Gadgetory

now the first Honda Accord Hybrid for $6,000 more than a four-cylinder Accord you picked up one Highway mpg now they're back with both a hybrid and what we've got here today the plug-in hybrid bottom line the numbers now make sense in a big way now first of all Accord plugins are all sedans this technology doesn't come on the coop spotting one of these isn't too hard it's got arguably the best-looking body of any Accord in terms of the body kit very aggressive front chin this blue tinted headlight lens isn't just for looks it also calls your attention to standard LED headlights and overall it's got a nice massive almost accurate look it all goes to hell up the wheels though those are actually Marie Callender's pipe hands well not really but they may as well be because they rattle like them and their actual wheel covers it look like hell which isn't just cheap it's an insult because behind there are actual alloy wheels I assume these are there for aerodynamics but really the trunk is rather highly compromised this is where the extra capacity battery lives it cuts the trunk storage by 45% over even a hybrid accord let alone a standard one so that's a big intrusion kind of unforgivable in a big car that is meant to carry foreign comfort but obviously not all for their luggage is gonna fit here now under the hood the plug-in hybrid doesn't present that much differently than a regular hybrid start off with a lean-burn 2-liter four-cylinder inline 4 sitting here sidesaddle coupled to an electric motor and going out to front-wheel drive only via a CVT transmission total gas engine powers 141 horse with another 55 coming from the electric motor the vehicles kind of chunky 3,800 pounds that's 200 more than a standard Accord Hybrid and almost 600 more than a standard Accord four-cylinder without any hybrids so this is way up on the scales but it all comes out in the wash 47 46 is your mpg rating and most people are reporting getting closer to 50 real-world 115 mpg E which is the electric mode miles per gallon equivalent so this guy is really stellar in terms of efficiency that's saying something for a car that is big and weighs quite a bit these gauges alongside the speedometer are unique to this vehicle on the upper right you've got your battery charge level lower right your fuel level on the left you've got your swing age if you will shows if you're using power or using momentum to recharge the battery and then you've got a whole variety of instruments in the middle of the speedometer the one that I find the most useful by far is this little momentum gauge leave that one turn on it will coach you to gradually accelerate and brake which will do as much for any cars economy as electrification sometimes there's your rear cam and of course you've got trajectory in distance if you hit this button here you're also going to change to a downward cam which is nice for the last few inches and then when you go into either a right turn or hit the button on the stock over here you get the camera on the right mirror activated that looks back down the car and gives you distance markings now regardless of what you're using in this car the interface is this - screen deal you got the big non touch setback and you've got a smaller touch screen up here that doesn't necessarily make it a success you can end up with disasters like this when you pull up FM radio and get not just two representations of your presets but two representations that don't even sync up that one's showing presets 8 through 11 by default this one's showing 7 through 12 I can scroll this one to get a different slice of my presets but it doesn't follow over here it's a complete mess but on the navigation side you can get to these kind of moments where you're entering an address and you get not one but two keyboards and they are a different interface and then even though you've got this giant screen up here in the dash they sure don't use the real estate very well notice how my tags coming off the RDS portion of an FM broadcast aren't horribly truncated I can't even tell what that says and I've been staring at it for minutes yet they did spend time using a whole bunch of lower real estate to give us what's basically an analogue band tuner which is completely useless now under the audio system just about every source you want is in there you have optical discs tildes cars and shed that yet Pandora and AHA talked about that diminished oddly for a high trim car the Accord plug-in is missing HD radio even though some siblings like The Odyssey have it iPod hooks up and does a very nice job of showing up you've also got song by voice on this car so you can literally call out the name of a track or an artist that's on your iPod and it'll go fetch it play moon buggy ride using the hondalink app you can bring up all of a hoss services which largely form the backbone of this cars interesting interactive features you'll also then get telematics functions by that same app including remote battery state charge on demand and charts programming range to dead shown on the phone and locate charging stations now the plug in the cord oddly shares a lot of approach with the Chevy Volt though not any parts let's break it down first there's easy mode the electric motor does all the driving the gas engines out of the picture it's actually freewheeling to kill friction this mode will cover up to 13 miles worth of start and stop driving and lower speed work then there's hybrid mode here the electric motor is still doing all the work but the gas engine is kicked in to run a generator to create more juice on the fly so you are using a hybrid of power plants but only a single traction source and that is electric this mode kicks in for at speed acceleration or frequent speed change driving then there's engine mode here the gas engine does all the work and the electric motor goes to sleep and the gas engine is basically running in a very efficient high gear mode typically for cruising and then there's hybrid charge mode lean on the hybrid button for a couple of seconds and the vehicle is told to operate as a hybrid but with the main goal of recharging the battery ASAP so you can get back to evey mode sooner now a full plug-in charge takes one hour on 240 volts level two or three hours on a typical household outlet as you can see on the screen there you got some great mpg numbers from some of our recent tests and recent loops this car really delivers serious mileage the ride quality is very good electric cars tend to because they've got that nice planting weight of the battery and although you can't really tell right now because I've got the window open it's very quiet inside one problem with that quiet it's shattered by this piercing whine that comes from somewhere behind the speedometer when you step on it it's some kind of an electric transition going on there I don't know exactly where it's coming from maybe from the inverter but wow it's annoying as all get-out okay pricing a 2014 Accord plug-in Hybrid is pretty simple everything I've shown you is included forty thousand six but that's before a federal tax credit of thirty six hundred and twenty six dollars well it's not the big seventy five hundred credit you've heard about because this car does not have as large a battery as the feds want to see nor does it run as pure electric as let's say a Chevy Volt does so you don't get the full credit so all in you're looking at something around thirty seven thousand dollars if you're in California you can qualify for another fifteen hundred dollars again not the full twenty five hundred that that state would often award more electrified owners the EPA figures the average fifteen thousand mile your driver will save about 1250 a year in fuel costs with the plug-in compared to an Accord v6 which is the most comparable now there's about a four thousand dollar price Delta after federal tax credit meaning it would take you a little over three years for the plug-in tech to pay for itself if you're an average driver but that's before any state credits you may get but also assuming you're going to take regular advantage of full plug-in charges as with any car with advanced energy tech it's a numbers game but regardless how those pencil out Honda has absolved itself here of the old Accord Hybrid with a new car that goes a long way to restore their reputation for doing Green right