Tell us about the 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid. I doubt that few here plan on going backwards.

My Honda is a 1997 Civic HX. My last tankful gave me 51 mpgUS.
I have 130,000 miles on the car. It has a 1.6 l V-Tec motor.
Guess I'll keep it another 5 years until the manufactures get off the performance kick. From what I read, I would probably be most happy with a 1.3 l diesel and about 60 mpgUS.

"An all-new 1.8-liter engine for the 2006 Sedan and Coupe delivers between 13%–25% more power but with a slight decrease in fuel economy."

For the sedan, there's a small decrease in city fuel economy, but a small increase on the highway (because of the 5spd transmission?). It could even itself out..

Lucas,

You can check:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/07/information_abo.php

and

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/09/update_on_the_2.php

For little hubs of info about the 2006 Civic hybrid.

The earlier write-up on the 2006 Civic hybrid is here.

Honda is moving the the Civic up in both price and size in order to make room for the Fit which will be coming up next spring. The fact that they were able to keep fuel economy the same with the increase in power and size is significant.

Union of Concerned Scientists like it.
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19624

http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=103178

"Guess I'll kee it an other 5 years until the manufacturers get off the performance kick."

Never going to happen. Performance sells cars. Bells and Whistles sell cars. Pure economy rarely, if ever, sells cars.

I assume that much of the "power" that this new engine has comes from the way the vehicle computer chip tells the engine to react in different situations. If so, it is surprising that these chips be cannot be recalibrated to have an economy mode? The auto shops are full of gizmos to reprogram the chips for more power!

Another aspect is this: I've always felt that Honda Civics have very touchy accelerator pedals - a little pedal gives lots of gas - giving them the illusion of being powerful. If this isn't controlled by the chip perhaps it would be possible to rework the linkage to require stepping on the pedal harder to get maximum power!

This makes me mad. They take a great high mileage car and put a lot of hi-tech effort into the engine and DON'T substantially increase mileage!

Times are changing. Gas is now flirting with $3.00/gal. Supply is very iffy. OPEQ supplies us with just enough oil so that we think we're ok. Well, we aren't! We need to cut demand and increase supply until we can sustain our own energy hunger.

That means we need to give up our 1960's demand for more powerful cars and switch to a 21st century demand for more fuel efficient cars, like the Europeans have been doing for decades.

Also, we need to provide more supply, which means begin drilling in the Alaskan arctic know as Anwar. This is our Saudi Arabia. The Alaskan pipeline didn't hurt the wildlife and neither will this. Canada probably, will be doing the same.

Meanwhile, lets use this time (i.e. the next 20 to 25 years) to get the heck off oil and other greenhouse gas producing fuels!

We consumers can do our part by writing letters to lawmakers, and car makers, and buying high mileage cars. My 05 Toyota Pruis is a SULEV, meaning super ultra low emission vehicle and is nearly 90% cleaner for smog-forming gases than the 2005 ULEV Civic Hybrid, which also reduces emissions.
Than's my 2 cents.

I have a 2005 HX (M/T). Over the first 6000 miles I managed only about 48MPG in mountain driving. Sigh. Not quite 50 overall. Only a few tanks have hit 50MPG.

It's even "ULEV", though not a hybrid.

The '05 Civic hybrid is "ULEV/AT-PZEV1*", BTW.

*AT-PZEV vehicles are SULEV-rated with zero evaporative emissions and differ slightly due to emission standards. Available in California and some northeastern states.
http://automobiles.honda.com/models/specifications_full_specs.asp?ModelName=Civic+Hybrid

Definitely whoever does those 'fuel economy' tests are lead-footed clods... just like the idiots who do most of the driving in America.

Unfortunately, I believe pretty much our whole civilization will still be in the petroleum basket when the next big price explosion happens (the current spikes in price are just a small precursor; a warning). It won't matter how many miles per gallon you get when you can't even afford even one gallon. Even if you're driving an electric car powered off solar panels in your own yard, the food at the market still needs that evil black fuel to reach it, and the job that lets you afford to live there with your own power will probably dry up.

There is no energy shortage, only a shortage on one kind of dirty, but portable and high density energy that's pumped somewhat 'cheaply' out of the ground and distilled somewhat 'cheaply' into different kinds of fuels. Most systems that use ONE product produced from this fuel do not easily convert to other kinds of fuels.

The problem is, virtually all of the oil that was cheap to pump out of the ground and cheap to distill is already burned up. Now we're working on oil that is ever more complex and expensive to obtain and process, to meet a perpetually growing demand.

We do have an energy production shortage. We have nothing quite ready to replace the densest portable energy demands of all kinds of vehicles.

From the article:
"By keeping an intake valve open during part of the compression stroke, some of the volume of unburned air/fuel mixture in the cylinder moves back inside the intake manifold and lowers the volume being compressed"

I just wanted to state that that's not how it works at all. Air coming into the cylinder is moving at high velocity and has kinetic energy, so it will take an equal amount of energy to stop it. So, by keeping the intake valve open during part of the compression stroke you're using that kinetic energy to your advantage and the air is still flowing into the cylinder even though the piston is starting to travel back up the cylinder; and the goal is to close the valve just before the mixture would want to flow backward. The higher the rpm, the higher the velocity, the higher the kinetic energy, the longer you can keep the valve open. This is one of the reasons engines can achieve over 100% volumetric efficiency(the other is acoustic wave tuning, but I digress).

From the article:
"During cruising or low-load driving conditions, the new engine utilizes a dedicated set of cams to close one of the intake valves and retard that valve's timing, exerting backpressure on the air-fuel mixture. This reduces the actual intake air volume."

Your explanation of the "cams" and timing are wrong. There is only one intake cam and only one exhaust cam; therefore, it is imposible to retard the timing of only one intake valve. They are both advanced or retarded at the same time. On the intake cam, there are 2 different lobes(On "real" i-VTEC, there are 3 lobes. This should be called i-VTEC-E). One is very low lift(barely opens the valve), and the other is normal lift. Although there is less of an intake of air, that's not the main goal. The goal of having only one valve open normally is to increase the swirl of the intake mixture, effectively stratifying the charge(meaning it's richer at the spark plug and progressively gets leaner). This allows you to run the engine leaner than normal, equating to better gas mileage.
Also, I believe the VTEC engagement is exactly the same. VTEC has always been engaged by a solenoid. With a VTEC controller you can have it engage at whatever rpm you want...all it does is activate the solenoid.
There are other things that I see should be corrected, but my post is already too long.
One last word to the people that bring up the issue of oil...there is NO OIL SHORTAGE! Do your own research and don't listen to what is fed to you on TV or other politically related media. Countless times an oil well is thought to be almost empty and dried out, and "mysteriously" it fills itself back up. We are not now, nor will we ever really run out of oil. We're pumping more oil now than we ever have before, and they're still trying to feed us this "shortage" BS? Ask people who are directly involved in the EXTRACTION of oil, and they will tell you that their wells are as full as ever, and that some of their wells actually go through cycles of filling back up. There are even new theories about where oil really comes from(we never actually 'knew', nor do we still) and it has nothing to do with dinosaur fossils. There is no shortage of oil, there has been no reports of oil shortages(just rants of "impending" oil shortages), but the gas prices keep rising...hmmm...

Oh yes! I called it! What did I tell you? I told you gas prices weren't rising because of some sort of "shortage". Now the oil companies are in trouble and have to pay penalties for having the biggest corporate profits EVER! And they're STILL trying to say that the prices are rising because of oil production falls...total BS...

I HAVE A 94 HONDA CIVIC W/ VTEC THAT APEARS TO HAVE TIMING SET IN SPECS. WHEN TAKING IT TO A SMOG STATION FOR TESTING VEHCILE HAS HIGH HC 200ppm AND ELEVATED CO"S .75% 0 o2 AND 2700ppm FOR NOX REPLACED TIMING BELT, o2 SENSOR, CATALITC CONVERTER, SPARK PLUGS I NEED HELP PLEASE HELP