One problem related to transmission slip out of gear has been reported for the 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
While accelerating moderately, often while trying to pass another vehicle on the freeway or even while trying to maintain speed up a hill, our 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid would slip out of gear and the engine would suddenly rev up to redline rpm (it is an automatic transmission). The service technician could not reproduce this event. After a few months, this started happening quite often -- every day in predictable locations on our driving route. In addition, a judder developed when starting from a stop. This latter issue was identified by Honda and a technical bulletin was put out. The judder made the car nearly undrivable, so we again took the car in. The transmission fluid was replaced and the clutch plates were burnished. The tranmission slippage and engine revving disappeared. Now, 5 months later, the transmission slip with engine revving has returned as well as the judder starting again. We purchased an extended warranty, so the cost has not been an issue so far, however our warranty expires in June 2010. We are mainly concerned with the repeated appearance of the problems, especially that the transmission slip/engine revving can be a safety issue when trying to accelerate on an on-ramp or pass a car on a two-lane road. If the engine slips out of gear while passing a car, it may have tragic results.