Honda e - 125 Mile Compact Electric Car
 

This is a sweet car, that I would love to own!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKq8jmckz0

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media...qott4u9hkv.jpg

https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/KkoMb/s3/honda-e.jpg

Just what I'd want in an EV... now if the price would reflect the lower battery capacity and smaller size of the vehicle, you'd have a winner.

Wish manufacturers would drop the gimmick "sport mode" from all vehicles. I'd rather have a button that changes the braking modes than mucks with throttle rates. Sport mode buttons should only exist for cars that adjust suspension characteristics and shift points of the automatic transmission.

Does it have a frunk? I'd need to know 6 bags of groceries would fit in there without occupying seat space.

Too bad it's never coming to America; we never get the good stuff.

Well, we did get Tesla first. Some places still don't get Teslas.

This car wouldn't sell well here because it isn't a CUV. Maybe in a decade the fad of better handling will be en vogue instead of the fad of slightly taller vehicles.

Holy crap, Honda is actually going to make it. This was the only of their concept cars I found interesting recently.

Now they just need to bring it to the US. That and the S660.

Looks like a brick for aero.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oAsI...ront_3_4.0.jpg

The initial concept was a lot punchier, but also a lot more bricklike. They've really improved the aero quite a bit over that, at the cost of looking less aggressive and more toylike.

Looks like a VW Rabbit to me

I don't care much what the car looks like, so long as the shape serves a function like cargo space or aero.

Toylike would be a good word to describe it.

Electric cars need all the aero they can get to minimize battery pack size and maximize range. Honda could've easily gone with a much more aerodynamic design without being too radical and probably gone with a smaller battery pack, increased the range, or both.

^ From what I've read, Honda has repeatedly said this car is meant for city use. Thus not too much concern with aero, and the small-ish battery pack capacity.


I read one comment from an owner of a Hyundai Ionic EV, and they pointed out the relative IN-efficiency of the Honda by comparison.

What good is a car that can't do well in both city and highway use?

It's suposed to be a retro first-gen Civic IIRC.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1562338651

I'd drive it. I like the look of it!

With the small battery capacity, you aren't going to get very far anyway on the freeway, and that situation wouldn't be changed all that much with improved aerodynamic efficiency (e.g. you probably aren't going to take it on a long road trip if you have 150 miles of range that you wouldn't do with 125).

Also, remember that aero efficiency is proportional not just to drag coefficient but cross-sectional area, where this car looks to be smaller than most. And further, we have no idea what the drag coefficient is, since Honda declines to publish those numbers these days.

They should be making around town EVs with ~40 kWh battery and price it to reflect the limited utility (commuter/grocery getter). That's what this looks like... but the price. You can pick up a new Chevy Bolt for ~$28k these days, and that has a 60 kWh battery.

Where are the $19k EVs with 40 kWh battery?

Perfectly fine:thumbup: In countries like Japan (and Australia for the most part) highway driving is mostly theoretical.

I love "the template" but I would rather not live in a world where every car HAD to look like that shape. May the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster grant semolina blessings and marinara dispensations on the engineers and industrial designers responsible for the Honda E, with its effort to make the future of cars cleaner and still about beauty and joy. Best looking production electric car yet.

More details including the hatch and inside:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VEH9ys655c

That dash has an excessive amount of screens just begging for your attention, not sure how you could train yourself to keep your eyes on the road. I'm not sure you could even see the road at night if all those screens were on.
The tiny aero benefit from the side view cameras won't warrant the future cost of replacement for any of the the parts, or the extra screens inside. And if the cameras are anything like my rear camera on my truck the night view will be terrible

I wish just one of these major manufacturers would just take one of their existing least expensive, simple cars and add a single fwd electric motor and a medium size Li-ion battery to get the $7500 tax credit, and sell it for a before credits msrp of $19,999. Keep it simple stupid.

Just look at say the Prius C. Drop the ice and transmission/transaxle, add a better electic motor, and quadruple the battery. It already is loaded with electric features and low current draw components, good aero, and is a bit over $21,000 msrp.

Isn't that basically what the Leaf is? Nissan's cheapest car (Versa) with a medium battery (24kwh?) and a FWD electric motor. Base price is higher than that because there's a lot more cost in the traction battery.

EDI: I just checked and the smaller battery options don't exist any more and the base price is up to $30k now. Competing upmarket now, I guess.

The Leaf is a new EV-only platform, and is significantly larger than the Versa.

The e-Golf is a factory conversion - and in my opinion it is the best EV, functionally.

The electric Focus also isn't terrible. To me all of these seem like they have the $7500 tax credit cooked in. They Jack the profit margin $7500 thinking most likely the customer has that subtraction in the back of their minds. Basically the manufacturer is getting the incentive not the customer.

That was the whole point, that manufacturers need the incentive to build the vehicles. It turns out that even with the $7,500 credit factored in, EVs range from unprofitable, to barely marginally profitable. Tesla is somewhere around break-even on their lowest priced Model 3.

I'd have thought a low priced commuter EV might be fairly easy to make profitable, but it seems not. The battery alone in a 40 kWh vehicle (~150 mile range) is about $5,000. You don't want to merely recoup the marginal cost to build a vehicle though, so the price to the consumer must be a bit higher.

With sufficient volume, I'd think a $19,000 commuter EV would be possible, but I don't know. Perhaps the public acceptance of less than 40 kWh EVs is gone when higher range options exist at much higher prices.

At this point I think Arcimoto looks to be the best value but I still don't see how removing a $10,000 ICE powertrain for a $10,000 electric powertrain causes a $15,000 price increase.

Well, how much is an ICE powertrain? It's certainly less than $10k on something like a FWD sedan.

Of course, the major expense in an EV is the battery, at something like $145 per installed kWh. Nissan's "low" range Leaf would then have a $6,000 battery. Add motors, controllers, chargers, etc... don't know what the final cost would be.

I don't know, I would think at least $10,000 probably going up to $30,000 for even non-exotics. You have an engine, a transmission, a fuel system, an exhaust system, a starting system, a cooling system, and an emissions system. Certainly even the simplest 3 cylinder and manual transmission still is well over $5000 brand new with factory warranty support.

The rumormill has it that Honda is going to market the E on its already acclaimed cult status, rather than affordability, let alone range ...