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My regular civic gets at least 30 city and close to 40 high way (if there's no wind and i'm not running the a/c then 45). And that's just the plain old kind.

We have a Prius and a friend has a Civic Hybrid. For combined city/highway, both get around 43 mpg.

doc-robc wrote:

You'll get better mileage on the highway with a regular Civic

Can you substantiate this? So far what I'm hearing is I'd be looking at the same, maybe slightly better. And rental-wise I think the cost difference is less than $10/day.

If the cost is close, I'd have fun and go with the hybrid no matter what.

robco wrote:

Have you driven a hybrid? "Fun" is not part of the experience...

Agreed.  Once you get over the cool factor, hybrids just aren't fun anymore.

If you really wanna have fun, rent a motorcycle, they get great gas mileage.

Ok, what range are we talking about? It's not unusual for us to do two things simultaneously.

1. Drive for long distances, up to 500 miles one way on Interstates,

2. and load the vehicle up till we look like the Clampets.

I suspect that the advantages of the hybrids may be lost under those conditions.

You want fun get a convertible.

Fried Chicken wrote:

sturner wrote:

Ok, what range are we talking about? It's not unusual for us to do two things simultaneously.

1. Drive for long distances, up to 500 miles one way on Interstates,

2. and load the vehicle up till we look like the Clampets.

I suspect that the advantages of the hybrids may be lost under those conditions.

The advantage of hybrids is pretty much lost on the freeway, at least that's where the advantage becomes much less noticeable than in driving where you have a lot of stop and go.

My experience has been opposite your assessment. Where my Prius shines is when I can maintain nearly constant speed, preferably not under a torque situation (speeding up, going up inclines). In my drive to work, the portions on the streets is when I get the worst mileage (~25 MPG). When I'm on the freeway (and it isn't clogged), I can get 40 to 60 MPG. Overall my MPG has been 44 MPG.

If your idea of fun driving is feeling the G-forces in your seat, then a Prius is not for you. On the other hand, I was able to go from about 60 to 85 MPH while travelling up a longish steep incline without much of a problem (to be sure: getting horrible gas mileage during that stretch).

For completeness: I have yet to load it until "we look like the Clampets" so I do not have any assessment for those conditions.

Fried Chicken wrote:

The advantage of hybrids is pretty much lost on the freeway, at least that's where the advantage becomes much less noticeable than in driving where you have a lot of stop and go.

For other full hybrids that have non-hybrid versions (like the Escape, Camry, Altima, etc.) your are correct in that they do get better city mileage due to the fact they can run part of the time on just the electric motor and the increase in highway mileage isn't as great. They essentially run the same gas engine (retuned to run on the Atkinson cycle) as their conventional counterparts.

The Prius and Civic Hybrid were designed for maximum fuel efficiency however. The Civic Hybrid uses a smaller gas engine than the standard Civic, so the difference is considerable. The Prius has no conventional counterpart as it's only sold as a hybrid, but still beats the Corolla and Camry in highway mileage.

A motorcycle (or Prius) is fine if you don't, you know, have to carry anything.

Last edited by Tallgeese (2007-10-02 8:12 pm)

What's a Jetta diesel get on the highway? Are there any other small cars available with a diesel?

MacAddict4Life wrote:

Motorcycle-wise I worry about... well... dying.

Heck, I worry about moving from my big explorer to a small car because you are 50% less likely for an accident to be a fatality in a SUV. I know "if there weren't so many SUVs that wouldn't be such a big difference." True, but any time two cars collide, you're safer in the SUV (ie: SUV on SUV is less likely to kill you can small car on small car).

Ah yes, but how much more likely is an SUV to be involved in an accident? It would be pretty darn hard to flip a civic with such a low center of gravity (unless you went up a curb or something) and SUVs flip like crazy. My brother had a truck (which is even worse) and flipped it going 20mph (granted, on an icy road).