[ProfessorLayton]

I just want to add some real-world experience to this as the owner of an early hybrid, a 6th gen Honda Civic Hybrid.

It's a terrible hybrid, full stop — but it's still a decent car because it's a Civic. It's as old as an early Prius, and those have held up pretty well, but Honda did a terrible job with their hybrid batteries. Mine was replaced under warranty at 60K miles, and the replacement is already noticeably worn only ~50k miles in.

If the replacement battery fails, the car is totaled. It's just not worth paying ~4k for a refurbished and flawed battery.

But the reason I bring this up, is that we're still in the early stages of EVs, and it still feels like luck of the draw on who's releasing a truly reliable EV product. Early Tesla batteries seem to be holding up long term, but at the same time those early cars have a ton of non-battery related issues. Maybe new ones are great, but there's no way to know until it happens. I thought I was buying something great because Honda typically builds long lasting cars (My last accord had ~300k miles before I sold it).

My next car will probably be an EV over a hybrid based on my experience.

[madphilosopher]

I don't know what era a 6th gen Honda Civic comes from, but I just bought a 2011 Honda CR-Z hybrid sports car this year, and I love it. I bought it to supplement my 2012 Toyota Prius-C, which is a pretty awesome hybrid. The Toyota gets way better gas mileage and can cruise in all-electric mode in the city, but the Honda has way more zooms. And the Honda Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system allows the transmission to be a 6-speed manual (more fun).

On the CR-Z forums and CR-Z subreddit, every prospective buyer worries about the hybrid batteries, but virtually no owner has ever had to replace them. The older NiMH batteries are more reliable than the newer LiON, and the former are that much cheaper to refurbish.

A plugin hybrid seems to be the best way to go for someone who lives in northern Canada and is not a city person. But I don't want to pay the new-car premium price, nor do I want an Internet-connected vehicle sending all that personal data back to the mothership, which they all seem to do.

[ProfessorLayton]

6th gen Civics are the ones from 2006-2010, which are fantastic, and notably better than the following generation that was drastically cut down thanks to Honda freaking out about the great recession.

The CR-Zs are awesome! I believe the 2011s use LiON batteries, which ironically are supposedly more reliable than the NiMH batteries they were using prior (and in my Civic). Apparently Toyota had patents on their prismatic batteries, and Honda was stuck using D-cell style NiMH ones which were poorly cooled.

The poor cooling caused them to slowly drift their state of charge, but because they were wired in series, there was no way for the battery management system to rebalance them, resulting in horrible capacity loss. Worse yet, Honda didn't include an alternator in my Civic, and the 12v battery was intended to be charged by the hybrid battery + IMA.

Guess who had a fun time when the car shut off in the middle of the highway (!!) on the way to work? Thankfully CA mandates a 10y/150k mi warranty on PZEV powertrains!

Everything but the hybrid part of my Civic is great, and I no longer need to drive to work, so I don't use it all that much. Hoping it lasts long enough that by the time I need to replace it I have tons of options to pick from.