Peakoiler buys 2008 Honda Civic Hybrid FD3

It has been almost 3 months of waiting since Biow and I decided to take a trip down to Kah Motors at the end of May 2008 to make a booking for the car that we "should have bought in the first place" (my opinion). Today, we took delivery of our 2008 Honda Civic Hybrid, also known by its platform code FD3 (1.3L CVT). At the same time, we traded in our 1-year-old conventional 2007 Honda Civic FD4 (1.6L 5AT) of the same generation.

In the meantime between then and now, NYMEX crude oil prices have hit consecutive price records to a dizzying $147.27 per barrel, nearly tripling from the $51 level in Jan 2007, and then fell hard in a correction that has probably shaken even some oil bulls. As I write this, crude oil prices seem to be in the early stages of recovery - we will only know for sure as the days and weeks progress, if (when?) it breaks the subsequent resistance levels of $120, $130 and $140. I am on record saying how the 2008 Beijing Olympics shutdown figures in all this. Like I said earlier, Peak Oil has not been cancelled. It's just the oil markets acting schizophrenic, which is usually the case most of the time. The fundamentals have not changed, and giant corrections are nothing new in the realm of commodities investing. The last time round, oil prices dived 35% from $78.40 to hit a local minimum of $51. This time round, so far, oil prices are down "only" 24% from $147.27 to $111. We remain on track to reach $200 oil and beyond.

As for the car itself, I could go on and on to talk about its LDA-MF5 3-stage iVTEC engine, CVT transmission, IMA drivetrain, fuel consumption, mileage and how it achieves its efficiency, or you could read up any number of websites that can explain it in (sometimes) excruciating detail, including various hypermiling techniques to squeeze every last drop of energy out of the fuel. Actually, Honda seems to have taken this "squeezing every last drop" story to heart and they have launched a website, driveeverydrop.com, and marketing campaign to show how this has been their philosophy all along, starting from the CVCC engine in the very first Civic generation back in the 1970's. Today's 8th generation Civic Hybrid continues that tradition and represents the current state-of-the-art in a car that is fuel-efficient, has low greenhouse gas emissions, does not have to rely on billions of dollars of yet-to-be-built future infrastructure (as is the case for pure electric vehicles, hydrogen or even CNG cars), and yet remains relatively affordable for its class. In fact, regarding that last part, we just needed to fork out an additional 6K or so, reset the loan period, and voila, we get a brand new hybrid car, proving both the relative affordability of the Honda Civic Hybrid and the excellent resale value of the Civic platform overall.

Of course, as in all things technological, progress marches on. I have alluded to that in my earlier post. Lithium-ion battery technology has always been "just around the corner", but unless you are in the (rather long - two years was what I last heard) waiting list for a Tesla Roadster, or if you put up US$29K worth of batteries to convert a Toyota Prius from Ni-MH to Li-Ion, or sign up your interest for a Chevrolet Volt, there just isn't anything lithium-ion powered that you can walk into a dealer right now and order or drive off the lot. Alternatively, if you set aside the notion of lithium-ion batteries for the time being, you could wait for the 2009 Toyota Prius. Or the Honda Global Small Hybrid, or even the 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid (another 3-4 month wait, Nov-Dec delivery if you order one right now), but as with all technological purchasing decisions, there comes a point when you just decide to buy the technology currently available at a certain price at a certain point in time.

One thing is for sure, and for now I can only speak for myself and not for others, but I am of the opinion that the era of driving conventional vehicles is all but over. The future belongs to the new generation of "non-conventional" cars. In time, "non-conventional" cars will become conventional, and pure fossil-fuel-burning-only cars will be euphemistically renamed as "classic" or "antique" cars. What might once have been labelled "newfangled" would be the new mainstream, the same way that trains have switched from coal to diesel and then to electric. Hybrid vehicles are an important part of the ongoing transition to a new economy which will be based more on electricity and less on fossil fuels, and I am happy to be a part of this revolution.