Screen test: passed
Latest from Mission Control. By Tim Pollard
When people find out I’m driving a Honda E, the main thing most of them want to ask about (and there are plenty of questions) is the panoramic digital screen. The outside of the E is cartoonishly striking but it’s in here where the special stuff happens. How many small cars have wall-to-wall electronic read-outs, a virtual aquarium that bobs fish across your dashboard and video cameras for mirrors?
I may work in digital media, but I love analogue where physical form is better – a magazine crafted with love and care, for instance, and a face-to-face meeting rather than another bloody video conference call. But there’s a time and a place for digital features and after just one month I’m convinced Honda is onto a winner with this interior.
It’s not actually one giant screen; like other ultra-widescreens, it’s actually several displays stitched together. An eight-inch read-out in the instrument binnacle clusters dials for speed and driving modes, and that’s joined by a pair of 11-inch displays to the left, stretching across most of the dash. These two touchscreens manage to hide grubby fingerprints most effectively. Hats off also to the simple, clear typeface and general user interface, which makes menus easy to swipe through and selections intuitive to make. Honda’s clearly observed what works on mobile devices and what doesn’t. Those three digital displays are bookended by a pair of five-inch camera screens in lieu of door mirrors. They’re quick-acting and work well, although it’s still a bit strange if you try to peer around a corner by craning your neck only to see an unchanged video angle.
It might have big screens but the E has a small range, as evidenced by the 43 miles in the photo above with the battery half full. We’re currently averaging 3.1 miles on every kilowatt-hour of energy, and with the average domestic electricity cost of 14.3p per kWh, that means we’ve theoretically spent less than £30 to drive more than 600 miles this month.