We Took Our 2025 Honda Civic Hybrid Sedan on a 3,000-Mile Road Trip Back Home

Motor Trend

07-07-2025

Let me be crystal-clear: I didn't want to have to drive from Los Angeles to New York. I am not one of those people who feels the persistent tug of the open road, whose romantic sense of adventure can only be quelled by a cross-country road trip. I could think of a lot better things to do with my time.
A 3,000-mile road trip from LA to NYC in a 2025 Honda Civic Hybrid showcased its fuel economy, comfort, and features. Despite some seat discomfort and a smaller fuel tank, the car impressed with its ADAS and efficiency, averaging 38 mpg across diverse terrains and conditions.
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But if this is what stood between getting MotorTrend 's new yearlong review 2025 Honda Civic hybrid sedan back from El Segundo (where it was delivered) to spend a year with me, then so be it. I could put my grumpiness aside. It would make my editors happy and be a good story, but most important make my editors happy.
The obvious metric to watch would be the Civic's fuel economy: an EPA-rated 50/47/49 mpg city/highway/49 combined. But the journey revealed more than just a string of mileage figures.
It's one thing to fly. But when you drive across the United States, you are presented—at times forcefully—with the sheer vastness of it. But within that, there's the elegantly shifting geography and the wonder of our interstate highway system.
What better way to see it than with a disposable camera from the front seats of a little red economy car? Leg 1: Suiting Up
Los Angeles, California to Virgin, Utah, via Las Vegas, Nevada: 421 Miles
Seeing as we have a My Chemical Romance show coming up later in the summer, we did what good millennials do: loaded up I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love and set off, guided only by a desire for off-Strip pho and a constellation of Marriott reservations beyond that.
The Civic scooted out of Los Angeles with ease, its electronically aided low-end power slingshotting it from stoplights with glee. There's a no-frills joy in nosing around a 3,200-pound car with direct steering feel. On the highway, that punchiness diminishes somewhat with the lack of more passing power, though it's not a huge deal. Plus, the Civic's front cupholders perfectly fit my favorite 20-ounce Yeti tumbler. This is a feat not always guaranteed.
One hour into sitting on the 15, I hit my first complaint: My butt was hurting from the thin seat foam. The acquisition of a pair of gel seat cushions from Walmart immediately remedied the problem.
I also insisted on something I carry in the car for any trip longer than six hours: a small cooler for snacks, bevs, and restaurant leftovers. The little wheeled Coleman we found was perfect. It even had a Velcro bottom that actually helped it stick to the floor of the trunk.
Semi-truck-choked traffic on the 15 had us reflecting on the dumb poetry of an empty railroad running alongside in parallel, but if any system was going to make things easier, it was the car's ADAS. It's no hands-free system like GM's Super Cruise, but it's the next best thing. It followed the flow of traffic carefully, displaying what the car 'sees' on the driver information cluster, so there are no surprises for either of you. Vegas came into view in no time.
I've had enough overpriced meals on the Vegas Strip to last a lifetime, so we cruised through for a look at one of the most uniquely American cities ever to exist and found ourselves some noodles in a quiet strip mall. Oftentimes, this is where the best noodles live.
The landscape took on a reddish hue as we crossed into southern Utah, but there wasn't much else to see after the sun went down. The car's automatic high-beams beat back the darkness and adjusted for oncoming drivers flawlessly. And as much as I respect the rawness of I Brought You My Bullets as a debut album, I think Gerard Way really finds his voice in Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge . Leg 2: Colorado Was Murder on Mileage
Virgin, Utah, to Denver, Colorado: 623 miles
A subfreezing sunrise trek through Zion's Kolob Canyons got the blood moving—just so we could remain seated for the next 9.5 hours.
This leg of the drive confirmed two things: First, Welcome to the Black Parade is, indisputably, the best MCR album ever released. And second, the sections of Interstate 70 between southern Utah and Denver are a flex .
The start of I-70 happens at an eastbound handover from I-15 near Cove Fort, Utah, cold air clashing with sun-warmed roads and sending up a sparkling, ethereal mist. From there, the road snakes through the San Rafael Swell, a breathtaking, otherworldly Paleocene collection of canyons, mesas, valleys, and domes.
Traveling this way came at a price, however.
Owing to I-70's 75-mph speed limit, Utah returned an average of 31.2 mpg. Then, snaking through Colorado's mountainous and suffocating elevation, that figure dropped to 25.1 mpg. I don't think I'll see the Civic Hybrid's mileage this poor for the rest of our yearlong loan.
We could feel the car struggling, too. The engine droned more frequently than usual, and there was noticeable sluggishness in its acceleration and passing power. This was especially true through the Eisenhower Tunnel, about 60 miles west of Denver. At 11,158 feet, it is one of the highest car-carrying tunnels in the world and the highest point in our entire Interstate Highway System.
When you see this, you just have to buy it.
All worth it, though, just to experience the spectacular engineering achievement that is I-70. Leg 3: A Stop at the Pony Express
Denver, Colorado, to Omaha, Nebraska: 540 miles
With the Rockies in the rearview, it's tough to retell just how dramatically everything falls away after that. Flat doesn't even begin to describe it.
Sitting on these big, open stretches really makes you wonder how much faster life became after cars and the interstate system. A visit to the Pony Express stop in Gothenburg, Nebraska (yes, named after the one in Sweden) drove that point home. As a historical site, the stop is fairly lowkey, situated in a park in the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood. But how hard did this idea go?
The Pony Express was born by the need for quicker communication with the new state of California, especially about the impending Civil War. The 1,900-mile route from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento involved mounted riders galloping between stops where they'd pause for a break before getting on a fresh horse and setting off again. (One feels this would be a marvelous idea for EVs and battery swapping, but that's a conversation for another time.)
It was, for a brief time, the most direct method of east-west communication: Letters could be delivered in a then-unheard-of 10 days.
Because of its romanticization and enduring legacy, it feels like the Pony Express was around for years. In reality, it only operated for a mere 18 months between 1860 and 1861 before being replaced by the transcontinental telegraph and going bankrupt as a result.
Despite this, I found distinct parallels between the Pony Express and doing this journey in the Civic. More than 160 years ago, they sent a rider on a horse to essentially cross the United States, forgoing the traditional stagecoach for speed. It didn't get more barebones than that.
Today, we're doing the same thing in a little economy car.
But how far economy cars have come! This Civic Hybrid has no optional extras, just what comes with the top-tier Sport Touring trim. However, that means fantastic ADAS with lane keeping assist and three years of in-car data to support the native Google apps. The result? Massively reduced driver fatigue on those long highway stretches and even some blogging when I wasn't in the driver's seat.
All on a car that was less than $34,000 out the door.
Traveling west to east has the advantage of the setting sun never being in your eyes. At dusk, the never-ending oceans of Nebraskan fields are as colorful and varied as any sea. Leg 4: Big Mileage, Small Tank
Omaha, Nebraska, to Chicago, Illinois: 468 miles
The farther back east you go, the more you can tell state boundaries were drawn by natural geographic features. As such, the landscape shifts, with Iowa's hills starting almost immediately after crossing into the state. There are more trees, too.
I won't spoil it here, but please check out my accompanying feature on what was easily one of my favorite stops on the whole trip: the Iowa 80 Truckstop, also known as the world's largest truck stop, outside of Walcott, Iowa.
It's where I bought these incredible shoes.
Wetlands greeted us upon passing into Illinois, along with a creeping realization: Without the distractions of canyons, mountains, and Pony Express stops, a small tank size becomes glaringly bothersome.
Normally, Civics come with 12.4-gallon fuel tanks. But to make room for the battery, the Civic Hybrid's tank shrinks down to 10.6 gallons. You make it back in improved fuel economy and averaging around $20 to $30 per fill-up (based on current gas prices), but you're still filling up pretty often. Like, the Honda needed to stop more frequently than I did.
As a final note before tucking into an obligatory Chicago deep-dish for the night: I respect the risk My Chemical Romance took with Danger Days , its fourth studio album, but I can't say I will be reaching for it again soon. Leg 5: Found the Traffic
Chicago, Illinois, to Detroit, Michigan: 288 miles
As a New Yorker, I was happy to spend the morning examining Chicago's inferiority complex for myself. I'M KIDDING! Chicago is lovely and offers many architectural delights. Go and see the Chicago Cultural Center for yourself if you get the chance.
Shorter day for us, this was. In Michigan past Hamtramck and headed north toward Troy, we encountered the first real traffic since departing Los Angeles four days prior. Here, the Civic shone, deftly switching between gas and EV-only modes. Somehow, sitting in traffic with a hybrid doesn't feel nearly as wasteful, as there isn't the engine's constant vibration to remind you of how much gas you're burning by idling.
Technically, we should have gone farther than Royal Oak on Day 5, but seeing as this is where MotorTrend 's Detroit bureau is headquartered, a team outing to Buddy's Pizza for some Detroit-style was a must. I'm a thin-crust girlie for life, but Detroit-style is something you can really sink your teeth into. Leg 6: Familiar Topography, Home Stretch
Detroit, Michigan to New York, New York: 631 miles
I spend an inordinate amount of time in California and on the West Coast, but I'd be lying if I said a familiar sense of home didn't steal over me upon crossing through Ohio and into Pennsylvania to see low, rolling mountains and forests of mature trees. Fascinating as the flat plains were, they also felt very exposed.
To pass the time more quickly, we performed a single-tank hypermiling test per the MotorTrend method: with a full tank of gas and cruise control set at 70 mph. Not part of the MotorTrend method: Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City audiobook playing over Spotify. What? Chicago inspired us!
Audiobooks are where the Civic's loud road manners detract from the experience. You can tune it out easily when nothing's playing, but to catch every scintillating detail of H. H. Holmes' murder spree and the building of 1893's Chicago World's Fair meant we had to crank the volume way up.
Calculations made after using roughly three-quarters of the tank equaled 44.7 mpg—2.3 miles lower than the EPA-rated figure. This isn't a huge deal, as variations in specific vehicles, driving conditions, and environmental factors all affect a car's fuel economy. This is quite literally a case of 'your mileage may vary.'
Still, 44.7 mpg on the highway is great. And we expect it to be even better once we get the Civic Hybrid home and unleash it in Manhattan gridlock. The Economy Standard
Speaking of New York—we made it!
In total, the trip netted 50 hours and 33 minutes of driving over 3,090 miles and through 14 states (California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York). I simultaneously felt tired and also like we never left.
This is old news to people who've done it before, but for those who haven't: Driving across the United States gives a perspective that flying will never offer. It's bigger than conceivable, but it also feels smaller and more manageable at the same time. You make memory anchors. We can now say, 'There's great Indian food in La Verkin, Utah,' and 'Downtown Omaha has a beautiful waterfront park.'
For me, at least—the unwilling participant of this whole thing—it's worth remembering you should regularly be made to feel uncomfortable, to go out to see and try new things.
Road-trip snacks are the spice of life.
It was also fascinating to experience westward expansion, albeit in reverse. People used to die on this trek all the time. Today, though? We did it in a relatively speedy six days of maximum comfort via a climate-controlled car full of snacks, cold water, and Wi-Fi along a well-paved interstate highway system dotted with rest stops, hotels, and gas stations.
We drove coast to coast and only used, like, four or five roads, which is my next point: What a modern wonder the United States Interstate Highway System is. What would the country look like without it? Could something like it be approved and built today? (Probably not.) This marvelous collection of highways is our Colosseum.
But the real hero of the trip was the little red Civic Hybrid.
Wondering what the average mpg was for crossing the United States of America? After all the distance and roughly 88 gallons of gas, the car returned about 38 mpg. The majority of it was highway driving, with some local and city roads in between.
Beyond that, though, the car is a sheer testament to how high the standards now are for economy cars. It wasn't even that long ago that features that come stock on this Civic were costly extras on far, far more expensive luxury cars. Hell, sometimes they still are.
Comfortable (after the cushions), easy to drive, and pleasant to be around, the Civic Hybrid proves you don't need the biggest land yacht to get from sea to shining sea. Much like the riders of the Pony Express, it does its best with what counts the most. Nothing more. Nothing less. More on Our Long-Term 2025 Honda Civic Hybrid Sedan: An Incredible Win for the Masses?