The hipster Honda is a smart SUV
THE HONDA CRV Hybrid couldn’t be more on-trend if it had a hipster beard. Here is a new crossover SUV, with petrol-electric hybrid power, from a company promising to ditch all diesels and make two-thirds of its new cars electrically powered by 2025. It would be easy to leave it at that and assume Honda has merely come up with a response to its clear rivals, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and Toyota RAV4 Hybrid.
Yet this wouldn’t be a Honda without a technical twist in the tale. In the case of the CRV Hybrid, it’s the 2.0-litre petrol engine, which spends a lot of its time not directly driving the wheels but actually using its power to operate an electric generator. In turn, this supplies the energy to the electric motor that turns the wheels.
Honda calls this mode Hybrid Drive as it’s using petrol and electric power to make the car move. You can also select a pure EV Drive setting that allows zero emissions driving for up to 1.2 miles on battery power. Or the car might choose to switch into Engine Drive where the petrol motor turns the wheel directly.
Together, Honda calls this Intelligent Multi Mode Drive which sounds more complicated than it is to use. Jump into the CRV Hybrid and all you do is select Drive using the push buttons on the centre console that replaces a traditional automatic gear lever. The car works out the rest and you can keep tabs on whether it’s running in petrol, electric or hybrid modes.
It might seem odd to press a button to choose Drive, Reverse, Neutral or Park but it quickly becomes second nature. You also become accustomed to the drive settings that let you pick between Sport, EV or the default Eco options. Stick with Eco and the CRV offers an average fuel economy of 53.3mpg in front-wheel drive along with 120g/km emissions.
Take the all-wheel drive model and those figures become 51.4mpg and 126g/km, which further encourages you to stay in the Eco setting. In Sport, there’s a crisper throttle response, while EV uses only
LOGBOOK LOWDOWN On sale: Price: Engine:
January £29,105-£37,255 Petrol-electric hybrid motor 2.0-litre plus electric
0 to 60mph in 8.8 top speed seconds, 112mph
53.3mpg 120-126g/km Mitsubishi Outlander Hybrid PHEV, Toyota RAV4
8/10