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There have been some concern on the CVT reliability issue of some Honda models, such as the City (local) and Civic Hybrid (oversea).
The Dept. of Energy (USA) has been conducting some long term tests (end-of-life testing) of all the various hybrid models (Honda Insight, Honda Civic, Toyota Prius Gen I). Some fascinating data are here:
2001 Honda Insight
2002 Toyota Prius Gen I
2003 Honda Civic Hybrid:
They are testing 4 Civic hybrids, all with CVT transmissions.
- Two of the four have CVT tranny failures.
- VIN 3864 has 161k miles, and had a transmission failure at 97k.
- VIN 1603 has 161k miles as well, and had a transmission failure at 99k miles, and again at 157k miles ($2,500 to replace).
VIN 1603 Fact Sheet
2003 Honda Civic Hybrid: http://ev.inel.gov/pdf/hev/honda_civic_fact_sheet3864.pdf; http://ev.inel.gov/pdf/hev/fact_sheet1603.pdf.
p/s: Not sure whether the new Civic hybrid is using the same CVT as in 2003 model year. Please confirm yourself.
2001 Honda Insight:
They are testing 6 Insights, all with CVT transmissions
- Two of them have CVT tranny failures.
- VIN 2163 had a transmission failure at 77k miles.
- VIN 2688 had a transmission failure at 90k miles.
VIN 2688 Fact Sheet
2001 Honda Insight: http://ev.inel.gov/pdf/hev/fact_sheet2163.pdf; http://ev.inel.gov/pdf/hev/fact_sheet2688.pdf.
2002 Toyota Prius Gen I:
They also tested several Toyota Prius's with similar mileage. While they had other problems, there were no transmission failures.
http://ev.inel.gov/pdf/hev/end_of_life_test_1.pdf
Source:
http://ev.inel.gov/hev.shtml
http://forums.caranddriver.com/auto/board/message?board.id=11&thread.id=138476&view=by_date_ascending&page=1