Does Honda Care at all about Hybrids, and Plugin Cars?
I have had concerns for some time about Honda and their latest actions with their Civic Hybrid do not give much confidence.
The Civic Hybrid is a nice car, with good mileage. It looks better than a Prius, and has mileage almost as good, although it is not a ‘true hybrid’. You can easily get over 40mpg on a Civic. But there have been reports of battery problems in the Civic, and Honda has now issued a software Product Update.
Instead of fixing the batteries, Honda is using software to make the car dumber. Honda even admits they are (1) idling the gas motor less, (2) eliminating the ‘idle stop’ more often, and (3) using the battery less. I am taking this right off of the letter that Honda recently sent to Civic owners.
If you use the battery less, then by definition you will get worse mileage. Honda does no care about your mileage, and it shows.
Their history is very spotty for these kind of technologies. Their insight hybrid came before the Toyota Prius, but they just gave up on it. They had a hybrid Accord, and they gave up on that too. And their new Insight, the one that looks like a Prius but has worse mileage, is doubly disappointing – not only is it a copy on the outside, but its not a true hybrid – it is what you call a ‘mild hybrid’. It never runs on battery power alone, the way a Prius can. To me this is a very useless car, I dont see any reason this car exists.
Now they are dumbing down the Civic. I am very disappointed in Honda.
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