10/08/2025

Contributing Editor Keshy Dhillon / keshy@piston.my Editorial

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SUNDAY | AUG 10, 2025

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The Honda Civic e:HEV RS feels sporty to drive.

Power & efficiency Honda’s hybrid engines are different, we explain how

rpm, providing acceleration akin to an electric vehicle. So, how does it benefit you? Simply put, it lets you travel further with lesser fuel. The Honda’s e:HEV sys tem has three modes: EV drive mode: During acceleration and at low speeds, the car is driven purely by the electric motor. The engine is com pletely shut at this point. Hybrid drive mode: At moderate speed such as in the city, the Atkinson Cycle works as a generator. It works at a constant, highly efficient rpm rate to gen erate electricity which drives the wheels. The engine does not drive the wheels directly in this mode. Engine drive mode: At high speeds such as on the highway, the engine drives the wheels directly through a lock-up clutch. In this mode, the engine runs at a constant rate where it is most efficient. As such, it can directly power the car without any compensation from the electric motor. All of this happens with you barely noticing anything. If you really tune in and put your ear down, you can make out a slight hum indicating the engine is working. Which Honda models offer this tech? All of Honda’s models have a hybrid variant, and all Honda hybrid models come with the technology mentioned above.

BY KESHY DHILLON

The interior trimming of Honda hybrid cars feel sporty.

HYBRIDS are becoming more popular. Would you believe it? It is not that hard to comprehend with petrol becoming more expensive and the cost of replacing bat teries dropping significantly. It was just about a decade ago when car buyers were spooked by the monumental cost of replacing hybrid batteries. Technology has caught up, hybrid bat teries are cheaper than ever (in the rare event they need to be replaced), and hybrid cars themselves are more accessi ble. But did you know that there are differ ent hybrid technologies available in the market? There are basic capacitor-based tech nologies. These store energy so that your car can continue to run when the engine automatically shuts off at the traffic light to save precious fuel. And then there are more sophisticated ones whose sole purpose is to use as little fuel as possible. Take Honda’s hybrid tech for example, based on the Atkinson Cycle internal combustion engine. It is one of the most efficient systems in the market right now with official fuel consumption ratings of just 20km per litre of fuel (we managed 19.8km per litre

on the compression and the power stroke. In an Otto Cycle engine, the compres sion stroke and the power stroke are of equal length. With an Atkinson Cycle, the power stroke is longer than the compres sion stroke. The benefits of a longer compression stroke is that all the gases can expand more fully, thus extracting more energy from the fuel before it is sent out as exhaust fumes. This leads to significantly higher ther mal efficiency but there is a trade-off. Atkinson Cycle engines have a lower power density and less torque, especially at lower RPM’s. Honda’s engineers though, have found a solution to that and that is to mate the more efficient Atkinson Cycle engine to an electric motor. The motor solves the core issue of the Atkinson Cycle engine because they cre ate almost all their torque from just zero

ket. One is the more conventional Otto Cycle which is found in most cars, and the other is Atkinson Cycle. We are about to get more technical but the fundamental difference between the two is in the stroke ratio. A stroke is described as a “single com plete movement of a piston in one direc tion, either upwards or downwards, within the cylinder”. There are three important strokes, an intake stroke which draws a mixture of air and fuel into the cylinder. Then there is the compression stroke which compresses the air-fuel mixture when the cylinder moves upwards. And then there is the power stroke, where the compressed mixture is ignited by a spark plug, causing a powerful explo sion thus generating power to move the wheels. To describe the difference between Otto and Atkinson Cycles, we will focus

during an independent test). What is Atkinson Cycle?

There are two main but different com bustion technologies available in the mar