After 8 years with my 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid the CVT was starting to give me trouble, so it was time to move on. After reading the forums and blogs I found that I was not the only Honda Hybrid owner to experience CVT issues, actually almost every blog-post I found for an '03 Hybrid talked about CVT issues - I did not find this when I searched for Prius information for the same years, so my first stop was Toyota to look at the Prius, fulling intending to once again go with a hybrid vehicle. Once again Toyota disappointed with almost exactly the same situation as I had 8 years ago: "we don't have any 2011's left, but if you can wait 2-3 months, we should be getting the 2012 models in...". Subtract 8 from the years and its the same story I got back then. So, I took my brochure and notes and headed out. I have been hearing good things about Ford, and noticed that a lot of the gadgets (like BlueTooth) were included whereas these were upgrades on other manufacturers, so I went to Ford. After some discussion I found that a similarly equipped Focus was $8-10K LESS than the Prius. With my actual experience with a hybrid vehicle I know that optimistically the hybrid had saved me ~$5K in gas over the last 8 years (assumes comparable consumption of 10 L/100km vs. my 5.2 L/100km). So with my Civic I believe I saved gas equal to or more than I spent on the premium cost of a hybrid back when I bought it...BUT when looking at the Focus 2012 fuel consumption information compared to the Prius information, I was a bit amazed... Prius Hwy fuel consumption at ~4 L/100km, Focus: 5.3 L/100km. So Prius is a lot more expensive, and very little relative fuel consumption savings. So, that's the story of how I ended up with a Ford (which I'm still trying to internalize and accept). That said, here are the things I've noticed so far.
- Cup holder placement may seem insignificant, but it's one of those little things that will bug you every single day. The cup holders are in the center and with your arm on the center armrest you will be resting your wrist/forearm on the top of your travel mug, so not only do you need to reach awkwardly backwards to get your cup, but any coffee drips left on the top of the cup will be transferred to your shirt sleeve. There is a whole lot of space taken by the oversized parking brake, this whole area could have been designed better.
- I like the holder for sunglasses above the rear-view mirror. This has become a standard feature in a lot of vehicles and saves me having one of those clip-on things on my passenger visor. I've got a bit of a complaint here; the mechanism and construction of the whole area above the rear view mirror seems cheap and clunky, especially compared to wife's Honda CRV - but still, I like it.
- The integrated garage door openers are a cool gadget, and again save me from having things hanging from my visors. I got them programmed easily for my 2 garage doors and like this idea.
- The transmission has me a bit concerned, it seems to have trouble finding the right gear when taking off from a stop or at lower speeds (around 60 km/hr). I will ask about it at my first oil change but it just might be that I have to get use to a "normal" transmission again after driving a CVT for the last 8 years, and a manual stick for the 11+ years before that.
- The voice activated Sync stuff is pretty cool - I love having the BlueTooth built in and it is way easy to call people (worked right off with no trouble after Syncing with my Blackberry: "Phone > Call > Dad > Home" finds the right number and dials). The number dialing is also easy to use with no fuss. The USB link works with my iTouch and overall I am really liking the whole setup. I may be biased since the radio in my Civic has been giving me trouble for the last 2-3 years, so just having good sounding music in the car again is awesome! Still learning some of the command structures for the voice activated stuff, but it will come...
- Odd find, the USB port is in the center armrest compartment. There is a dent in the compartment moulding where the latch mechanism is located that would be perfect for a wire to feed through, but the actual clip mechanism won't allow this. Surprised, it seems like it was made to allow a USB cable to be plugged in to the USB port and fed out to a device, except for 1 small piece of plastic...I might have to modify the design.
- Not sure why, but SMS messages through the Sync interface are not supported for my Blackberry. Given the text-to-speech and voice-to-text capability already built into the car, I would think that SMS support would be an easy and very useful add-on.
- The trunk release...as far as I can tell the only way to get into the trunk/hatch area is using the button on the key fob. Annoying. Stop the car at the end of the driveway to get the garbage cans, have to reach around and almost put my head under the dash to find the button to push. Sharon grabbing a few things at the store and wants to throw them in the back, same thing. If there is a manual trunk release, I can't find it...on the car or in the book.
- The key hole is behind the steering wheel and voice activation paddle, hard to see to insert the key, and several times I have accidentally hit the voice command activation paddle while inserting or removing the key, or trying to open the trunk (see above).
- I think there should be more fuel saving stuff/options. Having come from a hybrid there are things like turning off the fuel supply to the engine while coasting or going down hill that could be incorporated into any car. I've started shifting into neutral when going down hills, my RPMs drop from ~2K to ~750, and I notice an improvement in fuel economy (of course not sure if this is impacting performance of the transmission, see a few points above...). Related to this, a Real time fuel consumption meter would also be helpful to see how and when shifting gears affects performance.
- Coolness: Blind spot mirrors built in to the regular side view mirrors. Like it, use them all the time. I think the passenger side needs to be adjusted but not sure how, more reading required.
- Windshield Stones... Cheryl use to say that her old Jetta's windshield attracted stones. I think this car is the same. I think there is something with the aerodynamics. Anyway, not much you can do.
- I had climate control in the Civic Hybrid, loved it, still do.
- The cruise control is smart!!! Every other car I have ever been in would automatically put the pedal to the metal upon cruise "resume", but this puppy is smart, it slowly accelerates and allows some wiggle-room around the set speed so no down-shifting and rocketing over little hills, good.
- The information panel(s) are great, I love them. only suggestion is to also have a summary information panel. Currently all the travel information (odometer, fuel consumption, fuel remaining, trip timer, etc.) are all on individual separate screens, need 1 summary screen that has all of this listed in 1 place
