The slowdown is noticeable when you lift off of the accelerator pedal, but thankfully it’s still quite smooth.

Even at its highest setting, the regenerative braking won’t reach the point where you would consider one-pedal driving.

Under hard braking, the front of the Accord Hybrid stays impressively balanced without a lot of nosedive and the car tracks straight as an arrow.Īll of the Accord Hybrid models also come with “paddle shifters” that are used to control the amount of regenerative braking that’s being applied with three different settings. Pedal feel is very linear and confidence-inspiring, and the shifts between regenerative and normal braking are imperceptible to the driver. The Accord Hybrid makes the sprint in 6.7 seconds, beating the Toyota Camry Hybrid by 0.7 seconds and the gas-only Accord (with the 1.5T) by 1.0 secondsīeyond the powertrain’s performance the rest of the Accord Hybrid’s driving experience also left me impressed, in particular the brakes. Unlike the CR-V, Honda did give us some 0-60 mph times for comparison. The gas engine also fired up the moment I get around 32-33 mph in my driving conditions, so it’s only a low-speed application as well. I couldn’t get a good read on that claim, because the gas engine kicks on unless you’re very delicate with the throttle to a nearly unsafe degree. Honda also noted that the Accord Hybrid can travel up to one mile on battery power alone in its “EV” drive mode. High-speed passing acceleration is not as pronounced as it was at lower speeds, but it still moves in a reasonably quick fashion. There could be a wider range of environments where this happens but it would take a longer test to find them all.

I was only able to get the gas engine to clutch in and drive the car by itself after I’d gotten up to speed on the highway. It made the Accord Hybrid more fun than I thought it would be to pilot on the same punishing canyon roads that I like to test sports cars on, it was easy to precisely accelerate and carry speed out of corners.Īt highway speeds, the Accord Hybrid cruises along placidly. In this range the drivetrain feels extra torque-y and responsive, similar to driving a battery-electric. Much like in the CR-V Hybrid, the Accord Hybrid shines most from 10-40 mph. I’m guessing I’d get used to it after a week or two with the vehicle. There’s still some disconnect between the way the engine’s revs climb and the acceleration you feel, and the gas engine gets plenty loud at certain times, but the acceleration feels constant. This might instead be done to protect the battery, as a hard launch would put a pretty big dent in the battery’s charge (considering it’s only 1.4 kwh) and with the gas engine setup to only assist at cruising speeds that initial burst would be entirely dependent on stored energy.Īfter you get past that initial pause, the Accord Hybrid catches up nicely. Our previous hypothesis was that this was potentially due to the CR-V Hybrid’s mechanical all-wheel drive system, but the Accord Hybrid is of course front-wheel drive only. There remains a moment or two of off-the-line hesitation when accelerating from a stop. This is very similar to the system that we tested in the CR-V Hybrid earlier this year and my experience in the Accord Hybrid was (predictably) pretty close to the results of that drive.

2021 honda accord hybrid