My Green Car Journey

Around 2006 I decided that I wanted to save some money on gas and also lessen my carbon footprint. I researched Hybrid cars on the web. I finally purchased a 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid. I traded in my 2003 Subaru Forester. My gas costs were cut in half. I went from around 23 mpg with the Forester to 52 mpg with the Civic Hybrid. This is an "annual average".


Update: October 2018

In February 2018 we bought a 2017 Prius Prime. Unfortunately, my former 2013 PriusC was broadsided two times in a 10 day period and totaled by the insurance companies. I had owned 2 Honda Civic Hybrids, a Honda Insight, and then the Toyota Prius C. I will list the cars below with the total mileage achieved,

2006 Honda Civic Hybrid 52 MPG
2009 Honda Civic Hybrid 52 MPG
2010 Honda Insight 48 MPG
2013 Toyota Prius C 58 MPG

The mileage reported is a cumulative total of all the tanks of gas that I recorded. This is NOT the dashboard read out of MPG. I kept a database of mileage on all these cars. Each tank of gas was computed by dividing the total miles of each tank by the gallons of gas used to three decimal points. I was able to obtain about 10% over the EPA ratings by driving very carefully.

The Prius Prime is a Plug-In-Hybrid. I figured that it would be great to not use any gasoline for about 25 miles and then maybe not get great miles per gallon when I used up the battery. I now have about 15,000 miles on the car. I thought the gas MPG would be worse than previous hybrids because the batteries are heavy. This was NOT the case. During the summer, I was surprised to find that the Prime would go around 35 miles on the battery - 10 more miles than rated.

I have kept a database on this car also. My total MPG to date is 105 MPG. This is not a MPG Equivalent. This is the total miles driven divided by the total gallons of gas. I did purchase a 240 Volt charger about a month ago. So, on the weekends I can charge the car to a full battery in 2 hours. I can then double the electric range, if a make small trips in the AM and later after recharging, in the PM.