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i dunno what youre talking about, but i just got 42mpg in my 02 civic auto ex running on regular. i could easily hit 40mpg if i want to and if i made the effort to drive carefully. if you ask around this forum, there are plenty of people running 40mpg+. ask some hx owners on what they get, you be surprise that some could get 50+ mpg if they drove well.

 
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the Hx is the hydrogen model is it not? hence it is a hybrid

 
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^hydrogen? i hope you're kidding. the HX is a super lean burning version of the EX motor and the only civic available with CVT at the time the 7thgen was produced. Honda doesnt....wait, scratch that, I don't even know of a car manufacturer that has a hydrogen powered vehicle. There are several natural gas options, including the civic GX.

 
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Bio diesel is cheap while it is subsidised. Once that stops and we realize it takes more than 1 gal of bio diesel/dyno diesel to produce one gal of bio diesel that idea will stop.

i get 41mpg in the city every other tank. and when i drove to LA at 60mph with the ac on i got 48mpg over 400 miles.

hydrogen is awesome until it becomes popular. right now there is an unlimited supply because no one uses it. but if we used it the way we use gas we would run out in months.

 
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Are there any hybrid owners here that live in cold weather states and have upgraded stereo equipment in them?

I'm specifically interested in how this affects mileage, etc and are there any issues adding amps, subs, etc.

 
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Hydrogen isnt being used becuase they have yet to find a safe way to introduce it to the public. In a crash the tank holding the hydrogen can easily be impacted and boom boom and more boom and your dead. How are hybrids not efficient, haven't ypi guys heard the many people that have been able to go 1350-1400 miles on one tank in a prius. There are also new programs and companies that are modifying these hybrids for around $5,000 where they add a series of batteries to allow the car to run more on electricity,a and these vehicles are running close to 200mpg and they are expecting to be able to get to the 400mpg real soon. It all depends on how you drive your car. Suppose you usually take trips that are roughly 30 miles or less. Well in that 30 miles in a prius, you are solely running on electricity for at least 90 if not 100 percent of that time. If your trips are always like that then yes, a hybrid is worth it. If you know how to drive a hybrid and get the most benifits out of its recharging system then you can go astonishlingly long ways per gallon compared to a regular gasoline engine. The quoted 1350-1400 miles before was on a completely stock prius, the peopl that are obtaining those numbers are jus using their knowledge of the car in order to drive it at its most efficient.

 
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Hybrids are in the US becuase the population is too frickin retarded to realize that diesels are not how they used to be. They aren't loud, smelly, or sooty anymore. They also start fine in winter.

At the end of 2006 when US diesel goes to 5ppm of sulfur from 250ppm (just like Europe already has), they will be very eco friendly as well.

A small diesel car will get better mileage than these stupid *** hybrids. Not to mention we don't have to worry about battery problems and disposal of batteries.

 
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What are you talking about subsidized? Biodiesel is made from a) excess/waste oil from restaurants or b) (much less commonly) commercial, not-for-human-consumption canola oil. Where are you getting subsidy from here. Biodiesel cars are also known as 'grease cars' because they run on, essentially grease. The only part of that even remotely related to 'dino fuel' is the small amount of methanol required when rendering the biodiesel, which can be later recovered.

How the hell would we run out of hydrogen? Its all around us, in water, in gas, everywhere. Thats like saying we're going to run out of carbon. The reason we don't use hydrogen is a) no infrastructure in place b) technological hurdles to actually obtaining, using current methods, efficiently, hydrogen and c) the fact that a filled tank of hydrogen on a car won't take it very far.

You need to get some facts straight I think...

 
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Sulphur is only a small part of what makes diesel less clean. Another is noxious gas emissions, especially nitrogren oxides. And, what has me most worried, small particulate matter, which has been implicated in quite a few respiratory diseases. Small particulate matter can't be filtered efficiently by the body/lungs, its just not very people friendly. Our cities would look like 1800s London if everything was diesel...

 
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Particulate matter is not much of a problem anymore. The new cars and trucks have EGR systems and converters on them.

48% of all new cars sold in Europe during 2004 were diesel.... more than double that of 7 years ago. Yet they have not had a spike in pollution that can be directy related to diesels.

Read: http://www.edmunds.com/advice/specia...8/article.html

 
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your a tard. do research. yes hydrogen is all around us. however the hydrogen that a car would run on is not. and look in to how we would produce it. every major scientist who made it past junior college has admitted its a dousche bag of an idea until they find a way to produce the volume of hydrogen needed. and with bio diesel what do you think the tractors that pick the beans run on? there is not that much grease laying around once every car runs on it. so we would need refined canola oil. and actually it is more expensive to run on bio diesel right now than it is to run on gas. I am sorry that i got my info from going to the http://www.fuelcellpartnership.org/ in west sac and talking to the guys who are/were pushing fuel cells. and the bio diesel i got that info from the **** anti mother nature people at pbs. the only people who say anything positive about those technologies are the ppl who have something to gain from them being produced. however people who have nothing to gain from it failling cant believe its being funded. simply stated it takes less pollution to produce and burn a gal of gas/diesel in a car than it does to plant, water, harvest, and refine a gal of bio diesel then burn it or the = amount of energy in hydrogen.

 
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the process of creating enough biodiesel for a nation pollutes just a slight amount less than running a ulev car

 
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Yep. I get constantly 40+ MPG . And this is at around 65 mi/h. But the optimal fuel economy is at around 50-55 mi/h.
Check out this article:
http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/pw/50-litre.htm

 
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As I have said previously, I get, with no modifications to my HCH, a lifetime 52.7 mpg, which is more than the rated mpg. This summer, I was able to average, from May to September, nearly 60 mpg.

I used the A/C.
I went 70+mph or more as traffic permitted.

You can do very well with these nice hybrids.

Also, as for the battery life and the technology life, I have not heard on this, or some of the other more hybrid (Toyota as well as Prius) sites, of any battery failures not covered under warranty. Some states require warranties of 100K miles. Just after the introduction of the hybrids, replacement batteries were quoted at $5k, however, they now cost quite a bit more as the availability of spare units and units from totaled hybrids hit the market. The number is no about $1,500.

I have 48K miles on my '04 HCH, with no signs of battery degredation.

 
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I get 40+ on all hwy trips. I get 38 to 40 on my daily commute (50 miles one way). Gas with high ethanol content will give you crappy mpg. If I get gas in the city where I work, my milage goes down. If I get it near my house, I get 40 mpg almost every tank. I've got an 02 LX coupe.

 
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I didn't look to the ethanol content of the gas I buy, but I will keep eye on it from now on to see any sideeffect. The gas stations I thik are requred to post the ethanol content or not?
I wondering if the DX, LX, EX get the same ECU program that the HX, I think we all end up with higher MPG (not considering the VTEC).

 
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Yes, buy federal law they have to post what addative are in their gas. But very few do.

Yes, the HX has a different tranny, cam and ECU than any of the other civics.

 
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Have anybody put more than 13.2 galons in the tank without topping off? The pump indicate that I put 13.7!!

BTW here is an articla about Prius. I was nor impresed by the MPG get on HWY.

http://autospeed.drive.com.au/cms/A_2036/article.html

In the city the MPG is nice, but we can get the HWY MPG on our 7thgen if we want.

 
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Um...you're a tard. Read my post and learn to spell 'you're'. You said biodiesel was subsidized, its not. You're talking about market forces, yes if more people demand something, supply will have to keep up and if it can't it will cost more. I'm so happy that you managed to figure out supply and demand.

I also explicitly said the reasons why we didn't use hydrogen. Which then you chose to restate and imply that I didn't know. Yes we can't technologically do it efficiently. But when you say that we'll 'run out' you're implying that theres some sort of fixed supply. Theres no free hydrogen anywhere, at least none that we can economically refine and put to significant use.

And yes, it takes less energy to get gas presently vs. biodiesel, but gas prices are rising, because *drum roll* demand is going up. When we're out of gas completely and our supplies are depleted, a sustainable solution will be required, thats why more efficient biodiesel will be a plus. Oil is essentially stored energy, anything thats not oil requires more energy than oil to use/produce.

When you become more literate and actually read what I write, feel free to post a reply. I'm so happy that you did a bit of online research to ammend your original nonsense post.

 
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I'm still very skeptical about diesel, technolgy has made huge leaps, but particulate emissions still bother me, the soot is simply unavoidable, it can be handled to a point but not entirely. In the province where I am right now theres a lot of industrial expansion, consequently, small particulate matter levels have gone through the roof, other levels have stayed somewhat flat (owing to better/newer technologies) but small particulate matter is a lot higher. You can only make a filter so fine, if you deal with a filter on the micron level it becomes difficult to run large amount of volume through it before it reaches capacity. I don't know a great deal about diesel engines, but I've yet to see a diesel engine that does not emit at least a bit of black smoke behind it while accelerating, this includes new/current diesel engines in both cars and trucks, the soot is simply unavoidable and I think on a large scale could be problematic.

I admire firms like Mercedes and VW for making leaps with this technology and they indeed have, but I think a lot of this business is just good marketing. Particulate emissions are still bothersome and have been linked to a lot of respiratory impairments, asthma in particular, which has shown a rising prevalence in today's kids.

 
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here's a simple solution, buy a used hybrid for the $17k going rate.. not bad considering they'll still have a warranty and possible 2k a year back.

 
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The particulate is carbon, you can easily filter it out and running uncer the proper conditions diesel engines produce very little of it. When moded, they can produce far more. Filtering abilty has greatly increased and will be a law before long. Once the sulfur goes down, there may even be catalyst used (BTW, I'm working on those catalyst )

 
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As far as Hydrogen goes, I work and develop on fuel cells and catalyst that go into your cat. It is known that if hydrogen could be used it would be far more better than our current engines. Why? Because in the current internal combustion engine you use about 30% of the power realized by the exploding gas. The remaining 70% goes into heat, light, and sound, hence is wasted.

The temporary solution for hydrogen, you can easily reform oil to get hydrogen

Yes you are still using oil, but fuel cells are about 90-95% efficient, so if you put it into a MPG scale, right now you get about 20 MPG (this is per gallon of crude oil, not refined oil, you get about 2 gallons of gas out of every 3 gallons of crude oil, so that translates to around 30 MPG of refined gas). Moving on, with a fuel cell car, you would get about 60-70 MPG of crude oil.

If you do some more math, you can see it will make our oil last far longer. Also, hydrogen can easily be produced via hydrolysis (putting electric through water). This is how the space station operates their fuel cells, their electricity comes from solar panels while in the sun, which then charges the fuel cells by splitting the water, then in darkness the fuel cells are used. Since there is well over 300 years worth of coal left on Earth, we can safely say coal power electric plants are in no danger. I would think in 300 years we come up with a good way to split water and get hydrogen.

See the big picture?

 
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BY the way the US Department of Transportation has approved a method of transporting hydrogen. It can be stored inside a solid (it's a nickle doped zeolite) that actually hold the hydrogen like a sponge untill needed. Incase of an accident, the hydrogen stay in the sponge, so you get no boom.

 
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currently there is no technology to get to the hydrogen. Its so far from being developed its at the point of flying cars in the 1940's. its just a picture of a big building on the coast with pipes going in and out to the sea with steam going up. Now as to what is in the building the scientist dont know what should go in the hydrogen making plant yet. so we would run out. no way around it. Until we do find the technology to get the hydrogen we need we will run out. The farmers are subsidized. there for take away the farmers gov't check and no ones growing the fuel. Also as far as the limited supply of oil goes thats a on going debate. There are a lot of geologists who believe we are yet to even find a 1/2 the oil out there let alone use it. I am sorry I dont use proper english or spell check on a forum about cars. I know how to spell i just write rough drafts when writing for no real reason. Plus this is a thread about how hybrids are yet to be fuel efficient to justify their price.

 
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I see your point, but fuel cell cars a little further along than flying cars. I mean Honda is already leasing them to private people. There are many buses in California that run on fuel cells and even homes in remote areas that run on fuel cells.

Just because we don't have hydrogen, don't discount fuel cells. My R&D is running fuel cells on methanol and formic acid. You can run them on butane (same stuff in lighters) or anything that has hydrogen in it and can be oxidized.

While we are on the subject, you guys should also realize there is something called the Fischer-Trope (sp?) process that can take CO2 and water and make hydrocarbon. In other words it can make gas form air. There is a plant in S. Africa that is currently doing this. The problem is that it is expensive to do, so untill gas prices get around $4-5, you won't hear much about it.

 
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One important point i am very surprised that no one has jumped on me over yet is how heavily subsidized oil is.

 
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Once, I put 13.3 without topping off.

In NJ we don't have self service, and the petroleum transfer technicians usually just go to the first click.

 
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is this really what you call them? thats like calling the bug guy a public health technician. Man if we had no self serve in california we would call those guys "tweakers" or "meth dealers"

 
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As mentioned, there is technology to get hydrogen, I said that in my very first post: no infrastructure, no technology available for large scale implementation. Most all farmers are subsidized, but I don't see why that would end if they all started 'growing fuel'. If demand for their product goes up and supply can't keep up with demand that means the farmers are going to be making more money than if demand was low (as it is presently). I don't see how increased demand will somehow put strain on the present subsidy system in place in the US and somehow cost more. When demand goes up, and supply doesn't catch up (short term) or supply -can't- keep up (eg: oil capacity at present), prices go up, then producers get paid.

And there is no ongoing debate about the limited supply of oil and gas, it -is- limited, we might not run out today or tomorrow, but at some point we will. And demand shows no signs of abbating as the other half of the world finally industrializes on a large scale. Before we even run out, I have no doubt that we'll have fouled this planet to such a great extent that using fossil fuels will cease to be an option.

To quote Machiavelli: "There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit from the new order. The lukewarmness arises partly from the fear of their adversaries who have law in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have actual experience of it."

I think thats the rut alternative forms of transport are stuck in, I'm not counting on a paradigm shift away from fossil fuels (even hybrids) in my lifetime.