Honda being sued over hybrid mileage claims -- in small claims court

[thewayne]

The Slashdot summary: "Eric Peters makes the case that hybrids have been over-hyped. His argument is that in order to sell people on hybrid cars, automakers have emphasized the energy efficiency of hybrids in ideal conditions and failed to tell people that in most ordinary driving conditions they will not come close to meeting the numbers given. He refers to a recent case where an individual has chosen to forego membership in a class action law suit and has instead chosen to go to small claims court. He suggests that there is a significant chance that she will win there and that this will open up all of the manufacturers of hybrid vehicles to similar lawsuits. The article was on a rather partisan website, so I am curious what factors he has chosen to overemphasize to make his case. (Or what factors he has chosen to ignore to the same end.) I know that Slashdot has a large contingent of hybrid and EV supporters who are well educated on the subject (as well as a large contingent of those who are not so well educated)."

The key to this is the small claims court (SCC) angle. This particular state limits damages to $10,000 in SCC, but SCC also has a much lower burden of proof and the judge can be a more active participant rather than just the arbiter role that they perform in superior court. The issue is that Honda states that the car is capable of 50 MPG and that the owner is not getting more than 30. So the issue is manufacturer/EPA estimated mileage, which is tricky on a hybrid. The standard assumes level driving and extremely conservative acceleration and speed, speeds that would get you killed on an interstate.

Here's the thing that should scare the beejeezus out of car manufacturers: if this case succeeds, they could end up fighting dozens, if not hundreds, of such cases in SCC rather than monster large class action cases where the attorneys get all the money and the participants get a check for $15. Plus you can represent yourself in SCC, making the cost to enter very low.

Interesting times.

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/01/06/honda-civic-lesson

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/01/07/1730240/another-stab-at-sorting-hybrid-hype-from-reality

Comments

[silveradept]

So once again we have standards that are divorced from reality? At some point, we should probably fix those and make people claim something that others will actually see in their day-to-day lives.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Estimated mileage is a very tricky thing. I track my/our mileage very closely, and oddly enough, both my car and my wife's get about the same mileage. My automatic 2005 AWD Toyota Matrix has averaged over about 415 fill-ups 28.9 MPG overall, my normal mileage varying between about 24 and 33. My wife's six-speed manual 2010 Subaru Outback over about 120 tanks is averaging 28.7 varying between 23 and 33. I'd like to trade cars for two months and see how the numbers change, but that's not going to happen. I don't track who is driving where when, so the information is strictly observational rather than authoritative.

As I said to Hafoc, I think they need three numbers: steady highway, start and stop city, and a hill course. But you're always going to have drivers with different characteristics, and I don't see how you could control for external temperature and weather, so you're always going to have a wide variance.

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

Honda claims they ran their mileage test based on EPA procedures, and were required to do so. I can see that. The EPA probably does define the mileage test requirements very strictly; I work in air pollution control, and I know that EPA defines all the test procedures I deal with down to every significant detail. For them to do so with mileage tests would be true to their usual procedure.

Honda claims that, having obtained mileage according to EPA procedures, they were required to put those numbers on their window stickers and other ads. I can see this too. If Honest Businessmen were allowed to use numbers from some non-standard source, they would be free to go out and hire technicians and order them "Prove our car gets 85 miles per gallon" the way the ciggy companies used to hire scientists and order them to prove smoking is safe. And when scientists are hired expressly to prove a conclusion the Honest Businessmen pay for in advance, they inevitably do. Then, having manufactured test results to order, the Honest Businessmen would put THAT on the window sticker. You think they wouldn't?

If all of this is true, it is just Honda's bad luck that an established test method doesn't work with a new sort of equipment that didn't exist when the test was created. That, too, would be something I see all the time in dealing with EPA-approved test methods and their results.

I haven't done any research to know whether this is the situation or not. But if it is, what then? If all this is true, is Honda getting nibbled to bits in small claims court such a good thing?

On a related note, I still have hopes for hybrid technology, but I trust it far less than I did a year or two ago. I don't think I'd buy a hybrid now. I don't think the idea is working out. Maybe if they did pneumatic hybrids or something else, other than battery-electric. Or maybe the Chevy Volt system will work out better. It seems simpler, therefore more reliable, to go with an electric vehicle that happens to have an add-on generator for longer trips than to have two drive trains in parallel the way standard hybrids do. Also, the other piston engine-electric combined power system vehicles we have made in large numbers, namely diesel-electric locomotives and diesel-electric submarines, both ended up evolving to power systems in series rather than in parallel as the most efficient and most reliable way of doing things. But it could be that the only real advantage of the Volt, or pneumatic hybrids, or other such systems is that we haven't used them as long and so aren't as aware of the flaws that will lead to their downfall as we are with the systems used in the Insight and Prius.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I know the EPA and car manufacturers had tremendous headaches when hybrids started hitting the showrooms because the (then) standard test procedure for determining pollution limits and mileage just didn't work well. You end up with absurd claims like a vehicle getting 150 MPG. The statement may be factually correct, but you don't have the entire context to know that it is not realistic. EPA has revised their testing standards at least once since hybrids came out, but I think they have a way to go. I think what they needs is a number representing steady-speed highway driving, a number representing start and stop city driving, and a number showing what is going to happen to you on a hill circuit, but that would need some specific parameters. You'd also need to try to control for outside temperature, and I'm not sure how you'd do that.

Amongst the many problems is controlling for driver characteristics, and you can't. A lead foot is going to get poorer mileage, and that's hard to reflect in average mileage. There's a reason why people say Your mileage may vary, because it will.

I live at 8600' in Cloudcroft. My wife works at an observatory about 16 miles away at 9200' and you crest 10,000' getting there. The nearest town of any size is at about 4200', and you travel a 16 mile highway getting there. So some impressive grades from Alamogordo to Cloudcroft, lots of ups and downs and switchbacks from Cloudcroft to the observatory. Definitely hilly terrain, and it can be bloody cold at times. If I lived in Alamogordo and never went to Cloudcroft, i.e. stayed in the dessert floor area, a hybrid would be fine. But a hybrid such as a Prius is going to have trouble with snow because it's not all-wheel drive. I find the concept of hybrids appealing, and if I lived in a flatter area like Phoenix I would definitely consider one, but they're just not as practical for living where I live.

The other issue that I have with battery hybrids is the constant touting of how 'green' they are when they don't really factor in the costs of mining and processing the materials for the batteries. Their footprint looms much larger when that is also considered. And I read that batteries are now hitting their 10 year expected life and costing on the order of $3,000 to replace, not a small chunk of change.

They'd be a good commuter car in Flatlandia, but not practical for me being a mountain man. I don't know enough about how diesel-electric locomotives work to think if it would be possible for them to scale down to automobile size, maybe semi-truck size would be a realizable first goal where it might also reap the most benefit.