Introduction
I have a bit of a funny relationship with this car. I have a colleague who owns this car and uses it around London, which is the environment this car is made to thrive in. There have been some days as part of work where I have had to drive this car around, such as taking it to demo how EV charging works to new employees. The Honda is basically another employee at this point, running errands here and there.
I guess I have a bit of a jaded perception of this vehicle as I have pretty common access to it for day trips, and all I need to do is fork out the daily insurance for a thousandth of the asking price. If I were to buy this vehi… Who am I kidding, I would/could never buy this for £37,000, you’re asking me for Polestar levels of money for a 3½ door car with a 100-mile range? I also do not live in the big city, so I’m more used to Kent roads and the demands they bring. With that in mind, please take my opinion of this vehicle at the price of £37 for 24 hours insurance, and the 2 quid it cost me to charge overnight.
The test drive narrated in this post was a drive that took me 60/70 miles from Covent Garden to Tilbury to get the car wrapped, then back home to Kent. Seems doable right? Let’s find out what this 28.5 kWh battery can muster.
Thoughts at 100%
There is a lot to love about this car. All the features on paper are great and show that you do get a lot of niceties for your money (this isn’t the same as good value). The cabin is very nice, with lovely fabric everywhere and wood effect in between.
The infotainment has a lot of exciting features to try, namely swapping what app is on each screen, allowing passengers to update maps or the playlist without you having to risk a pileup by fiddling around with a touch screen while driving. The displays sandwiched between the two camera wing mirror screens really do make for a great sight. Oh, the rearview mirror is also a camera. And it has 360 camera view for parking. That’s a lot of cameras. You get used to the wing mirrors being inside the car very quickly, and they are fast to adapt to exposure differences such as going in and out of tunnels. Keeping the cameras clean, especially the rearview will become a new habit.
The turning circle is crazy small at 4.3m, it can basically spin on the spot. Great for getting me out of Covent Garden with all its dead ends and one-ways. The drive is punchy and responsive but tapers off pretty hard towards the end, its top speed is only 90mph (for those so inclined). But hey, you can't knock it, it's only a city car. It is a bit of a strange juxtaposition from what you'd probably be used to; a car this quick and nimble around streets weighing in at over 1800kg, leading to good driving dynamics for an EV, but not for a car of this size if that makes sense? Just imagine a very dense Mini Cooper.
Getting out of London meant that it was just me and the motorway until Essex. Checking my charge I was sitting pretty at 80% already. No big deal. Then I saw it drop to 77% in front of my eyes. This was where I started sweating and doing mental calculations about my range. The drive was fine on the motorway, the lane keep was so good that I didn’t feel the need to turn it off, which is high praise as most cars I have used suck enough to make lane assist feel unsafe. Still only a tiny bit of headroom above 70mph, you could start to feel the car didn’t have much more to give. The battery was now at 74%. I drove the rest of the way to Essex watching my battery drop chunks at a time.
I made it to Tilbury to get the car wrapped (you can see the results here), and started making my way back over the Dartford Bridge. I was shooting down the motorway when I started to hit the low digits in charge. 10%, 7ish miles left, will I make it? I didn’t want to chance it, I had to stop. I couldn’t find a charger on the route easily without messing about with maps, so I did the only thing I could think of, stop off at my mum’s for a coffee; 3% remaining, averaging around 3miles/kWh which was very optimistic. I’d say it was closer to 2.5miles/kWh and the car was having me on.
Thoughts at 0%
Ding dong!
“Hey mum, can I plug my car in for half an hour?”
There’s something I never thought I’d ask her in my life. The charging port is in the black square right on the Bonnet, which looks great, but I’m not a massive fan of forward parking as it makes getting out difficult, but your opinion may differ.
The 3-pin plug in the boot got me back up to 30% in about half an hour, although a public fast charger would have done it faster, with the car’s max charging speed of 56kW. The smaller battery can fully charge in 30-40 minutes on a public charger, although to get the high speeds you need to be cheeky and take a 150kW charger, as most will cap out around 43-50kW, so you need to jump again to get the extra 6kW of juice. This could be more costly than pulling up at your mum and stealing her electricity for the car and the kettle.
The drive home was slow and controlled. No more sport mode for me. My block of flats does not have public chargers, so I had to dangle the cable out of my bedroom window into the front of the car. Neighbours weren’t very happy, jokes on them when this becomes the norm in a few years!
Waking up to 100% juice was a bit more calming. Straight back to Covent Garden in stop-start traffic, with all the cars auto driving modes? Yes, please. I dropped the car off and went into my office, feeling great that I didn’t pay ULEZ, didn’t buy a train ticket, and had aircon and my music on full blast the whole way. I can see the appeal if I had a spare £37,000 and never went above 50mph.
The Good
Ticks every box possible for a city car
Good looking car, proper head turner
Go-Go Gadget tech all around, it has everything
The Bad
The range
The price
Did I mention the range?
Conclusion
Writing this review makes me feel conflicted; it’s a lovely car. It’s simple and sweet, very good-looking, and the interior is a great place to be even if it is small. The car really turns heads.
But or me personally (you are reading an opinion piece so don’t snap my head off for this), the range is just not enough. It’s officially rated for 138 miles range by WLTP, many others report it’s closer to 105 miles on a charge, and this is for inner city driving. A great way of thinking about this car is each 1% of the battery gives me 1 mile. The bigger problem comes when you start hitting motorway speeds, where it seems to be closer to 3% per mile. It really is not designed to leave the town you live in.
Most money-smart buyers will pick a car based on what they get for their money. Then other buyers may make an emotional purchase based on looks and how much they like the car. But for Honda E buyers, I feel that you have to weigh up all the journeys you plan to make in the next 3/4 years to see if you can work around the car, not the other way round. This is why this review sing praises about the car and how it feels, but ultimately, I find it almost impossible to recommend this car as a car, it’s really just a big adult toy. If the range works for your lifestyle that's fine, but there are many other alternatives for much cheaper prices. If that still doesn't deter you, go get one and go have a great time… for about an hour before you have to charge.
If you’d like a cheatsheet of this car’s specs or any for that matter, I recommend using EV-Database. Plenty of information and statistics to help you quickly compare cars if you love your numbers.