It's great to see it looking so close to the concept car that was seen not that long ago - it's a great mixture of retro and future Honda, and it's also great to see Honda going for a full electric drivetrain as well as such a great design.
Fully Charged got 19 minutes in one, and the video [1] is worth a watch - you can see how quickly it accelerates when he floors it, and he was really impressed with the car, the turning circle and the camera mirrors.
I think the bottom line is that most electric cars will be a blast to drive - I'd love to have one as a rally car on single venue airfield-type events in the UK, if I was still competing; it'd be incredible in the forests too, but not sure range would make it possible for anything substantial, alas. [Totally ignoring any other practicalities that are impinging on my daydream about electric rally cars]
Im sad at how much the design and look of the car that they're actually bringing to market deviates from the model at the car show.
I _really_ liked how the concept looked, enough to have started investigating the potential of importing one from Europe when they came out. With how the actual car turned out looking, I've since cooled on that.
Not road legal in US with camera wing mirrors either as far as I understand. I believe the camera mirrors are standard on all models so can’t be avoided. Current US Department of Transport rules still require new cars to have two traditional physical wing mirrors.
I’ve often heard that outside of the 25 year rule (if older than 25 years it’s much simpler), importing cars not sold in the US to the US is basically so hard as to be largely impossible for the most part. Most car enthusiasts patiently wait for their favoured foreign car to hit 25 years old so they can finally get it into the US, even for extremely valuable exotics. There’s lots of websites out there that catalog when foreign models will hit 25 and be eligible for US import.
I hope this rule will be demolished in Europe as well. The driving side in the UK makes the cars dangerous at takeovers on the continent and vice versa. With video mirrors and a cam forward I could see ahead better regardless which side I sit.
This is presumably a VW e-Golf competitor and it seems to be European only model (to meet the ever increasing restriction on emission standards there). The Standard 35kwh battery option is not impressive at all as Fiat's compiance EV 500e already achieving and or exceeding those ranges (yes I drove one myself.)
The Korean auto makers have already made a strong push to longer range EVs like Hyundai Kona EV, Kia Niro EV, all are in the range of 240miles. The EV market outlook post 2020 is going to be massive, all thanks to Tesla's demonstration of how you can make an EV the best possible vehicle with technology and dedication.
The battery isn't supposed to be impressive. It is not for travelling salesmen or Americans. Honda have done their research and they know how far most people drive most of the time.
It is also worth remembering that many in their target audience are in two car households. So there is still the big car to visit the grandparents with.
This is not an e-Golf competitor. The e-Golf is a compliance car that is hard to actually buy. Dealers don't stock them.
This car is designed from the ground up as an EV, it is not an ICE car where the gearbox has been replaced with batteries - that is what the e-Golf is.
The EV options are not actually that huge post 2020. Most people are not in the Tesla price bracket. If you watch any car show there will be plenty of models that are new and do not have an EV option. There are grand promises from all of the different makes but when it comes down to it, in the UK (target market for the Honda) there is just Tesla that can deliver a nice new car to your specifications in four weeks. Other than that you can get a Nissan Leaf with the smaller battery pack in four weeks. For anything else you are looking at 3 to 6 months. The Korean wonders are even further out, eighteen months for them. That means 2020.
Range anxiety, cost and charging network are top 3 EV adoption hurdles. The first is addressed by a larger battery pack which in turn help address the cost via economy of scale. Giving the rate of lithium battery cost reduction, the same price point of 35kwh pack you can buy 60kwh in 2 years. In other words, for $35000 you can buy this E with 120 mile range or another EV with 60Kwh with 240 mile range, which majority of the buyers will choose?
Also EV efficiency matters - Tesla is the current king of efficiency. My Fiat 500e can have the same 120 mile range with a smaller 28kwh battery, which means Honda E is less efficiency or have a poor battery management system (BMS). This brings up the next point.
> This car is designed from the ground up as an EV, it is not an ICE car where the gearbox has been replaced with batteries - that is what the e-Golf is.
That's simply not true. If this car weren't designed as a compliance car why doesn't Honda bring it to the North America market or sell globally? Having 50%-50% weight distribution and strong torque are native characteristics of an EV, having less to do with redesign EV platform.
Honda/Toyota are known to be the two major Japanese auto makers that are EV holdouts. They poured billions of dollars to bet on fuel cell and hydrogen cars and invested heavily on hybrid technologies. Honda have never been fully onboard with 100% Battery Electric vehicles (yet) and NEVER develop a EV native car platform like VW Group's MEB[1] or BMW's i-Series[2]. Their last attempt was a compliance car Honda Fit EV in order for them to give emission credit in California.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying about the e-Golf thing being a compliance car, which it is, they have literally shoved a few batteries where the gearbox goes and called it a day.
The Honda EV is not a compliance car. Honda don't have to make compliance cars as they are the only ICE manufacturer that hits all emission targets and doesn't have to cough up for not meeting targets.
As for your car, lovely that it is, that most definitely is a compliance car and FCA have a true rogues gallery of far from efficient vehicles, even with the FIAT stable!
The Honda EV is best understood by watching the Fully Charged Show from a year or so ago when they were lusting over the prototype shown at the car shows. What the concept was turned out to be remarkably similar to the announced car, quite unusual for concept cars.
It does have doors for getting into the back seats. I can imagine being able to get a childseat in there. At 50cm or so longer than your cute 'n' silent Fiat, I think it is on a par for efficiency. There is also the matter of numbers, are you, FIAT, Honda or anyone else quoting WLTP figures?
According to Wikipedia:
The 500e is powered by a 111 hp (83 kW) and 147 lb⋅ft (199 N⋅m) permanent-magnet, three-phase synchronous-drive electric motor, and its 24 kWh liquid-cooled/heated li-ion battery delivers a range of 80 mi (130 km), and up to 100 mi (160 km) in city driving according to Chrysler.
Sounds like yours is an update of that, however, numbers aside, there is a different philosophy to it. The Honda gets 30 minutes quick charge time and it really is supposed to be light rather than dragging around a massive battery everywhere.
They know what they are doing and they have created a truly cool car. It has its own design and I think that is important to the desirability of an EV. I don't think people want an ICE car in EV flavour unless it is something retro cool like a refurbished VW bus.
As for not selling it in the USA that is because of the philosophy. It really is a city car. For people who live in typical European cities and Japanese cities as secondary market. London is an exception and even then the Honda E is as good as it gets for London. They say 'good to go for 125 miles' and I would be happy with that. In fact I would want this car, although cycling is what I do.
I would not dismiss Honda as an 'EV holdout'. Honda did make the original California electric cars, as per the EV1 era and they were first with the hybrid Insight. Honda factories are also 'zero waste'. So nothing comes out of a Honda factory to be landfilled.
You do know that your car as well as the BMW and VW ones are all the same Bosch technology under the hood?
It is like electric bicycles, quite a few of them from different makes have the same Bosch bits, others have Yamaha, others have Shimano and that is what you get - Bosch, Yamaha or Shimano.
So VW have just shoved the same Bosch bits under the hood rather than poured billions into it. BMW have invested in making carbon fibre bodies for their EV cars, but they too have the same Bosch bits as your car. Think of it like tyres, some cars of different makes have Pirelli, some have Michelin.
I would say Honda have done plenty of R+D beyond the needs of compliance. With the Honda E they did what everyone else is doing and went to Bosch. Then they made a well designed city car around the available tech. There is no need to do them down as an 'EV holdout', the stop-gap hybrids have done the job that BMW's M-sport cars haven't.
The e-Golf is a compromise. It is very difficult to add electrification to a vehicle platform built for traditional ICE cars.
There is almost no space under the floors for the cells, and you can't put them up front either because the additional weight over an engine and ancillaries would create a car with a 70:30 weight distribution. This would make the car handle terribly, cause excessive tire wear and fishtailing under braking.
Too bad we're not getting it in North America. I would buy this in a heart beat, though I'd prefer a slightly larger battery pack. In the winter here my Volt gets down to 50-60km range and I can't make it to work without using the ICE; round trip on days when I can't charge at work would be dicey with this Honda.
The 40kw 2019 Nissan Leaf is broadly in this ballpark, sells well enough at a lower price point than the typical 200 mile+ EVs. This Honda is roughly price competitive with the Leaf too, but given lack of US announcement hard to directly compare. Worth remembering many quoted European launch prices will be inclusive of sales tax in the 15-20 percent region.
For sure it's not enough for absolutely everyone, but 95 percent of US commuters travel less than 40 miles to work. Its workable for a great many.
With rear wheel drive, I suspect this thing will be a riot to drive compared to the Leaf though!
I would disagree, the Gen1 Nissan Leaf has sold well in North America and the Honda has a 30% range increase over the Gen1 Leaf.
Whenever I talk with people about EVs, they're always quick to suggest how an EV would never work for them. I was talking with a coworker the other day and he talked about how he needed a truck to tow his boat and how an EV could never allow him to travel 500 miles to the coast. And went on with a myriad of other use cases he thought made EVs non viable. I said something about the poor gas mileage of a truck for daily commuting and parking downtwon, his response was "well I just drive my Mustang".
It really depends on the climate you're asking about but from what I understand, systems like the Nissan Leaf's hybrid heat pump, can use up to 6% of battery capacity per hour. I'm in the Southern United States and heating vs cooling uses roughly the same amount of power which is a 2-5 mile range penalty.
Unless you're pushing up against the maximum range of your vehicle routinely then it's probably a non-issue. I've had my Leaf for several years and I can count the number of times I've gone below 20 miles of range on one hand.
Running the heater isn't so much the issue in winter. It's that cold temperatures dramatically alter the efficiency of the battery. In summer, I get about 90-95km of range off my Volt. In winter, about 50-60. That has little to do with running the heater (I preheat in the garage before I go, use seat and steering wheel heater, and besides, I run AC in the summer).
Right, but it was my understanding that the lithium batteries have heaters built into them to prevent them from ever reaching a low temperature threshold.
You won't have a button to enable/disable this feature and you probably won't be made aware of its presence by any UI elements.
This little piece of hardware would likely be powered whenever the battery temperature reaches a certain point, regardless of whether or not the key were present or the charger plugged in.
I'd even be willing to wager that if you left your car dead, with 0% available charge, in a cold parking lot overnight the heaters would still be powered for as long as the batteries could physically maintain them without dropping below 3v/c.
I don't entirely understand the market for the "city car." Living in the city, the only times I need my car are when I leave it. Maybe half of those trips wouldn't work with this car's range.
It’s sounds better in marketing materials than “commuter/groceries car” which is basically what most of these things are likely intended for. I suspect a staggering percentage of these will end up as 2nd cars for commuting/school runs/oh crap I’m out of milk etc. It’s not exactly crazy-affordable, affluent two car families are surely a huge part of the target market here. The limited range isn’t really an issue for most in the context of a 2nd car either.
There’s rarely anything all that “sporty” about giant “S”UVs either, one doesn’t have to take the marketing label too literally...
Agree with this. Whenever I go to a city, I tend to leave my car in burbs and public transport in (Cal train when going to SF and Go Train when going to Toronto). Bring a car into the city is a hassle with parking and associated costs. Everyone I know whose recently moved to the city, have usually ditched they cars.
I think it depends on the city. I've lived in the Bay Area, New England, and Dallas. For NYC and SF that's definitely but for Dallas it is not. NYC and SF almost go out of their way to make cars difficult. But Dallas was developed with cars in mind and is rather weak in public transit. I can see a car like this working OK in Dallas, depending on the availability of chargers.
I see Honda too has fallen prey to the EV alien styling curse. It really seems that conventional car makers are more susceptible, or is this some sort of intentional thing to limit demand to keep production capacity from being swamped?
This doesn't look like an alien or a robot as some cars do. It looks like a zero texture 1980s VW golf/rabbit with a dorky grill. Like something out of the Cars movie or a video game with no budget for licenses.
I came in here to say this car looks great! It's design is very clean which is not something I could say about Honda's current over styled design language.
Electric cars are still an oddity, so I can understand manufacturers employing weird styling like this, because the kind of pioneering people buying a electric city car will want to advertise that they're driving something special. I don't like the look of it at all though.
I think it's interesting that the Nissan Leaf seems to have taken on a more normal appearance that it did at it's introduction. But maybe that's part of the marketing progression, start by grabbing attention and as you expand dial back the attention getting styling and move to a different grouping of customers.
The major form is just a generic small city car, which is clearly the target market for this design. The short wheelbase combined with maximized passenger compartment leaves little room for any other form, whether electric or ICE. As others have mentioned, it looks similar to many other subcompact economy cars.
The minor styling to me is not just retro but references the low-budget street racer scene. Flat shading and almost shaved appearance, not unlike second hand cars I would see among teenagers and twenty-somethings, stripped of their OEM trim to cleanse it of the stuffy practicality of its original owners.
I can see the resemblance, but cars of that era were much more angular. (Saturn made a big impression in the late '80s just by adding a little bit of curviness.)
I think this is why some people react to the design as 'alien'; it looks almost like an old Golf, but then things like the curved hood and the rounded corners on the headlight/grill assembly push it over into the Uncanny Valley.
Alien, really? Looks like its coming from their roots. To me it looks like a modern retro design of a z600 from the early 70s. Definitely not alien though.
I wish I could find it now, but I saw a survey/study a while back that showed that the weird looks of EVs are actually a selling point. Apparently one of the benefits of driving an electric vehicle is having everyone know that you drive an electric vehicle.
Well, that's a big selling point for most vehicles, electric or not. You want people to recognize your car. Why would anyone buy a BMW if people wouldn't recognize it?
I think this is going to be a problem for the Audi e-tron. It looks just like a Q3/Q5. I'm not sure I'd recognize it on the road.
And the available-right-now Nissan Leaf has 147 HP and 236 lb-ft of torque AND gets 150 miles on a full charge. Price guesstimates put these cars in a similar range.
I'm glad more of these cars are getting made, but this Honda is all about style. There's nothing new "under the hood".
It also evokes the classic lines of many hugely popular 70s/80s hatchbacks. Huge numbers of people have much affection for the hatchbacks of this era, especially the so called “hot hatches” that many European brands are famous for - cars like the 205 GTI etc.
I think Honda nailed the styling on this. Worth also pointing out that those camera wing mirrors, while legal in most European markets, still aren’t road legal in the US, I imagine the Department of Transport will have to relax the rule that all cars sold in the US have two physical wing mirrors pretty soon.
I personally find this attempt at modern reinterpretation of an old design far more successful than any of the Mini models BMW has done.
Hope the price is in line with that short range, 124 miles and that is probably the more generous testing methods.
Is there a market for low hundred mile (two hundred KM or less) vehicles? Perhaps if the price is seriously low as well. Wasn't long ago this range would have been amazing but Telsa basically forced the industry as a whole towards providing true usable range. I am of the opinion that three hundred miles plus is where premium brands must land and mid two hundred is fine for standard cars, for now. The sub 200 club is just not trying or needs to be priced so well to create a market; commuter style.
I think it depends where you are - if you're in a city, you probably do very low mileage. Yes, of course, there are plenty of people who do 100+ mile commutes or are traveling salespeople, but most of the people I know could have a car with a sub-100 mile range and that would never (or perhaps once a year on an airport run) be a problem.
I think we all need to think differently about transportation, and that it's just 'tough' if you have to take a 1-hour break in a long (200 mile+) journey. We've been spoiled by our ability to pollute our way around, and we need to recalibrate that in the same way it's not socially acceptable to litter, drink drive or the many other common behaviours that we now no longer do.
> Is there a market for low hundred mile (two hundred KM or less) vehicles?
I hope so, and I trust that Honda did due dil on potential market size.
My wife and I are in the market for a small electric car - commute is less than 25km so this would be perfect for us. And looks cooler than Nissan's Leaf.
For when we need range / space we have a (decently efficient) CI car that we know we can rely on.
This definitely isn't a road trip vehicle, but as a daily driver it could be great for a lot of people. I work from home, but my wife drives to work and it's about 9 miles round trip. So she could get to and from work and take a bunch of diversions along the way to run errands and still easily be under 20 miles per day.
The great thing about electric cars is that, as far as I know, unlike ICE vehicles, short journeys do not cause excessive wear on the engine and drivetrain because oil, water and components are unable to get up to correct operating temperature.
If you mean warming up your car by idling before you drive off then yes, that advice is rather stale.
First, by idling you only warm up the engine, oil and coolant. By the time you drive off your gearbox oil is still cold, as are the driveshafts, CV joints, differential, and your brake fluid.
Lots of new cars have something called a cold start where for the first minute or two they run very rich, burning excess fuel to get the catalytic converter and exhaust up to temperature as quickly as possible for emissions reasons.
You definitely should warm up your engine, but strictly before starting it and not by idling it (i.e. use a block heater). This is because it takes a lot of time for the engine to warm up when idling without any load.
For the Japanese domestic market (and China, to a great extent) 124 miles is plenty for a large proportion of consumers. The Honda E appears to qualify as a Kei car, making it uniquely appealing in Japan.
It's a different market; it's a sporty RWD subcompact car with amazing design aesthetic. North Americans love huge vehicles and don't "get" this market which is why we have almost no cars sold in this segment anymore. But in European and Asian cities a small vehicle like this makes a huge amount of sense, and they sell very well.
It's maybe more competition for the Kia Soul EV than anything else, but this is sportier and much nicer looking.
Borrows the design language of the classic Honda Civic, which is nice, as all of Honda's current cars look terrible.
I'm not usually a fan of Honda and up until recently they were openly hostile to electrification, but this vehicle is really nice.
If you can charge every night, 124 miles will easily handle most commutes. In a traditional American 2 car family, one car is a commuter and the 2nd car can be kept for longer trips.
In addition to the aerodynamic improvement, using cameras eliminates the need to adjust the mirrors for different drivers. Which is probably safer, as fewer drivers will be running around with misaligned mirrors and blind spots with varying sizes.
Yeah, but then you look at a modern car, and there are plenty of electronics that are critical to its functioning, especially safety. We reply on those every-time we drive. The car industry is probably 1000x more risk-averse than your typical SV startup.
it could, side mirrors take space, and having a digital feed could help in parking.this is a small city car, i can see it being beneficial on our european streets.
This thing would totally work for me, and I get both the Honda "small is better" ethos & the design aesthetic.
I live in the Suburbs, my driving is usually ~10 miles a day on work days. There are no busses that are helpful for commuting. I often have to pick up a kid or do an errand that makes bicycle commuting tough.
There's charging at work. But even so I could go a week or more without a charge. My use case is light enough I could probably get by on just doing slow 120V charging without upgrading the wiring in the garage most of the time.
Long trips that exceed the range of this or the leaf are probably < 10 days a year for me. There's got to be lots of other drivers who are in the same boat but don't really get it/understand.
Hngggg...as someone that is not so big on modern cars (my background in cars defines that loosely as "post-1995") I've gotta say that is ADORABLE. It reminds me more than a little of the original Mini 1275GT! I can't remember the last time I saw a new car whose styling I liked.
From my perspective, 221 lb/ft of torque is only slightly, as in single digits, less than the legendary Toyota Celica GT-Four (ST-205) from the 90s, and in such a cute car! If it's as small and light as it looks, that could be an awful lot of fun. :)
For some reason the centre console has an HDMI port [1][2]. Does anyone know what this is used for?
The lack of any USB-C ports is also a strange omission for a brand new car, especially when many of Honda's rivals include at least one USB-C port on their new cars.
In Arthur Hailey's novel Wheelshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheels_(novel) , about the auto industry, an executive at a fictional US car company suggests building a very homely city car. When others criticize its looks, he says that if it's inexpensive and practical, people won't care.
probably true enough... there's also probably at least half the people out there that might like it. I drive a car I bet about half the people out there hate anyway. To each their on on it.
Why can't Honda just normalize the EV drive train by releasing their top selling Accord and Civic as an EV option? Why does it have to be repackaged into some ugly little toad of a car?
The platform on which the current generation of cars are built often does not lend itself nicely to electrification. You have transmission tunnels, engine bays with large firewalls, exhaust tunnels, suspension and braking systems designed for chassis with certain weight distributions. Ultimately, you end up designing a new platform with electrification from the get go.
No accounting for taste, but I look at the current Accords and Civics and think those designs are gaudy and try-hard. Tons of creases and moldings and little blings everywhere.
This design looks really nice to me. Not too weird, looks a bit like the original CVCC, and it's clean.
I completely agree with you, I'm not a fan of them either. Those cars are designed to blend into the crowd, that's why they sell so many of them. But crowd-pleasing designs like that are quite difficult to develop. So why make a polarizing car your EV flagship? Is it so they can later say "oh well it didn't sell very well, EV must not be worth it"?
Good point. I confused my idea of good with what’s actually popular.
There’s got to be some reason they do it. Back when hybrid cars were new, Toyota’s design for the Prius was polarizing. But it worked for them, and they established that model as “the” design for hybrid cars for some time.
So differentiation seems to serve a purpose, but I can’t say exactly what that is.
The idea is that by designing a new platform you can create one which has a 10-20 year lifespan. These platforms tend to be designed for both electric and hybrid cars, can have variable wheelspans, tracks, and widths while retaining a common set of drivetrains. The MQB and MLB platforms from VW are two examples of this.
Monkey patching an old platform might get you another model generation, but ultimately it will end up being more expensive and less flexible in the long run.
Doesn't higher torque directly lower fuel efficiency? It seems they could get better range if they weren't trying to make the car a "blast to drive around town". Having a car be a "blast" may be fun for the driver but certainly not anyone else outside the vehicle.
Longer answer: For a given flux density, torque is proportional to the rotor volume. To get higher efficiency usually requires adding material (copper) to the windings to lower electrical resistance, which may require a larger diameter motor.
Having said that, for a given motor design you are likely to get better range by accelerating at lower torque for a longer time as opposed to more exciting driving.
I never understood peoples enthusiasm for torque numbers. It all goes through gears and then gets divided by tire radius to get a forward force, and then gets divided by vehicle weight to get acceleration. Just give us the final acceleration in G's please. Similarly, power is important but power/weight is going to be more indicative of 0-60 time.
I don't know. I heard that stronger electric motors are not much more expensive and they allow more recuperation during breaking which is why they make sense even if you don't want to accelerate like a race car driver.
There is very little downside to putting a bigger motor than needed in an EV, other than a bit of extra weight to move around. As long as you don't use that power, (fast acceleration), you won't pay for it.
That said, 221 lb-ft of torque isn't very much. They don't say at what rpm that is. Most EVs are electronically torque limited at low rpm. Assuming the peak torque is around 2000 rpm, that's only 84 hp.
(My biggest pet peeve is torque without rpm -- it's meaningless!)
I don't think it is about higher torque. It is more about instant torque, which a characteristic of electric motors. AFAIK, they did not design the motor to behave that way, it just the natural behavior of the electric motor.
This is an electric car so the 'fuel' is batteries. And the article mentions that there is a "Sport" mode that can be activated that would result in the full torque (otherwise it's at a reduced power to reduce battery usage).
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Fully Charged got 19 minutes in one, and the video [1] is worth a watch - you can see how quickly it accelerates when he floors it, and he was really impressed with the car, the turning circle and the camera mirrors.
I think the bottom line is that most electric cars will be a blast to drive - I'd love to have one as a rally car on single venue airfield-type events in the UK, if I was still competing; it'd be incredible in the forests too, but not sure range would make it possible for anything substantial, alas. [Totally ignoring any other practicalities that are impinging on my daydream about electric rally cars]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKq8jmckz0