the battery pack can't be charged to full capacity, the car relies on the gas engine more and fuel economy suffers."

In essence, the car is no longer the hybrid that was originally purchased. It's now ICE-only, or pretty close to it. So there does seem to be some merit to the lawsuit.

I wasn't aware of this from Honda until I read the article either.

Like most things, it's probably not a clear cut either/or situation. Lousy driving plus a deteriorating pack would make it easy to slip to 30ish mpg.

We obviously all know that with attentive driving plus a completely dead pack, a driver could still beat the EPA.

Your MPG Estimates

looks like 2 people have low mileage issues out of the total number reported.

regards
Mech

Another case that we are just that much closer to the movie Idiocracy.

I see this issue as operator error. I drive the same car and did notice a very small dip in mileage after the recall/reprogramming.

But adding ethanol to the fuel had a much larger impact to FE. Why not sue the government for pushing ethanol with a net loss in energy savings.

What would be the operator errors you are referring to?

I'm sure in part you mean this as a joke. Corporations are often the biggest and most unaccountable bureaucracies in our lives. It can't be viewed as simply as Honda is good and government is bad.

California98Civic -

It could also be a situation where not all battery packs are equal. Some people may have good cars but lemon batteries.

Has battery manufacturing quality control been ruled out in the suit?

CarloSW2

You're right. I'd view Honda as an entity out to make money by blessing others with a good product, making them kinda neutral, and government as bad/incompetent. Glad you pointed that out.

Let's not have this thread devolve into a political philosophy "debate". Thanks!

MetroMpg -- I deleted my posts, assuming you were referring to them.

Thanks. It wasn't what raised the red flag though.

Let's just try to keep things on topic.

FYI

Just got the paperwork in the mail for this lawsuit settlement.

They are offering $100 for the poor fuel economy and an additional $100 for the 2006-2008 HCH subclass who feel that the software update made the car perform poorly.

Also they are extending the warranty for the IMA battery system for another year and 12,000 miles.

This is better than nothing. The woman in California is going for $10K in small claims court, I doubt she will get it.

In a nutshell the issue I see is that the software update was done to preserve battery life, and by doing so they are only using 50% of the battery power, this in turn decreases mileage and horsepower available.

I bet car manufactures will be a bit gun shy in the future claiming high MPG numbers. Honda originally claimed 50 MPG for both city and highway.