Yes, these are troubled times. Fumes are killing polar bears and oil is getting rarer to find than an impoverished sheikh. And the automotive industry is getting a huge amount of flak for such things coming to pass. Now they are making amends by introducing hybrid cars. While hybrid cars may not be the complete solution for a green planet (as they use IC engines), they are at least a step in the right direction.As expected, these machines are pretty sophisticated, and even a few years back, no one would have believed that we would have hybrid cars on our roads (though God knows they strike the right chord with our ‘average’ mentality!). But here we were, Aman and I, in a proper hybrid car on the Delhi-Noida Expressway, coming to terms with how different this car is and how it has a cleaner conscience. The car, of course, is the Civic Hybrid... really, hats off to Honda for being the first carmaker to introduce this category to India.
Except for the ‘Integrated Motor Assist’ emblazoned on the left rear quarter glass and a ‘Hybrid’ badge on the top right section of the boot, you wouldn’t be able to make out the difference between this Civic and a regular one. Okay, the wheels on the Hybrid are flatter because they produce less drag, but you wouldn’t be able to make that out very easily. It just struck me that since this car belongs to a whole new technological concept and ideology – besides costing a lot more – Honda could perhaps give the Hybrid a stronger identity for our roads.
The interiors too are very similar to the Civic 1.8, except of course for the instrument cluster. Now I realise why the regular Civic’s dash has digital displays and futuristic looks – it’s because they had a hybrid version in mind all the time! So, at the touch of a button, the temperature gauge switches to a mileage gauge; this gauge displays a reading from 0 to 50 and gives you an instant readout of the current fuel consumption of the car. Another eight-stepped bar at the bottom left of the cluster displays the charging condition of the electric motor’s battery. Adjoining this is an amp-meter that has ‘ASST’ at the top and ‘CHARGE’ below with a line in the centre, which signifies a zero charge-discharge condition. Another addition to the Hybrid’s instrumentation is an AUTO STOP light that glows when the engine is shut off and the motor is running when the car is at a standstill.
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