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There are Civic Hybrid owners on the Yahoo! groups honda-hybrid forum who could help you out with Civic-specific questions.
Any car that gets high MPG is well suited to a long commute such as you describe. The Civic Hybrid gets 30%-40% better MPG than its EX counterpart, so you could expect some benefit. I don't think the hills would be a concern, the CVT should easily be able to crank up the RPMs to give you the power you require, and you can downshift a 5spd.
As for getting a 5spd, you should ask around your Honda dealers if there are even any available for purchase. AFAIK the 5spd Civic Hybrid is quite rare - I have never seen one but OTOH I have not looked very hard.
I haven't seen any reports of problems with a CVT transmission.
Your question about batteries is difficult to answer. The IMA carries an 8 year / 80k mile warranty. Some people assume that means the battery pack can be expected to fail after 8 years or 80,000 miles, but I think that is an unreasonable expectation.
There are definitely no Honda Civic Hybrid owners anywhere with over 80,000 miles yet, but there are those of us with Insights approaching or exceeding that mileage. I have not yet read a report of anyone having to do an out-of-warranty IMA battery replacement. We don't even know what the replacement would cost. I have read a couple of reports of Insight owners getting in-warranty replacements done. If you are very worried about the batteries, you will have to wait until more long-term Insight driving is done to see how the batteries perform in the real world.
Any car that gets high MPG is well suited to a long commute such as you describe. The Civic Hybrid gets 30%-40% better MPG than its EX counterpart, so you could expect some benefit. I don't think the hills would be a concern, the CVT should easily be able to crank up the RPMs to give you the power you require, and you can downshift a 5spd.
As for getting a 5spd, you should ask around your Honda dealers if there are even any available for purchase. AFAIK the 5spd Civic Hybrid is quite rare - I have never seen one but OTOH I have not looked very hard.
I haven't seen any reports of problems with a CVT transmission.
Your question about batteries is difficult to answer. The IMA carries an 8 year / 80k mile warranty. Some people assume that means the battery pack can be expected to fail after 8 years or 80,000 miles, but I think that is an unreasonable expectation.
There are definitely no Honda Civic Hybrid owners anywhere with over 80,000 miles yet, but there are those of us with Insights approaching or exceeding that mileage. I have not yet read a report of anyone having to do an out-of-warranty IMA battery replacement. We don't even know what the replacement would cost. I have read a couple of reports of Insight owners getting in-warranty replacements done. If you are very worried about the batteries, you will have to wait until more long-term Insight driving is done to see how the batteries perform in the real world.