New Honda Civic Diesel will REALLY do 76mpg, say Honda

An enhanced version of Honda’s 1.6 litre i-DTEC diesel engine will be available next year in the Honda Civic, promising to do 76mpg in the real world.

Although diesel engined cars are getting a bad press at the moment, the investments made by car makers in diesel technology means they’re not going to be abandoned overnight in favour of hybrids and EVs.

Instead, expect car makers to demonstrate how clean their diesels now are in the real world to keep buyers on-side, and tell us how economical they are too. 

That’s what Honda are doing with the announcement of a ‘comprehensively revised’ 120PS 1.6 litre i-DTEC diesel engine heading for the new Honda Civic in 2018.

Honda are keen you know that this engine in the Honda has been tested using the new Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) which actually measures fuel consumption whilst cars are on the road doing real driving. A novel concept.

That, say Honda, means the test figures of 76.3mpg in the WLTP test will be easy to achieve in the real world. Interestingly, that’s the exact same combined economy number the current NEDC Lab Test yields for the current version of this engine.

Our rule of thumb for real world economy is to take a third off the official combined figure, and that’s usually close. So either Honda has worked miracles on the engine or the WLTP tests are as flawed as the NEDC.

We’ll have to wait to see which is the case until next year, but Honda are also keen to point out the new version of the engine has also tested through the Real Driving Emission (RDE) procedure to validate NOx and particulate emission levels, which is good, and the engine has a NOx storage Converter (NSC) and bigger catalysts with higher active metal content.

As we said, a demonstration that diesel can be good by Honda. Will the pitch work? It should, if the claims stack up.