We have a Honda Civic hybrid at work for a pool car. Its certainly a nice car to drive. For me the only difference is that its an automatic, and prior to driving the Civic, I'd only ever driven manual. Got used to it pretty quickly though.
One thing I do find odd is how the automatic cut out on the engine works... As the car comes to a stand on the foot brake, the engine cuts, then when you lift off the brake and onto the accelerator the engine fires up. In my view, holding the car for more than a few seconds on the foot brake is a bad habit and the handbrake should be used. So... In the Civic: bring car to a stand, engine cuts, apply handbrake, lift off foot brake, engine fires up again. I find that odd when you're clearly not going anywhere!!
Of course there is the whole school of thought that actually it would have been more green to just have something like a diesel Fiesta or a Polo Blue Motion, with not dis-similar emissions, and no nasty metals required for big batteries.
As for congestion charging, I don't see the justification for exempting low emission cars including hybrids since a car causes congestion regardless of how it is powered. Having said that, at the other end of the scale I think there is justification for charging high-emission cars and 4x4s more because they are contributing more to poor air quality and threaten pedestrian safety... but that's a different discussion.
