28th Mar 2006, 10:47
I have a 2004 Civic Hybrid and it has been absolutely fantastic.
I have about 35,000 miles on the car and have not had a single problem.
Fuel economy has been just as I expected. I get nearly 600 miles out of every tank of fuel.
15th Apr 2006, 11:16
I have a 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid and I'm loving it. I drive about 120 miles/day round trip and have averaged around 52MPG using my calculator. Today my car has 84,000 miles and I have had no problems at all.
Absolutely recommend it to all my friends.
-Becky TN.
16th Apr 2006, 10:19
Hey, Becky, can you report back at 100K miles? There has been a lot of automotive bad press about batteries not lasting past that mark, but I don't believe it. Just wondering what happens to hybrids when they actually do accumulate high miles. Thanks.
2nd Aug 2006, 15:41
I have an '04 Honda Civic Hybrid that currently has about 80K miles. I love this car and the great mileage that it gets (600+ miles per tank). I feel sorry for the SUV drivers who are at the gas pumps at the same time as when I am filling up (smirk). Have to drive about 80 miles per day to and from work and only have to fill up once a week! Hopefully the car will be around at 260K, which is where my '96 Saturn is now. We'll have to see how the battery pack holds out.
16th Oct 2006, 21:20
Unfortunately the hybrids are nowhere NEAR as energy efficient as they are advertised to be. Also, the horrendously expensive (several grand) and highly toxic batteries have to be replaced often enough to offset any minute (and it is MINUTE) savings in fuel mileage. If you drive a Civic hybrid the same way as most people drive a Ford Focus you'll get about the same gas mileage. You only get decent mileage if you drive like a 100 year old lady and never go over 40mph. There are HUGE numbers of used hybrids showing up in the auto sale magazines here because after folks discover the big discrepancy between advertised mileage and real-world mileage, or have to shell out 3 grand for a new battery pack at 40,000 miles, they can't wait to get back in a regular car again.
17th Oct 2006, 15:07
Granted, driving an SUV is not an economical or ecology-friendly thing to do. There are a number of very fuel efficient 4-door sedans or wagons that will haul almost as much as the smaller SUV's, and get about 10mpg better mileage doing it even WITHOUT The hybrid set-up. I'm somewhat concerned about the hybrids because the battery packs are VERY environmentally unfriendly. Disposing of them and their highly toxic content is nearly as big a problem as disposing of nuclear waste, and their poisonous content lasts nearly as long. I'm all for protecting our (very fragile) environment, but to me the threat of thousands of highly toxic discarded batteries spoiling the ecosystem offsets any tiny advantage in carbon output or fuel savings. My choice for now will remain a conventional 4-cylinder compact. It gets 5 mpg less mileage, but for the 5 grand I save I can buy a LOT of gas, and I won't be contributing to spoiling the environment with discarded batteries every two or three years.
11th Dec 2006, 10:33
Dude, you said you have to change the IMA battery every 2 or 3 years??? Have you experiencing owning a hybrid before? Think again! I have a 2003 Honda Civic hybrid & I bought it new! I had the Honda Dealership check my IMA battery & I still have 80% of it's life!!!
13th Dec 2006, 09:25
The one who said that changing the IMA battery every 40,000 miles, Dude, do you have a hybrid vehicle? Hear it from experience, what you said is NOT TRUE!!! My civic Hybrid is already 106,000 miles & the IMA battery works like new the day I bought it! Don't be fooled by those what others said over the I-net bad about Hybrids!!!
13th Feb 2007, 08:29
To the 19:37 poster: If SUV owners "work hard" for their vehicles (like no other car owner does) and can afford the gas, why do I ALWAYS see lines of SUVs clogging the cheap gas stations like CostCo and Arco? I mean, there is a Union76 station across the street from an Arco station near me. The Arco station is 10 cents cheaper. I can always get gas at the 76 station, but the Arco station is always crammed with SUVs who spend MORE gasoline idling than they end up saving.
Please explain why this is if SUV owners don't care about the price of gas.
17th Jun 2007, 18:19
My Honda Civic 04 Hybrid's IMA Battery is not charging though I think the charging system is OK. I'm yet to change the battery, but none is available here. Is it a special kind of battery? help me on this.
13th Dec 2007, 18:23
I just purchase from the Honda dealer, an used 2004 Honda civic hybrid for $17,000+tax, etc close to $20K WOW to much for my budget. My civic VX 1992 was stolen, and gave me 40MPG. The 2004 Honda civic hybrid had only 30k miles on it, the body had some spots, but I don't know what's up with the driving wheel, it doesn't stay straight after a take a turn. Also I still have not driven a full tank yet, so I hope to get what some have reported, about 600 miles with the 13 gallon tank, because I am only driving on the freeway from home to work and back.
I am not 100% sure this was a good deal, only time will tell.
Cheers!
5th Mar 2010, 09:28
Wow, things sure got ugly in here. LOL I just purchased a 2003 Civic Hybrid back in November. I want to wait a while before posting a full review, but I thought I would add some observations to this thread.
First to the issue of gas mileage. My previous car was a 1997 Ford Escort station wagon. It had a 2 liter 4 cylinder engine and an automatic transmission, and weighed about the same as my Civic hybrid. The best fuel economy I was able to achieve with that car was 37 mpg. On my first highway trip with my Civic, I got 56 mpg. In my book that qualifies as much more than a slight improvement. And on several subsequent tanks, which have all been with winter blend fuel (which has a lower energy content and gives lower fuel economy), the worst I have seen out of a tank with a mix of city and highway driving is 40 mpg. Under the same conditions my Escort would have seen mpg in the high twenties at best. So I'm not sure why some people are complaining of only slightly better fuel economy, as that has not been my experience at all.
And as to the issue of battery life, only time will tell, but I don't lose any sleep worrying about how long it will last. My car has 71,000 miles currently and the battery works flawlessly. When I was looking at cars, I saw a Civic Hybrid for sale with 171,000 miles that still had the original battery. Even if I do need to replace it someday, I am confident I will recover the price of a new battery through years of savings on fuel, especially if, or more likely when, the price of fuel skyrockets. And if I only break even on the deal, I have still kept a pretty large amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere. After all, I didn't just get this car for my benefit.
6th Jun 2013, 19:19
I have an 04 Civic hybrid with 143,000 miles on it. I'm the third owner, and the battery had held up until just today, which is why I'm here. The battery is holding a charge the same, it's just no longer charging while I drive, but it does when I let off the gas or when I brake. Anyone have any ideas what the issue is?
7th Jun 2013, 12:09
Yours lasted longer than my 03 Honda hybrid. Mine lasted to 110,000 before the CVT trans and battery pack went bad. I cleaned it up and traded it in... didn't get a lot for it, but it was better than nothing. But no more hybrids for me.
I also will not get a CVT trans car until they get all the bugs out of it. Went back to simple Hondas with automatic trans and the tried and true 4 cylinder engines... and have never looked back.
6th Jan 2006, 00:49
"It was easy to sell 'cause others have bought into the hybrid hype."
Heh, you'll be sorry you sold it...