2009 Honda Civic Hybrid 1.3 L Beautiful Unbelievable Mpg!! on 2040-cars

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2015 Acura NSX burns to the ground at the 'Ring [w/video]

Assuming all goes to plan, automakers test their vehicles to the breaking point in the months and years leading up to that vehicle's actual release into the public. Which is good, because it's much better for a car to break in glorious fashion in the hands of the company that produces it than in the driveway of an owner who just spent their hard-earned cash to get it. Such was the case with this production-guise Acura NSX prototype that we saw running around the Nurburgring just the other day. We can't be 100-percent certain, but the burned-out carcass is wearing the same number plate as the car that was spotted earlier, so it's likely the very same NSX. We have no idea what was the cause of the blaze that turned this Acura into the car-b-q you see pictured above, but our spy shooters on the ground in Germany say it was not involved in any collision, having caught on fire all on its own with engineers behind the wheel. The good news is that nobody was hurt, though the car is quite clearly a complete loss. We're sure there's another ready to to test in the burned car's place... just as soon as the engineers at Honda figure out exactly what went wrong. Have a look at the smoldering aftermath up above, and feel free to scroll down below to see a video of the car in much better circumstances.

Honda's electric 0 Series: 5 things we learned at CES 2024

LAS VEGAS — After Honda announced its new all-electric 0 Series at CES this week, suffice it to say we had questions. Fortunately for us, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe was there to share the news in person. Along with other selected media, we had the opportunity to ask anything we liked about the forthcoming platform and Honda's plans for its rollout here in the United States starting in 2026. Here are five key things we learned about this new platform and the cars it will underpin.  We may see one before the Saloon arrives in 2026 While Honda has promised it will launch a production model based on the 'Saloon' concept in North America in 2026, another 0 Series vehicle may actually arrive at the same time — or even sooner. What form that may take is anybody's guess, as Mibe remained shy about the details. For now, treat 2026 as the hard deadline and rule nothing out. It will expand to new segments At launch, 0 Series will be a "mid-large" platform, which we can take to mean midsize for practical purposes. This would support cars of equivalent size to Honda's existing Accord and Passport along with the Odyssey minivan (take a close look at that Space Hub concept below). Honda plans to offer 0 Series models with different footprints later. A small-car platform suitable for subcompact, midcompact and compact offerings (think Honda City, HR-V, Civic, CR-V, etc.) will follow later, as will an even larger platform, which we would expect to be utilized for a Pilot equivalent. Though the existing ICE-powered Pilot and its other sibling, the Ridgeline are midsizers riding on the same platform as the aforementioned Passport, these are as big as Honda's trucks and crossovers get. If the mid-large platform could accommodate such offerings, it stands to reason that a larger one wouldn't be necessary.  It has not damaged Honda's relationship with GM Mibe dismissed any perceived rift between Honda and General Motors resulting from the dissolution of their agreement to build a line of small cars on GM's Ultium EV platform. The companies parted ways over a desire to approach their long-term electrification strategies differently, not over any technological limitations or constraints provided by the Ultium platform itself, Mibe said, and the two companies are still working together to develop autonomous technology utilizing elements of GM's Cruise division.

Honda underreported 1,729 claims of injuries or deaths since 2003

Among these underreported cases were eight Takata airbag inflator ruptures not submitted. Following an independent audit of its safety reporting procedures, Honda has found massive holes in its methodology and practices that resulted in 1,729 claims of injuries or deaths going unreported to federal authorities dating back to July 2003. The cases should have been submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as part of its quarterly Early Warning Reports (EWRs) under the TREAD Act, but they fell through the cracks for a variety of reasons. Honda blames the underreporting on three factors: data entry errors, computer coding problems and "an overly narrow interpretation of what constituted a 'written notice' under the TREAD Act." The first two issues were related to the computer program that collected the claims. If employees didn't enter a date in the "written claim received" field, then they were omitted from the EWRs. Also, the company's internal component codes didn't always match those used by NHTSA, and only the ones that were the same were disclosed. Finally, third-party documents, including police reports, were not considered. Honda says the computer error is now corrected, and the company is updating its data entry training. In the future, written and oral claims will be included in EWRs, as well. Among these underreported cases were eight Takata airbag inflator ruptures not submitted in Honda's EWRs, including one death and seven injuries. However, the automaker claims NHTSA was already aware of all of these incidents either from the agency's own records or from the company's notification outside of the EWR process. Unfortunately, this problem could have been stopped much sooner. The issue was first brought to light in 2011 but didn't result in a followup. NHTSA advised the automaker of discrepancies in January 2012, and it still did nothing. This third-party audit wasn't commissioned until September 2014. "Honda acknowledges that it lacked the urgency needed to correct its problems on a timely basis," it says in the announcement. Separately, the Japanese government is starting an investigation, as well. According to Reuters, the Japanese Transport Minister has created a task force to look into the Takata recalls and find out whether Honda under-reported incidents there. Scroll down to read the company's entire statement on the third-party investigation.