What ever happened to the 50 MPG Honda?
Kenyon Sandy from New Jersey writes:
What ever happened to the high mileage Hondas of just a few years ago? The special engines that delivered around 38 city and 52 highway. They were not hybrids and were very peppy. All of the sudden we’re supposed to get excited about a car that gets 40 MPG? I don’t think so.
Also, I was reading the reviews of the Volkswagen TDIs (turbodiesels) – why are they getting 42 mpg highway now, when my 2002 TDI Beetle got 48 to 49 on the highway?
Well, Kenyon, the Hondas of the mid-to-late 80s weren't saddled with the weight of dual airbags, anti-intrusion door beams, etc. The highest-MPG Honda was the two-seat CRX HF. In 1989 it had a 62 HP engine, manual transmission only, needed 12 secs to go 0-60, and EPA estimates were 49 MPG city/52 MPG highway. The 4-door Civic sedan for that year had a more useable 92 hp and room for four; its EPA estimates were 31 city/34 highway.Now, compare that to the modern-day Civic sedan, which is bigger, has heavy bits like A/C, antilock brakes, side airbags, power windows, etc. as standard, and goes 0-60 in around 8 secs for the manual and 9.5 for the automatic. Considering all that, 30 city/40 highway really is pretty darn good, don't you think?
As for the turbodiesel VWs: Some time in the last couple of years VW added catalytic converters, which are supposed to shave off a couple of MPG. I drove last year's Jetta TDI and an '05 Civic Hybrid back to back and averaged 46 MPG in both. If you ask me, diesel is the way to go. It has much more economy and performance potential than hybrids. Thanks for the email, Kenyon.-- Aaron Gold
Comments
I JUST PURCHASED A JETTA TDI. THIS IS MY SECOND NEW VW. I FIND THAT ON HIGHWAY DRIVING YOU CAN AVERAGE OVER 50 MPG ON THE ROAD. THIS IS NOT TRUE FOR LOCAL DRIVING BUT, IT IS MUCH BETTER THAN GETTING 24 MPG ALL AROUND. AS WAS THE CASE WITH MY LAST CAR.
I HAVE OWNED DIESEL CARS FOR OVER 20 YEARS NOW AND WILL NOT GO BACK TO GAS.
WE HAVE TO LOOK FORWARD. THERE IS A BETTER WAY.
THANKS,
KEVIN
It is possible. My 92 Honda Civic VX was rated at 3.9 L/100Km or 72mpg in Canada (sorry, you’ll have to convert to US gallons). I never usually got better than about 50, but I came really close a couple of times during long drives sticking to secondary roads instead of the main highway. Problem was the thing was geared so high, I had to shift to third and turn off the A/C to climb anything more than a moderate hill. [Ed. note: 72 MPG Imperial is about 60 MPG US, 59 MPG Imp. is about 41.6 MPG US. -- Aaron]
Count me in that group of former Honda owners. I had one of the original ‘86 (1st generation) CRX HF’s. I never got less than 45 mpg driving around town and typically got 55 mpg on the highway driving back and forth to college, for which it seemed to be perfectly designed.
It wouldn’t do 0-60 in 12 seconds (closer to 14), but that’s because of the huge gaps in gear ratios from the 5-speed manual. 1st gear topped out at a reasonable 32 mph, but 2nd gear went all the way up to around 70 mph. These ratios prevented even the most aggressive drivers from getting low mileage.
The car was very light though (less than 1900 lbs), so the 58 hp wasn’t as bad as it sounds by modern standards. That would be the equivalent of about 90 hp for today’s sub-compacts.
I’m as confused as Kenyon Sandy though. I don’t understand why after billions of dollars of research to develop the most technologically advanced hybrid engines that we have today that only run on gasoline a part of the time, still only get 50 mpg on a good day. That’s ridiculous. And you can’t blame it on weight. I would occasionally haul 500 lbs of people and cargo in my old CRX and would still get over 45 mpg.
I think it has a lot to do with valve timing. The sub-compact manufacturers put a lot of effort into timing those tiny engines to get as much power and instantaneous torque as possible, and the mileague suffers. I average about 21 mpg in my WRX, but when I use the “economy mode” engine mapping from Cobb Tuning’s AccessPort computer, I can EASILY increase my mileage to 26 mpg, even as high as 28 mpg with very conservative driving. That’s a whopping 25% increase just by altering the computer with the push of a button!
You want great Honda Civic or Accord mileage? Read my post just added in the sites forum, in the Japanese/Asian folder. They just arent marketed here. Which is equally true of other makes sold here, whether GM, Ford or Toyota.
I need to correct myself (comment #4), my post in this sites forum is in the folder titled “Technology, New/Changing” and is titled (in part) – Hondas Great Mileage…
There you will find a great Honda Civic (and Accord) that gets really great mileage along with performance. Trouble is we cannot buy it.
Forum Sysop
well,i have the last honda crx1991,came off the line in dec 91,then they made the 1992 crx/delsol,1.5 dx 16 valve auto,i’d say from full to a half of tank of gas i can travel up 190 miles on a good day,thats minding the speed limit and traffic,super peppey a lotof get up and go very adgile,now the car has mods and you can hear it three blocks away,when coming up on people on the highway people look over there shoulder and they think it is a big truck barreling down on them ,it might be small but she carries a big bite!
I’ve wondered about this myself, especially as I will be in the market for a new car within the next year. I had a 92 Honda Civic hatchback (I think it was the DX model) with manual transmission. Even with air conditioner use in the summers, I had that car for 8 years and I tracked the mileage against every tank of gas I put in the car, and I never once got less than 42 mpg. Without a/c use I frequently got over 45 mpg, even when it was approaching 100,000 miles. I’m sad to say I traded it in for a Saturn 4-door SL2 that has never gotten above 30 mpg. Of the non-hybrid bunch, it now looks as though the Fit is the best Honda option. Given their long history of emphasis on fuel economy, I just can’t understand why Honda of all companies isn’t driven to produce a higher-mpg car for sale in the US. I’d buy a hybrid in a minute, but they’re really out of my price range. I’m in the Fit price range (back in the day, my 92 Honda was in that range too!!) and really can’t swing the cost of a hybrid.
I owned a 1989 CRX HF and usually got 40-55 mpg. This was with over 100,000 miles on the engine. I admit that you could not have hard accelerations and needed to travel at a steady speed to achieve 55mpg but it could do it. I also had a 1984 CRX (also with over 100K on the engine)and you could run it hard and still achieve at least 40mpg. I agree, we should not be satisfied with 40mpg from hybrids (for a $10k premium added to the price tag) when we had much better options 20 years ago. Honda is probably still selling these cars elsewhere but the demand in the US has been SUV’s up until about 3 years ago and now you see a lot of new Hummers and Pickup trucks on the road. I guess some people are unaffected by the cost of fuel. My question is why doesn’t the US market have the options available in Europe like single passenger cars? It seems like the market is flooded with automobiles that the average person cannot afford. Also, what is it going to take to bring back cars like the CRX?
Cars are heavier now?! The variety of alternative lighter materials, some of which are being used , but many that are not, make that argument a bad excuse. Also, how many people or even families need two vehicles that can transport 4 people? 95% of the people I see commuting, even driving anywhere, are alone. And they’d still have room for one more person with a CRX! Bring back the CRX and we can all have a 2nd car that gets 55mpg! Let’s here it for late 80’s technology!
To vicemna72: People are looking around because they’re wondering who’s the IDIOT with the loud car.
I nearly bought a civic in 93 after watching their “progress” since 88, but settled on a Geo Metro XFI. LOVE that car. I averaged 55 mph for many years and just tallied my last two years of driving which averaged out at 49.7 miles per gallon!!! WHY oh WHY can’t we produce cars like that and the Crx now! I’m getting an AVERAGE miles per gallon higher than the lame hybrids out there. And my car is 15 years old. When will americans start using their heads and remember the 70’s gas shortages? When will we realize that we need to DO something to stop global warming? If all the SUV drivers would purchase 15 year old Geo’s, we’d drop our consumption of oil nearly two thirds. Oh utopia, where art thou?
I had wondered for many years why the average corporate mpg keeps declining, I mean cars used to do better. 1984 crx’s with a 1.3 engine rated 70mpg! 1995 Geo Metro’s with 3 cylinder engines still get 50 mpg! (both models have been discontinued) Europeans get a lot of diesel options we don’t etc.. Over the years I have come to understand that the answer is not as simple as the 100 year old engine we still use or the increasing additions such as airbags and anti collision doodads. It’s P O L I T I C S ! the US government and it’s politicians LOVE taxes, ANY taxes including FUEL taxes… and the mafias that run the U.S. ensure that their candidates get that tax money by intimidating the automakers into producing gas guzzlers. That’s the bottom line, it’s the 21st century and we still can’t get 30 mpg out of a sub compact??? B S !
When the manufacturers produce the cars they build what the consumer demand is. consumer demand has not been for the 30mpg+ cars. there is an increasing market for it now, but car production is usually behind by about 3 years. the consumer wants power and comfort. the consumer is the person with money who can go out and purchase a brand new car, and the people who actually have money do not really care about gas prices. Gas prices are just a couple of extra dollars out of their pockets. if the U.S. mandated more standards, such as california does, there would be more fuel efficient vehicles. so for people like me who do like better gas mileage, buy older cars like the 93 civic i have and get great 40mpg+ mileage. (by the way my civic has 130 hp. and gets 45+mpg, because of extra mods) GO GREEN GET A DIESEL AND CONVERT YOUR CAR TO USE VEGE OIL. HAHA
Bull****! The manufacturers build gas PIGS on purpose and not because that’s what we really want. That 1984 CRX I mentioned was popular cheap transportation. It was the Reagan Administration which decided it was TOO popular and slapped import tarriffs to stop fuel effient cars from coming in. tTTHEN the a******s convinced gullible americans that small cars just aren’t safe and trucks and SUV’s are cool! You can’t tell me nobody ever wanted to get 50mpg out of their cars! Gas was just so “cheap” that people – with their short memories- forgot the way things were. AND EPA emmisions regulations are tailored to prevent efficient engines. Doesn’t it make more sense to use less in the first place rather than burn it and waste it in the catalyst????
I myself have ALWAYS wanted a 50mpg car but waited and waited and it was never produced. So I am indeed shopping for one of those OLD 50 mpg cars!!!!!!!!!
If you believe that there are no 50 mpg cars because “nobody wanted them” then you are a fool. You probably also believe that current gas prices are a result of supply and demand? Think, the internal combustion engine in our cars hasn’t been changed significantly in over 100 years! Why? Yet, we can go to the moon and back whatwasitnow? 40 years ago? and the rocket engines on the space shuttle are 100 times more powerful and fuel efficient than those that got us to the moon. Why have car engines then remained the same, even gotten LESS efficient and choked with smog equipment?? why change the status quo when taxes were just rolling in from all the gasoline? So let’s keep letting them use more gasoline all the time. Explain why the government time and again since the 70’s has backed down from more strict CAFE fuel economy requirements?? (cause they love taxes and guzzlers bring more taxes) and electric cars are not on the roads and our government is fighting it -notice they are trying to find ANY OTHER MEANS to fuel a vehicle that THEY CAN TAX? A car that runs on hydrogen from a pump can just as easily run on water from a tap! and an electric car that gets it’s power from a fuel cell fueled at a pump can just as easily be plugged into ANY outlet. Obviously anything that is not taxable is not “feasable” for a reason. DUH. They want our money!
I have to say I agree with the sentiments here about how Hybrids aren’t as efficient as the CRX HFs, Metro XFIs and Civic VX HBs of the ’80s and ’90s and have found similar posts on the internet elsewhere on how much a disgrace it is.
I have also noticed how the fuel economy of cars over the last two decades keeps declining. I wanted a 50pmg car but I had the budget of $2500 (not $23,000) so I sought out a Honda Civic VX Hatchback and now am enjoying a 1993 model year that gets 50+mpg with plenty of power! In fact I think I may achieve as much as 60mpg from my first full tank with this car and it has over 175,000 miles on it! And I don’t even have the right tires on it.
Sadly, Ford had a 42mpg car in the US that sold well….(Ford Fiesta)….aqnd I got as high as 49.897mpg with it on the freeway….
My 1994 Geo Metro got up to 54mpg on the highway…and my 1999 Chevy Metro has gotten up to 53mpg (it has AC)…
Yet Chevy thinks a car now getting 30 mpg is excellent mileage?????
Chevy plays at high mileage cars (the triplets) but does diddly…..
I will not even consider buying an American car in the future unless it gets more than 40+mpg…
Well, some time ago I started this mayhem and, I’m glad to see it got some attention.
I would correct Jedi that the CRXs sold until the Clinton Administration when they stopped – green Gore could have kept them here, but he was busy buying his Maserati.
Anyway, we CAN produce a consistent 60 to 70+ MPG car with the use of plugin hybrid tecnology and solar recharging panels and we MUST or we will witness our earth becoming very sick, very soon as China explodes industrially.
I’m awaiting the “blue motion” VW…..why isn’t that being sold here….clean and efficient?
Hybrids are a crock. a CON on the american people. Do you know when a Prius will pay itself back in gas savings over a 1 or 2 year old Efficient car? NEVER. When that Prius chokes dead even if it lasted 200,000 miles it would STILL have cost you more than the alternative.
The ONLY viable answer is PURE EV’s all electric cars. Efficient models (ie not sports cars) cost about $1 in electricity to go 100 miles. Thats it. thats equivalent to 300mpg at todays gas prices. With the advent of NANO SOLAR at $1 a watt if they get to the public at that price a $500 solar panel on your roof tied into the GRID (ie you sell your E back to the utility) will be enough to 100% offset the E usages costs of an EV for 90% of us a $800 solar panel should cover 99% of us. That means the car would cost you NOTHING to drive EVER AGAIN not one red cent AND be 100% clean NO carbon or emission footprint AT ALL since your solar panel would generate MORE power each month than your car would use each month.
SO why don’t we have EV’s ? thats easy. GM sold out to Texaco Chevron Bought Texaco and they are holding and sitting on the patent for the EV1 etc.. battery packs. Large Form Factor NIMH’s. Its a controlling patent meaning no one can make similar batteries without violating the patent and Chevron REFUSES to license the tech to anyone for EV use or to anyone where the resulting batteries MIGHT be convertible to EV usage. Cute ehh?
THAT is the only reason we do not have EV’s RIGHT NOW. Think about that for a while.
Lol. I just slapped a 1994 honda civic VX engine, equipped with V-Tec E, into a 1991 civic hatchback. After installing a after market header, a drop in K&N air filter to the stock airbox, and reprogramming V-tec E to 4000 rpm instead of 2500 rpm I am averaging over 60mpg highway. I may not have all the safety features of a prius, but I don’t look like an Al Gore supporter when I drive my car. I also get better fuel economy than a prius and I ONLY SPENT $2,000.00 DOLLARS U.S. I did none of the work myself on this car.
I bought a barely used ‘94 Civic LX with a manual back in ‘95. It was a great car for mileage so in ‘04 I bought a new Civic EX manual thinking that I’d be able to get near the 40mpg average that my old Civic got. Unfortunately Honda had regeared the new Civic for low speed power (and good mileage if you don’t go beyond the 45mph that the EPA did their estimates at). At freeway speeds- 75mph- the engine was turning over at nearly 4000rpm. It was noisy and, worse yet, inefficient. I was averaging 32mpg. The last straw was a tank where I got only 26mpg because of a headwind so I sold it. There are dozens of cars that do better or as well as that and are nicer and heavier cars. The 94 and the 04 models were very similar in most respects but the gearing made all the difference. There was no industrial or governmental conspiracy behind my poor mileage; just Honda Motor Corp. respoding to the horsepower wars with a transmission geared for power rather than mileage.
I too owned a CRX-HF in the late 80’s. If I can remember the window sticker said 52 City and 58 Highway – I was getting over 65mpg on the highway…and yes it was a dog – I remember climbing the WV mountains in 3rd gear just to get to the top but I also remember that it was so well designed that I was going 70mph down the other side in neutral (because 5th gear was holding me back). I would disagree with the article above and the sentence “Considering all that, 30 city/40 highway really is pretty darn good, don’t you think?”.
No, I really don’t think that ‘is pretty darn good’. You have just taken away my option to have a light car, that will carry only two passengers and a vehicle that will go from 0-60 in more like 15 sec.
Call me kooky but these non-luxeries should be available for the ones that want them – like me and every other person that needs a work car or an efficient way to mitigate current fuel costs.
to every 1 saying u get 45- 55 mpg in your 92 civic, your full of it!!!!
why lie about that its sounds so stupid!
factory specs for 92 civics all say 30-35mpg.
I have an old 1991 honda civic DX 4 door. It has a rebuilt 1.5cc engine.
It has plenty of power, and a 5 speed.
In the city, I plan for lights,coast and just used 1.71 gallons to go 103 miles. I got 60 MPG, mostly in city and some hiway.
Even the Metro’s efficiency degraded. My 1987 Chevy Sprint, purchased in 1990 with 40,000 mile: I measured mpg with precision possibly 100 times. With great frequency achieved over 60 mpg. With very careful open highway driving up to 78 mpg was achieved. I had a skeptical witness monitor my full measurement procedure and he became a believer in eye witness to a 77 mpg road trip.
5 years ago I bought a 1999 metro, 45,000, very excellent condition. Same size engine/tranny. Actually smaller and lighter weight than my 1987 was. The 1999 is not more powerful than the 87. Nor is it faster. The 1999 has the appearance of being more aero dynamic. After about 50 or 75 careful mpg measurements, it seems to be impossible to achieve more than 51 mpg. After extensive experience and fairly scientific observation, it is clear to me that the 1999 is not nearly as efficient as the 1987. Effciency has only continued to degrade since 1999 as some of you have noticed.
In view of this, what others have said, and a hundred other careful observations, the issue appears not only disgraceful, but insidious. This is certainly one powerful lynch pin for squeezing the life and strength from an economy. Though the power and wealth of our leaders and their associates has been escalating immensely as a result of this and other oil related issues, those horrible terrorists must nevertheless be finding a most ironic and kindred spirit of laughter and victory celebration with our leaders and corporate powers who conduct whole sale wreckage on the fabric of our economy with thinly veiled rhetoric and contemptuous disregard for anything but obsessive amassment of greed and power for their elite.
mpgliers what Big Oil lobbyists do you work for? Older excellent mpg vehicles still exist out there. And if you know how to properly maintain your car it can be done.
I found a 1992 Honda Civic VX with 170K miles on it for $2500. The EPA mileage is 55/48 and I’m getting about 45 mpg highway. My 1992 Saab 900 gets about 33 mpg highway with the top UP (30 mpg top down). If you look at the EPA mileage charts on their website, you will see the constant lowering of fuel mileage across the board from the 1980’s to present. Good luck trying to find a ‘92-’95 Honda VX because people that have them aren’t selling!
Watch “Who Killed the Electric Car” for a real shocker. The politicians and the corporate auto/oil executives who own them are enjoying the status quo, reaping $BILLIONS in profits. Don’t look for this to change any time soon.
“”It was the Reagan Administration which decided it was TOO popular and slapped import tarriffs to stop fuel effient cars from coming in”"
That’s BS. First of all it was quotas not tariffs and it was done to reduce the size of the US-Japan trade deficit and yes help GM, but it had nothing directly to do with MPG as there were US cars that got decent MPG back in the early 1980s….Why are liberals still so upset with President Ronald Reagan. Was defeating communism that much of a sin for them??
“”Watch “Who Killed the Electric Car” for a real shocker. The politicians and the corporate auto/oil executives who own them are enjoying the status quo, reaping $BILLIONS in profits. Don’t look for this to change any time soon.”"
Electric cars arent viable except for limited city driving. Ill galdly buy one when I can 1) drive 300-400 miles on a single charge and then 2) recharge in 15 minutes or less.
Also how you generate the electricity also maatters. If the electricity used was generated by buring coal or oil, there is little benefit. electricty would have to be generated by nuclear power, to be both clean and help the US be energy “independent”
The only reason I beleive that they don’t make more efficient vehicles is because as soon as a better design comes out the oil companies will force the sale of the design out of the hands of the developer to keep it off the market so they can sell more oil at inflated prices. Our economy is ruled by the rich and it is easier to control the masses of people if you can keep them poor. I don’t care what the so called experts say, big oil is corrupt. Even when the governments say they will look into why fuel prices are so high and come back a month later saying the oil companies are not doing anything wrong, more than likely after the oil companies just donated a couple of million to their party. Corruption breeds corruption.
I’m reminded of the motion picture “Tucker”, where a new automotive idea is suppressed by “the powers to be”. So – every time I hear of an automotive idea that somehow faded away, I just considerate that car or idea was “TUCKERED”..After all – in order for big business to stay “big”, they need to continue to spread their lobbyists money so that congress makes the right decisions for us lowly tax payers…..
joey claims that evs should be powered by nuclear power (”clean and good for economy”).Sorry joey, nuclear power is niether. Solar power is both. PV works. The sun comes up every day.
Well….the Earth turns every day. Exposure to the sun varies by location as does viability in terms of solar as a power source.
Plus some would likely protest the big footprint of a solar power plant. Wind power is another source that some don’t like because they don’t like to see the generators. Eventually we need to realize that there is no perfect power source and that some folks would only be happy if we all lived in caves and wore loin cloths-just so long as the loin cloth production facility was made of vapor and located on the moon.
Purchased my first Honda CRX in Dec 1983, an ‘84 CRX 1.3 for $6,199 + a few small options. Drove it for 20 years and over 300,000 mi. It averaged 54 MPG lifetime and 61 MPG Highway up here in the NH Hills. Kept a detailed expense record. A lifetime operating cost of $0.0425 (4-1/4 cents) per mile! Can you beat that for value? I never walked home, either.
Still driving them, too. Numbers 5 & 6 are in the yard, 1986 1.5 and 1986 HF. Keeping Road Cancer out of them is the only issue here.
My answer to this problem was to locate a 92-95 Honda Civic CX or VX, with the tall-geared manual tranny and aerodynamic hatchback body style. I did find a rust free 95 CX down in Virginia this summer. It cost 2K, has 193,000 miles on it and I have done nothing to it (yet) to improve performance. I have run it for about 4,000 miles now, and my worst milage was 38mpg commuting and hauling heavy stuff all week in stop and go traffic with the AC on the whole time. It averages about 40mpg with everyday driving, and will get 45 mpg on long trips. I recently bought a VX engine (the VTEC-E) and plan on swapping that in over the Winter, effectively turning my car into a VX, which another blogger here was correctly indicating are hard to find. For me, the search was worth it, as I expect to get better performance and even better milage with this engine; probably close to 50 mpg, and all for well under $3K by the time I am done. Every time I see a Prius on the NY Thruway, I just smile, and think about the twenty grand I kept in my pocket for other things, like saving up for a diesel electric Honda Fit. Prolly be too old to drive by then…
Bring back the Honda VX. Great gas mileage, roomy and dependable.
40 to 50 mpg
J
I had a, ‘87 HF – I had weeks when I logged 60MPG on Rt. 80 as my commuter work car – I was attentive to keeping track of mileage… this was one of the best cars for that function.
I have a 1992 Honda VX but serious damage to the driver’s side made too costly to fix. The engine with only 32,000 miles on it is sitting in my barn. Can’t bear to throw it away since at the time I had it checked and it’s supposedly okay. But after all this time and a lot of pigeon and bat doo-doo, I guess I should. It feels like disposing of a Da Vinci painting that got dirty.
“Lol. I just slapped a 1994 honda civic VX engine, equipped with V-Tec E, into a 1991 civic hatchback. After installing a after market header, a drop in K&N air filter to the stock airbox”
Uhm, duh bullwinkle, how does installing a performance header and a performance K&N filter *improve* mileage?
Yeah, I had a 94 Civic VX with 92 HP, dual airbags, and air conditioning. It’s EPA fuel rating was 51 city/54 highway. That was better than any production 2008 model car (including every hybrid) available in the United States, probably 2009 also, though the new Prius finally claims to have gotten back to a combined 50+ MPG. This car (Honda Civic VX with VTEC-E) was first available in Japan in 1990, thats almost 20 years ago, with efficiency which still hasn’t really been duplicated in NA (save the original hybrid Insight). Why? So we could have reinforced doors? Why can the Feudral Government mandate that Honda make cars that have certain safety features, but not at least the efficiency that they did the year before, or 20 years before for that matter. Which is a bigger problem, the 300 out of 300,000,000 Americans that would be seriously injured without those extra safety features (and their weight) or the 300,000,000 people who are going to have to force their way to higher ground because ice keeps melting into the oceans because the people that run the world are determined to get every penny for every drop of oil by making sure it gets burned as inefficiently as possible. Give me a break, to me, this is proof positive of one of the worst massive conspiracies, do the math, every major auto manufacturer bows to OPEC when it comes down to it. Just like the EV1, which got between 150-300 miles on an overnight 120v charge with NMHd batteries in 1996, and GM’s 2011 Volt is probably going to get 40 miles on a charge of Lithium Ion batteries 15 years later, I thought Lithium Ion batteries were generally supposed to be 10 times more efficient than Nickel Metal Hydride, not 1/10th as effecient…Go ‘F’ yourself Illuminati.
Hello
I have a 1993 Nissan stanza Altima this car gets 40 to 44 highway miles and 26 city, I just went on a trip to Canada to Montreal back to Florida to Deland Fla, and my average was 39 mpgs, so its far better then most new cars out there and the Engine is a 2.4L KA24DE Engine. its not a hybrid. its a older car.
I currently own a ‘93 Honda Civic VX.. 320,000 miles… I can get over 40 mpg, rated 55mpg, but with a bad o2 sensor, its not running up to par.. IT HAS AN AIRBAG. I have read time and time again of people getting 65 mpg with this car. What is stopping Honda from re-release this car? I can smoke the tires with this old thing! Seriously, I can leave rubber on the pavement. Imagine this engine in the insight’s aluminum chassis? Imagine this drive train in a newer light weight body? What is stopping them from this idea? Is it the big oil companies?