Real World MPG - smart beats Honda Hybrid!

[Iceberg]

Well my wife’s little blue smart has been consistently beating my new '08 Honda Civic Hybrid (HCH) in fuel economy. Our little smart has been averaging close to 45 mpg while our HCH has never bettered 43 mpg. She has already put 5K miles on the car since we picked it up the 1st week of March from smart center Portland. This fuel efficiency really surprised me since I had read some of the horror stories on this forum about low smart MPG averages.
My wife commutes 70 miles round trip w/ little congestion (she drives against the grain...lol). She does not baby the car, but does drive in the auto shift mode. Anyway her commute is made up of approximately 60 miles of freeway (65 - 70 mph), with the balance being city stop light to stop light driving. Never one to give up easily, I even tried to lower my freeway speed and drive like a grandma in the Honda and still couldn't beat that little blue devil! I sure hope when it is time hand off the smart to our son we can buy the even more efficient little diesel powered smart.

[zipp2001]

I have done six fill-ups since I purchased my Smartie and my low has been 42.84mpg and my fill-up today was a new high of 46.01mpg. Beats my wife's of 22.05mpg.

[16d @ 4]

I got 201 miles from 4.346 gallons of fuel. This equals 46.2 mpg!!!!!!
This is my highest since I got my "blue devil" two Friday's ago.

My commute consist of 100 miles all freeway, round trip. I have roughly 5 miles of congustion at the tale end of my commute to work, and 5 more miles at the begining of my commute home.

This is fantastic!!!!!

[nevis]

In these remarkable examples above, are you using air conditioning? My wife and I are consistantly getting 32-33 and I can't explain it other than a short 7 miles commute and air conditioning. Even when I slip in a short 70 mile round trip highway run, we get the same mileage. We still love the car and its 10 mpg above our old Dodge Neon and 20 mpg above our Mercury Van, so its all good overall. Sure would like to see upper 30's - low 40's at least.

[Iceberg]

Well we live in the Portland Oregon metro area so A/C weather doesn't start until the rain ends in mid July....lol. We did have a week of 70 - 80 degree days when she ran the A/C; it sure didn't seem to make very much difference (approx 42 mpg that week). I'll have to watch the fuel economy closely as the weather heats up around here this summer and see if the A/C makes a big difference. I do know that she rarely drives over 70 mph on the freeway, which I'm sure makes a difference.

[bottlerocket]

Originally Posted by nevis

In these remarkable examples above, are you using air conditioning? My wife and I are consistantly getting 32-33 and I can't explain it other than a short 7 miles commute and air conditioning. Even when I slip in a short 70 mile round trip highway run, we get the same mileage. We still love the car and its 10 mpg above our old Dodge Neon and 20 mpg above our Mercury Van, so its all good overall. Sure would like to see upper 30's - low 40's at least.

The trick is to drive below 70mph, which I've come to the conclusion is physically impossible for me to do...

[Broken Kid]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

Well my wife’s little blue smart has been consistently beating my new '08 Honda Civic Hybrid (HCH) in fuel economy.

That's interesting to hear! I'll have to tell that to my friend who keeps telling me I should have bought a hybrid. Most people (not you folks of course) forget that hybrids get worse mileage highway than city, so a smart vs. a hybrid on the highway probably will often result in the smart winning!

[stevenvillatoro]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

Well my wife’s little blue smart has been consistently beating my new '08 Honda Civic Hybrid (HCH) in fuel economy.

Congrats! And you have two superb cars. Your HCH mileage is below the real world average reported at greenhybrid.com. You might visit there, in case you haven't, and pick up a few hybrid-specific driving tips.

I used to get 40+ MPG on my TCH (Camry Hybrid), and am certain I could have easily beaten that by 10 MPG in your HCH (also based on Honda Insight experience, where I'd easily get 70-85 MPG on freeway trips).

Cold winter weather will adversely affect hybrid gas mileage by probably 10 percent.

[saskdiesel]

My brother in law bought an 08 Civic Hybrid.
He is getting 58-60mpg Imperial on his highway/city commute.
You should take you Civic in. Somethings wrong there.

[Kermit]

I used to get a consistent 48-49mpg on my Civic Hybrid but I only had a '03. That of course was driving it easy. Driving it normal was around 42-43mpg. (like stevenvillatoro I've got Insight experience too but that was after my Civic ) You need to jack up the tire pressure and drive very very easy for just one tank. Just do it to see what it'll do. Never getting better than 43mpg just sounds like her's and your's driving techniques are very different.