2020 Honda E Has 148 HP and More Than 221 LB-FT
motor1.com
motor1.com
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]
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.
Pic of the original concept: https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/img/OpIioNgjBiNWWvlU9WYIn68Krcs...
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MEB_platform
Because the North American market has a strong preference for big cars, whereas Europe had more interest in small ones.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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".
There’s rarely anything all that “sporty” about giant “S”UVs either, one doesn’t have to take the marketing label too literally...
A very interesting theory I had not heard. I love Honda. My jaw dropped when I saw that design. Maybe in 5 years :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_(first_generation)...
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.
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.
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'm glad more of these cars are getting made, but this Honda is all about style. There's nothing new "under the hood".
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.
Well Fiat are doing ok with the 500, and BMW with the 'Mini', so I'm surprised its taken them so long to try it.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Id need that range very rarely, certainly not for the 2nd car.
The stats for commuting distances would seem to back that up.
This car has an awful range at highway speeds, so every little bit helps (but you probably still want to drive at a lower speed if you're going far).
I'll return to my pedantic cave now.
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.
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. :)
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.
If like me you wondered what a PS was
"Pferdestärke - German for horsepower, equal to metric horsepower and sometimes referred to as 'continental horsepower'"
1. https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/vw-could-sell-50...
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.
This design looks really nice to me. Not too weird, looks a bit like the original CVCC, and it's clean.
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.
Pretty low, even for city standards.
200 km is not enough
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!)
http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080909
(Unfortunately you need to search for the section "Hold Your Horsepower")
I assume the same would apply to electric vehicles. It seems insane to continue the power arms race with cars given the detrimental impact is has.
In EVs the max torque is available at 0 RPM, so it doesn’t really matter (and the drop off curve will be almost the same for every electric motor).
Short answer: No.
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.