Originally published December 29 2005
Honda's Civic hybrid vehicle scores points with car experts
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
For The Independent, John Sinister reviews Honda's new Civic hybrid vehicle and finds the ride so appealing that he ventures to assume the Honda will now give Toyota's Prius some stiff competition.
Honda's new Civic is a revolutionary-looking hatchback but it's designed for and will be built in Europe.
Japan is where Honda builds its hybrid drive systems so this is the one that gets petrol-electric power.
It's significant that the name is now Hybrid rather than IMA, which stood for "integrated motor assist".
These days people know what a hybrid is and the new car can run on the electric motor alone like a Toyota Prius, which wasn't possible before.
In the Honda the 1.3-litre, 71kW engine and the 15kW (and 103Nm of torque) electric motor are always connected because the electric motor is part of the flywheel.
There's no mechanical resistance, however, because all the valves are shut; the air in two of the cylinders is compressed while the air in the other two expands, so it all evens out.
It also has Prius-like regenerative braking that uses the electric motor as a generator when you touch the brake pedal, which helps the hybrid to an average fuel consumption of about 5litres/100km.
There's a stop-start system as before, but previously it didn't work when the air-con was on because the air-con pump was driven by the engine.
If you accelerate away gently, you can feel and hear a subtle change in activity somewhere between 1100rpm and 1400rpm; the electric motor doesn't operate alone above these speeds.
So that's the hybrid part, its only other visible sign a small hump in the rear bulkhead where the slender battery pack lives (it means you can't fold the rear seats).
Driving this Civic is just as you might imagine a Civic CVT to feel, except that it has a brisk, keen step-off from rest (the 0-100km/h time is about 10 seconds), and the engine gets quite vocal when you accelerate hard, because it whips up to high revs.
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