The top-spec Advance version of Honda’s new electric supermini hits the road.
Top-spec Advance version of Honda’s new electric supermini sets out to prove that it’s the future of zeroemissions urban motoring, writes Steve Cropley
It’s well made, well equipped and extremely cute, but you might as well know from the start that your opinion of Honda’s new electric supermini is going to depend almost entirely on how you view its relatively meagre WLTP cruising range of 125 miles. This dominant statistic — low compared with the ranges of most other electric cars currently being rushed to market — directly controls who will buy the Honda E and how it will be used. It’s even more important than the relatively high price, which starts at just over £26,000 for a basic version (after the £3,000 government grant) and runs close to £30,000 once you’ve bought the plusher, faster Advance version and added obvious options.
Knowing that range talk will be dominant, Honda is careful to describe the new car as an urban runabout, relentlessly pointing out that the average British motorist’s commute is only about a fifth of the little E’s range, which means its battery has plenty of juice for most suburbanites. If you need more, it implies, better to buy something else. Or own a second car.
The flaw in that argument comes from the E’s innate eye and driver appeal. Its modern, simple reprise of the styling of the 1972 Civic — itself a new kind of Honda back in the day – makes it uniquely appealing among current small cars. Once you’re behind the wheel, it soon dawns on you that the E is also dynamically different from the horde; it avoids the disappointingly oversprung and underdamped suspension of many electric cars (especially those towards the bottom of the size/price range), and that’s another inducement to the driver to use it for more than the low-grade errands implied by the words ‘urban’ and ‘commuter.’
Mind you, it’s easy enough to understand what Honda is saying. The E is a small car, just 3.9 metres long, and even with its modest 35.5kWh battery, the lightest of the two variants weighs 1,514kg. Give it a big battery and you would add 20cm or 150kg and get a car with an entirely different character and price. Other car makers have shied away from uniquely engineered small EVs, and this is why.
One virtue of the small battery is that it can be charged quickly; about half an hour on a rapid charger lifts it from 20-80%, and most home chargers need four or five hours to replenish it completely from empty.
If you park the range subject, or reach your own accommodation with it, suddenly you’re talking about a rather special little car. Honda certainly feels so; it points out that it could simply have strapped a battery under the recently launched front-wheel-drive Jazz hybrid (which is longer and roomier in the back), but it instead chose to give the E a new platform to give it dynamically pure rearwheel drive, plus a 50/50 weight distribution and MacPherson strut-type independent suspension at either end. The move away from front-wheel drive also allows the steered wheels to turn very tightly, resulting in a taxi-beating turning circle of 8.6 metres.
The E’s single electric motor sits between its rear wheels. In the entry- level model, it makes 134bhp, while the Advance we tested gets 151bhp. Both are good for 232lb ft of torque (from standstill), but the Advance’s extra power shaves 0.7sec off the 0-62mph time of 9.0sec, even though its extra gear adds around 30kg.
Power is fed into the battery via a Type 2 socket under a flap in the bonnet that neatly doubles as a styling feature.
Almost every dimension of the E points to its central purpose. It occupies about the same road footprint as the current Mini, but it’s nearly 10cm taller, so it feels pleasantly high, has a spacious and upright driving position, offers a great view of the road and affords easy cabin access front and rear.
The 2,530mm wheelbase is one of the longest going for a car of this length; combined with wide tracks and an ultra-low centre of gravity (courtesy of that underfloor battery), this lets the E muster impressive stability and good roll control.
Rear seat room is decent, given the car’s length, but the boot is small, because it has a high floor, due to the drive motor lurking beneath.
The interior is a fascinating combination of materials, using furniture-influenced fabrics and a matt wood finish across the dashboard (it’s much better than it sounds) to create a “lounge-like experience”. A complete contrast is the flat-fronted dashboard, with no fewer than five screens across it. The outer two provide rear vision; instead of conventional door mirrors, the E uses video cameras to look behind.
Ahead of the driver, there’s a classic TFT screen providing all-digital information that’s configurable in a variety of ways, and the rest of the dash is filled by a pair of 12.0in touchscreens, again very versatile in their configurations but mostly used to control the sat-nav, ventilation and infotainment. A neat switching arrangement lets you swap the contents of the two centre screens so your passenger can juggle music or phone calls or request a new navigation route, then switch it back.
The infotainment system will accept commands in a normal, conversational style if you preface
__ Honda is careful to describe the new car as an urban runabout, pointing out the average British motorist’s commute is only about a fifth of the little E’s range.
them with “Okay, Honda”. The whole thing is a source of fascination to passengers and new drivers; we suspect an owner would need several days to gain full familiarity.
On the road, the E combines the best of small cars and electric cars to make a really enjoyable driving experience. It isn’t truly sporty, given the high hip point and sit-up-and-beg driving position, and some say the seats rather lack side support for hard cornering. But the combination of a small steering wheel (three turns lock to lock), the tight turning circle, the narrowness of the body (relieved of the usual extra 20cm of mirror width) and the built-in low-speed precision of a very good electric powertrain makes the E a great little car for confined areas.
It zips through small traffic spaces and slips easily into tight parking slots. In the Advance, there’s an automatic parking system to help (you still work the brakes), along with an almost bewildering array of electronic crash prevention and traction-keeping measures. No small car has more, all visible and configurable via the screens.
The E is pretty decent on open roads, too. Its long wheelbase, low centre of gravity and short overhangs mean it resists pitching far better than most cars of this size, and it efficiently insulates occupants from road noise and bump crashes.
Honda benchmarked this EV against bigger cars for refinement, and it most definitely shows. This is one car you can drive in urban areas without being continually reminded about the ravaged state of Britain’s roads. Altogether, driving the E is an uplifting experience, which shows a new way for small cars – or at least for small cars that weigh 1.5 tonnes.
The exhaustive launch bumf for the E is succinct about only one thing: that it represents “the start of Honda’s electrification journey”.
On the showing of the Japanese brand’s first UK-bound EV, this could well be a bandwagon worth boarding.