In an ideal world, cars wouldn’t have to burn petrol and smog up the place. They would run on a combination of grass cuttings and rainwater and, as they passed, the air would be lightly perfumed with the heady smell of summer. And they would still be capable of doing 120kph, of course. And a bit more than that, when no one was looking.
Alas, the motorway-ready, grass-and-water-powered automobile remains, according to most of the messages coming out of the motoring industry, some way down the line. Ditto the genetically engineered, all-terrain, turbo-charged, people-carrying horse. In the meantime, the most workable solution, for any driver seeking to make an impact on fuel consumption and air quality, but still needing to make a 60km journey has to be the hybrid engine.
In hybrid cars, a conventional petrol-drinking engine receives assistance from an electric motor, creating a hitherto unthinkable collaboration between good and evil, clean and filthy, right there under your bonnet. At certain key moments — most notably when idling — the electric motor takes over the running of the car and the petrol engine shuts down. Thus the car only burns petrol when it really feels it has to and returns the kind of consumption and emission figures for which diesel car owners would cut off their steering wheels.
Despite this, a hybrid car places no extra or peculiar demands upon its owner. You go to a petrol station to fill it up, like anybody else. You just don’t go as often. And because the electric motor constantly recharges itself with energy recycled from decelerating and braking, you don’t need to leave the car plugged in overnight in your garage. In fact, you never have to plug in a hybrid car at all.
The obstacle between hybrids and mass acceptance has been their tendency to look thigh-slappingly ridiculous. The first mass-produced hybrid car was the Honda Insight, which went on sale in 1999. It was a dead ringer for the trailer for a glider. Also, the Insight only seated two people and cost as much to buy as a good-quality family saloon, meaning you would have to drive it in a frenzy, 24/7, for some months before you began to notice any saving at all.
It was all valuable research and development, though, as far as Honda are concerned. And now, with this new version of the trusty Civic saloon, the company has clearly — like Toyota, with its Prius — reached the stage where it can produce hybrid cars that do not declare their hybridness in any way at all.
Yes, the car’s dashboard is dizzyingly strange, but this has nothing to do with it being a hybrid and everything to do with it being a Honda.
Arranged on many tiers, and featuring more typefaces than Microsoft Word, the Civic’s dash manages to strike a rare balance between high-tech, 21st-century console and mid-’80s music centre.
Also, explain that handbrake — a strangely abrupt little handle that could have been made by snapping a coat-hanger.
The car accelerates firmly and clips along, quickly shaking off any milkfloat analogy. It is hard to quibble with Honda’s claim that it has produced a 1,4-litre engine that pulls like a 1,6-litre and is as frugal as a 1,1-litre. The silence that descends at junctions, when the petrol engine lies down for a breather, is at first eerie but, eventually, plain restful.
Overall, the driving sensation is light and airy — perhaps too feathery for some. Still, you can trade a bit of heft for the pleasure of the smugness that arises from knowing that you are fouling up the environment, but not half as much as you used to, and that if everyone joined you, the polar ice caps would shortly reform. Or maybe not. But we might use less petrol. — Â