A very short Hybrid Moment

[howeird]

Last night on my way home (~7 pm) I stopped at Stevens Creek Honda to look at the Civic hybrid. Unlike Sunnyvale Toyota, where there were two salesfolk on the lot to greet me, there was nobody paying attention to customers at Honda. I walked around the lot, looked at stickers and was shocked to see that where Toyota marked everything down from MSRP, Honda added $3k. This brought the price of the minimum package Civic Hybrid to about $28k, more than the Prius for what looked like far less car. I was there for about 15 minutes, and at no time did anyone as much as look at me, though I could see two salesclowns on the lot and two more in the showroom. Maybe this explains why Toyota has sold more than 60,000 hybrids and Honda has not.

Comments

[seamoose.livejournal.com]

I just can't convince myself that they are worth the price yet. I think that I would be better off getting something like a VW that gets 36+ mpg

[howeird]

I agree. While I would love to geekily save the planet, paying almost twice as much for a car which only gets 10% better mileage is not the answer. A fellow I worked with in 1982-3, Bruce McCaskie, built an all-electric car from a VW bug using a jet aircraft ignition motor for an engine, and for a long time held both the electric car long distance and speed records, but it was not really freeway-worthy and I think it only was good for about 3 hours of run time between 18-hour charges. Great for his commute from south San Mateo to Foster City, and it got infinite miles per gallon.

I'd pay double for a hybrid which gave me twice the mpg with freeway-safe speeds & power.

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Well, Trey and I weren't hybrid-biased before we went car shopping last time. We'd had and loved our [avg] 28 mpg Honda Accord - for 10 years [and the prior Accord for 11 years] - going for new cars because ... well the Honda's were 10+ years old.

Lots of comparison shopping; LOTS of test drives. Mileage a definate plus [back in summer '05] - but we checked all the hybrids. The Prius was the only 'real' hybrid, using braking to recharge the batteries. Neat.

But we compared it to all other cars in that category and size - and found the Prius gave us room, storage, 4-door access, decent head room and 'butt-space', had great acceleration [and can charge up the Grapevine and maintain 65 mpg, while our Accords would start at 70 and be limping at 50 by the summit].

So we went for the Prius - and are receiving a very stable 48 mpg . The most astonishing [IMO] plus it has is that the service charge for routine maintainance are so low. We always go to the dealership for servicing - and with the Honda the 'low' service charges were $300+ - and it went up from there. With the Prius, minor service has been around $80-something - and the major 30K mile service we just had was less than $400. So that very favorably impresses me. [so NOW I'm a Prius fan ^_^]

[howeird]

Yup, I noticed you were getting into a Prius after BASFA. lisa_marli points out there are at least three in the parking lot at any given meeting. I guess my previous posting about test driving one boils down to it being all good except for the price and not having an unobstructed view out the back. The latter kills the deal for me. If they re-design the hatchback to remove the spoiler and wiper, I'm there.