Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing

No blog entries about my now somewhat new car after over 3 months?  Hrm, something must be wrong with me!  ;)

I've been commuting with the car full time and have also used it on a number of 160 mile round trips between Santa Cruz and Concord over the holidays.  Since it's a hybrid, I'll jump right to the fuel economy: on my commute, I can get 30-32mpg depending on how carefully I drive and what the weather is like.  With the cold weather, it's dipped a bit under 30 but 32 wasn't a problem back in October.  On the longer trips, I was easily seeing 38mpg or so over the distance if I kept my speed to 65mph and didn't run in to traffic.

In my opinion, this is good fuel economy for a heavy mid-sized sedan with a 250 hp V6 engine under the hood.  Compared to the Jeep's 180ish hp V6 and 18mpg on the same commute, it's a huge improvement in fuel economy.  It's no where near as quick as the Miata, of course, but it gets up to speed nicely and also beats out the Miata's 18-19mpg on the same commute.

It should be noted that the Honda Accord Hybrid (HAH, as it's called in forums) isn't designed around fuel economy but rather around decent power without sacrificing the standard economy of the weaker four cylinder version. As both Honda and Toyota sales people were quick to say when I said these were the two cars I was comparing, "There is no comparison."  That's not entirely true since they're both mid-sized family sedans, but they do have different feature sets when it comes to economy.

The car is quite smooth and comfortable to drive, which still having relatively firm suspension for cornering.  The interior noise is surprisingly quiet, although there is plenty of throaty V6 growl from the rear twin exhaust pipes when flooring the car and letting the RPMs get high.

 The amenities are pretty standard and can be found easily.  It's interesting to note the 8 cup holders, though, with plenty of storage pockets. These come in handy even with just two of us in the car.  A soft light when the headlights are on illuminates the center console just enough to not be lost in the dark. The center storage area is two level with a wire pass through to the top level for phone use and a power port in the bottom area. There's another power port next to the big pocket below the radio.

The seats are heated, of course, and the climate controls have a dual zone thermostat with fully automatic settings.  For instance, I can set the temperature to 72 degrees and it'll control the fan speed and temperature of the air that comes out.  It also can determine when it needs to run the front defroster (probably a function of internal versus external temperature, or something).  The rear and side mirror defrosters are separate controls.  These controls are all very intuitive.  For instance, if a passenger wants to be warmer, they just rotate the knob near them and the dual control automatically engages.

Overall, I've been enjoying the car and the comforts it provides.  It's not quite as fuel efficient on my commute as I would like, but it's better than most non-hybrids (the commute is over the Santa Cruz mountains so there are no flat areas to really just cruise) and is likely about the same as the Toyota Camry Hybrid, which does better in the city.  It also provides ample power for merging.  It is, of course, just an Accord, though.  I do also feel good, though, in supporting the efforts to make fuel economy better across all types of cars through the improvement of technology.

There's more to talk about with this car, but I'll save that for more posts... ;)

Posted by Shane on January 30, 2007 7:46 AM | Permalink