I’m pleased to say that I’m now one step closer to being the environmentally, socially responsible person that I’ve always strived to be. We traded in my old (and nearly worthless) 1998 Chevrolet Malibu for a brand new 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid. I’ve always wanted to drive a hybrid car, but always thought them to be too expensive or too new of a technology. Well, this little fella wasn’t much more expensive than the non-hybrid model, and gets 51 miles to the gallon! I don’t even have to plug it in. It takes regular gasoline, and charges when you’re coasting or slowing down.

By far though, my favorite feature has to be the digital spedometer. I remember when I was nine years old my uncle bought a new Jaguar. It had a digital spedometer that showed the miles per hour AND a digital bar that lit up as you increased speed. I thought for sure that that was the future, and that all cars in the future would have digital spedometers. I haven’t seen one since, until now.

Other little niceties include that we’ve had the car for over three weeks and still haven’t used the first tank of gas, that it’s got a variable RPM transmission so that you never feel the car shift gears, and that the engine actually stops when you stop at red lights and stop signs. That’s right, it’s intelligent enough to run just two cylinders if you only need two cylinders to run, and in the case of being stopped, you don’t need any cylinders to run, so it turns them all off. Cool beans!

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.