Green Car Expert Gets Real about Honda Civic Hybrid MPG

by John DeCicco

From the time the first hybrids hit US roads a decade ago, some hybrid owners have complained about not achieving advertised MPG numbers. The latest huff involves some disgruntled Honda Civic Hybrid owners acting on that all-American maxim of “Sue the bastards!” Last week, Honda proposed to settle the resulting class-action lawsuit, which would reap a cash windfall for the instigators and a bigger bundle for their lawyers. As a Civic Hybrid owner myself, I just shrugged when their legalese showed up in the mail.

I’m not a hyper miler, and no, neither do I get real-world mileage as high as the original 2003 Civic Hybrid’s window sticker ratings of 46 city and 51 highway MPG. But my wife and I kept careful gas logs since acquiring our hybrid, counting ourselves among the earliest of its early adopters in late March 2002.

Apples to Apples

We also ended up keeping our 1997 Civic LX sedan. That car, now fondly known as the “beater,” had sticker values of 32 city and 38 highway and we kept pretty good gas logs on it, too. Thus, we have close to an apples-to-apples comparison, both being 4-door sedans with 5-speed manuals and air conditioning. We drove the two cars fairly interchangeably, predictably favoring the newer and nicer model for longer trips, although always using the beater for the 90-mile round trip to the airport when leaving a car for several nights in a parking garage.
So what kind of tale do seven years of gas logs tell? As shown on the graph, the Civic Hybrid averaged 42.2 MPG. That’s 12 percent lower than its original EPA composite (city-highway average) rating of 48 MPG. But it’s a 30 percent improvement over the 1997 Civic LX’s average of 32.5 MPG, that latter value being only 6 percent lower than the older car’s 34.4 MPG average sticker rating.

Honda claimed “up to a 30 percent improvement in fuel economy” over other Civics according to a brochure from the time of the Civic Hybrid’s launch. Our observed mileage matches that efficiency gain dead-on even though it falls short of the original EPA numbers. Our main mileage-related complaint is the dashboard fuel economy readout, which gives numbers 3-4 MPG higher than reality. Honda acknowledged this bias and fixed it in later versions of the vehicle, though it leaves early Civic Hybrid owners such as ourselves reliant on gas logs (based on presumably accurate odometers and filling station pumps).

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