Here's the judge's math from page 25 of the decision[s3.documentcloud.org] :

Fine, but you should really stop saying "This is primarily a lawyer making an uninformed purchasing decision", which seems more a mean-spirited misreading.

Maybe. I know of no other car that had EPA 50mpg (on the older tests) and dropped to the 30s in the real world. This case had the smoking gun of Honda's software update that lowered the mpg to reduce battery deterioration.

You're right, in 2006 she should have carefully considered the 2007 lawsuit from other Civic owners about poor mpg, the 2010 software upgrade that lowered the mpg to reduce battery deterioration, and Honda's lame 2011 proposed settlement of the 2007 et al cases. What a fool! Buyer beware! Boy, she got what she…

You've got your eyes closed and your hands over your ears, go read J. Walter Weatherman's "Son I Am Disappoint" . It's clear from the class action settlement thatn Honda f***ed up with a poor battery, and so years after the sale the software upgrade lowered the mpg to reduce deterioration. In what universe do these…

Clarkson the entertainer does a lot of handwaving and no serious analysis. You are gullible and lack common sense if you think the pollution from making and shipping 20 pounds of nickel (also present in the chrome and steel of conventional cars) to then produce a 120 pound recyclable NiMH battery pack is remotely…

But alas VW doesn't sell the fine Bluemotion 1.6 TDI (a micro-HYBRID!) in the USA, maybe VW fears it's underpowered at 104bhp, or because its stop-start doesn't benefit EPA mpg ratings. Road & Track tested the 2010 Prius against VW USA's Golf 2.0 TDI and the Prius got better mpg in every driving situation they…

"MPG" becomes somewhat meaningless once you can plug in, but the EPA that everyone around here loves to hate gives you all the info you need to estimate your gas and electricity consumption, assuming the math skills that most lack.

Teh InterTubes suggests the Honda Civic Hybrid battery costs $2100, so with labor costs less than $3000 from dealer. Meanwhile over 120,000 miles the 2012 Civic Hybrid at 44mpg will save 1,000 gallons of fuel over a regular Civic at 32 mpg.

AP story: [www.google.com] , summarizes:

My solar panels beg to differ.

Tesla manages its battery pack, laptops just drain theirs. Again, please link to someone having a problem with their Roadster's battery pack; I'm sure out of 2000 owners some must have had problems.

Ray at 1:02 "But the problem is Tesla hasn't had the sufficient engineering history in order to build a car from scratch."

Most of your first paragraph is "citation needed". Tesla's thermal & electrical battery management seems at least as good as anyone else's, and name the people experiencing questionable lifetimes. The Roadster's humongous and expensive 450 kg of batteries blew a hole in the "no range" criticism of EVs, and since then…

MPG figures aren't massaged estimates, you drive the car according to the EPA's detailed test specification and see what you get. The EPA itself doesn't test every car, it allows manufacturers to submit their own figures (and I don't know how you can tell which numbers are from EPA). Some allege that Hyundai inflated…

Props to @wickedme91 for pointing out the software update angle before me.

@steliosr32, no. I think "Honda Civic Hybrid's IMA battery pack comes with an 8-year/80,000-mile warranty, or a 10-year/150,000-mile warranty in CA", though Honda admitted early battery deterioration which they tried to counter with the software update that f***ed up the mpg. I think replacement runs about $3000…

No, moral of the story is Honda's IMA couldn''t get high MPG without hurting its battery, and beware of software updates that "fix" problems by screwing up performance. I think the Nissan GT-R got a software update to lessen gearbox damage that decreased 0-60 slightly, I wonder if anyone took them to court.

Thank you! That's the key point that Jalopnik left out, hence all the uninformed ranting here against the customer who got shafted.

Right, and Honda "fixed" the deteriorating battery problem in a software update by running the gas engine more, worsening the MPG. Both Jalopnik and LA Times left this out.