I’m curious what others maintenance experience has been with hybrids.
We own a 2003 Civic Hybrid with 174,000 miles on it that we purchased new.
In general, we’ve been happy with the car.
But my estimate is that the cost of ownership is about the same as a conventional gas Civic (taking everything into consideration, including the cost of replacing the hybrid battery).
Here’s our major maintenance history. I’d be interested in hearing others experiences:
Hybrid IMA battery replaced at 130,000 miles ($3,500).
Shocks, struts at 167,000 ($1,800).
NOX catalytic converter at 173,000 ($1,000 for the part; I installed it myself).
Other maintenance:
Front brakes at 130,000.
Third set of tires installed at 167,000 mi.
Other normal maintenance as specified in the owner’s manual.
Except for the $3500 battery, the maintenance looks about the same what most careful owners experience with good compact cars.
My son has a 2004 Mazda 3 with about the same number of miles, and he had had the brakes done, and one tuneup with cooling sytem flush and spark plugs, etc.
Battery is still original and he has gone through the original and one other set of tires.
Where I work, we get paid $0.445 per mile to use our own cars for business. Since one of our company cars is a Camry hybrid, I went to edmunds.com to see their estimate of the cost to own a Camry Hybrid. It came to $0.44 per mile.
Edmunds’ “true cost to own” calculations only go back to 2007, but the cost to own a 2007 Civic hybrid sedan is $0.37 per mile, while a 2007 non-hybrid Civic EX sedan is $0.41 per mile.
I have an '03 conventional Civic, but don’t have the miles you put on yours. I’m at 97K now. New front brakes at 70K, due for 3rd set of tires soon, one strut replaced years ago under warranty, so far no rear brakes. Brake fluid flushed twice, manual trans fluid replaced twice, new timing belt, new coolant, new water pump. That’s about it. Still has the original battery. Sounds about equivalent to your experience if I racked up more miles.
Edmunds.com figures only consider 5 years of ownership and also including depreciation. This post is about maintenance costs so it is hard to get a grasp of real true cost to own unless they show depreciation in the Edmunds figures and you remove them both.
This thread is about comparing the costs of ownership (check the title). Maintenance is only one of the costs that contribute to the overall cost of ownership, and that should be pointed out, but I don’t object to you identifying the criteria used by Edmunds. I only used Edmunds for comparison purposes.