Honda e: the EV that electric car haters love // Jonny Smith

my name is Johnny Smith and in this episode I'm going to be driving the most hyped electric car that isn't a Tesla in Spain in a biblical rainstorm come join me this is probably the longest I've ever waited to drive a finished production evey from when our first sort as a concept first sort in 2017 it came out of the Frankfurt Motor Show a show normally dominated by the Germans let's face it and this thing just absolutely destroyed everything around it all of the column inches all of the social media was about the urban Evie concept I got to touch it and play with it and interview the designer at the end of 2017 in Japan today we're going to be actually driving this car so how different is it from the original concept so it was called the urban Evie now it's called just the Honda II which is a shame because I quite like the urban Evie and they've strictly told us this car has been designed all the time with an urban environment in mind look frameless doors very very popular in in Japan the old frameless door if you just take it from a style perspective I love the two spoke steering wheel which is just unusual it's not sporty sporty stable as a normally three-spoke gives you that feeling of extra space this flat kind of wooden plinth underneath all these TV screens this is not even real wood it's not even real wooden yessuf and yet it feels special and it does feel kind of homely you've got this mad screen set up to twelve point three inch touchscreens here and then you've got an 8 inch TFT one for the kind of drivers binnacle and then you've got the two camera ear screens here left and right the rear view mirror is a camera there uses a camera on the back of the car but if you flip it away which normally you would dip it to get rid of glare then it converts back to being a conventional mirror Honda have said this a few times in their presentations they want they the e2 feel like a luxurious kind of lounge despite the fact it's a pretty small car come walk on that you get carried away with this lock steering lock right we're going to go out into what is thought to be one of Valencia's stormiest weeks you only need to look at the palm trees I'm trying to get used to the cameras replacing mirrors thing because I've got a camera up there and I've got a camera there and I've got a camera there and I've got a camera there and I've got a camera there so it's proper Japanese technological overload now Honda have gone big on arrow which is presumably why they've gone with this design no wing mirrors instead you have these little nodules with the cameras in much better for aerodynamics but they actually unlike the Audi e-tron which is the only other production car I think which has cameras instead of mirrors the e-tron has the sticking out on stupid stalks so they still look like wing mirrors is pointless these don't look like wing mirrors having these screens here as opposed to the Audi e-tron which has a man down on the door tops it just doesn't work these side cameras have a special rain repellant coating on them and today's the best test you're ever going to get in the life of this car with gale force winds and rain you can already hear the wind whistling through this bridge next to me if I look there it's crystal clear and if I look over there that is absolutely crystal clear fair enough that is good these are more in board than those swollen wheel arches so you're more likely to catch the arch of the car or curb the alloy than you are hitting the mirror this is their first completely electric car from the ground up so it's an important car for endure it's a good statement because it shows that they're not following the crowd you know it's not an e-tron thing it's not a Mercedes EQC it's and it's not a conventional hatchback in the way that a leaf is or a Kohner which is kind of cross over this is got a 35 and a half kilowatt hour battery pack single motor at the back 113 kilowatts there is a lower-ranking motor as well you can really feel that that will low down weight 50/50 weight distribution that hundreth dialed in to this car the battery pack be nice and low in between the axles I like the steering I've put it in sport mode and I've got plenty of battery before I get to my destination I think it's geared up for more power it's got independent suspension the Honda II and you can really feel that I love the way it's damped the suspension feels firm you're not uncomfortable feels like it's paused for a bit of action when it comes to be roads it's the response isn't certainly nothing like Tesla feels slower than like an e 208 Peugeot in sport mode it feels like it will be perfect for a Type R for a full AV Type R the world's first I guess I feel like this is gonna be a cold car tunable car I like Honda when it's at its quirkiest and it just goes off on its own tangent that's when Honda really just nails it for me there are people on my social media when I first saw this car and put pictures up about it back in 2017 didn't even have any interest in electric cars and just wanted a piece of it they wanted it because of the way it looked because it's a great piece of design when I interviewed the designers they were very very keen for me to not call it a retro because on the one hand it looks retrospective because of cars like the Honda Civic the first generation Honda Civic from the mid seventies and even from also from the mid seventies the VW Golf Mark one those with two of the designs which a lot of people kind of liken this to with this C pillar here which kicks up and then you've got the bulbous arches and you've got the really simple Dorland's with this groove that goes from the bonnet all the way along and then at the back there the front the face and it does have a really wonderful happy little face I mean even in this kind of dark metallic grey which is quite sort of sensible color for this car really it was launched with that lovely pearlescent white but the black concave face with these character fillets look it's what everybody's kind engaged with under here is the air intake so in there is the air the air goes in the battery pack is between the axles but yeah the Honda badge no longer illuminates you can see the indicators are around the edge of the Tipton's full beam headlights and when you look down the full frontal profile you can see these bulbous wheel arches and they were a feature on the original urban TV concept that everyone really resonated with let's go to the side I know what you're thinking it's a good side profile isn't it it's just a great proportion car it's three thousand eight hundred and ninety five millimeters long it is about four and a half centimeters longer than a mini electric a mini one but it's a lot shorter than the Nissan Leaf it's a lot shorter than an E Golf is shorter than the honed I Kona it's shorter than the Renault Zoe the seats just bored of leather leather so done to death and it's great to see alternatives to dead animal skin and this is a recycled polyester kind of fiber it feels kind of cozier you know there's a bit of huger here that Scandinavian thing of relaxation and lighting candles we won't like the candles but we'll do everything else I just wanted to check I've got the seat on its lowest setting it's a mechanical seat by the way no no electric switch I don't mind at all and you sit quite high in relation to the - so you get that more upright on a crossover stance really safety configuration if I go into that this is Honda's sensing suite which comes a standard on the a low speed braking control which are tested this morning so nearly reversed into a bollard doggy collision mitigation braking system wrote departure blind spot and it has the the parking assistant as well which if I press that button there it will assist with parking which is not new on cars these days but it's it's something a lot of people like I don't really think you need a parking assistant if you've got a car this short with this kind of turning circle and you've passed a driving test I think you should be alright this is one of the party pieces honda says of the e because it's an urban centric vehicle they wanted to get a huge turning circle on it well actually no a tiny turning circle partly this is a turning circle of four point three meters that's even smaller than the smart which is some six point nine five meters that is way less than than a London taxi which is eight and a half meters it's ridiculous the Nissan Leaf that has a tenant circle of 11 meters I've got to test this look at it looks broken so let's put on a full lock now with this pillar here let's see if it comfortably it should go round and go round the other between these two Wow Wow that's tight look at that I can go round again that is seriously seriously good so you think how agile this is the car under 4 metres long with a 4.3 metre turning circle look that's quite good isn't it I don't find that boring at all I guess I should probably Drive it properly now instead of just tooling around in a tight circle in a car park we're in gale force winds and floods right now and it feels very very quiet what I would say about the Honda is although some of the the plastics like the the door sills where you enter the car the threshold sills and this this plastic bit underneath the faux wood it's not brilliant the dash tops not brilliant I would say either compared to sort of German cars and stuff of that and even compared to the / goe 208 which I think has a superb interior it's just a great piece of design and it's very comfortable actually okay we come to the back now look at that badge look that font is great I really like that the thing about the Honda is it doesn't follow the design of any other Honda in the current range Honda's have been a bit fussy in design the civics have gone through a strange phase this is so simple all the lines are so simple and yet it's so desirable I just hope that the popularity around this car the hyper on this car pushes Honda's design out into the other models and we are going to get other electric and electrified models in fact by 2022 Honda says they're gonna have all of their models will be electrified these I think of the reversing light so you reverse enlighten there with a camera there and there's a camera in the middle so on inside this dark kind of recess and then you've got your rear light cluster indicator around the perimeter your red bright rear lights in the middle I think now we come to the boot and this is the bit which I think will test whether the visual appeal of the Honda II is enough to just make you want it because it's great inside and it looks great externally the boot is tiny 171 litre boot bearing a mine the mini electric minis a small car has a 230 litre boot and the nice only from a Kona and the eGolf and those guys are well over 300 litres it is small this your charge cable and there is a cable in there this is the this is for the home plug that the three pin home plug setup and this is your puncture repair kit so there isn't another deep floor under there this is here it is that is it enough for you do you still want it I kind of do still I think what we have here is a car where you desire it so much based upon the visual appeal you will forgive the fact that the boot probably can only fit one of my children's school bags in it not both of them this is the advanced model which has the 17 inch wheels which look like gas Hobbs on an oven are really like those you can order it with 16s and that gives you extra range panoramic glass roof is standard this is called modern steel metallic all Honda Riis are two-tone whether you get it in platinum white charge yellow which is probably my favorite color crystal black crystal blue metallic which is really high but telling all this this is probably the most kind of sensible sinister color for the Pikachu faced Honda II so you've got lots of legroom big open footwells like a little floating center console here that doesn't bridge this gap and down there you've got a proper 3-point plug a home plug along with other kind of cigarette lighter outlets bracer USBs and a little little pocket got this little sort of leatherette handle you pull that out got one cup holder there that just folds out you've got this these little dividers and have the space is the size that you want depend on how many drinks or where you can just have it fully open I suppose in the center console again not much going on really Park reverse neutral Drive and then you've got your drive mode witches either sport or normal fight put a video on I go to HDMI look I'm watching our video all about Honda motorbikes but the idea here is look I've got this on this screen if I go like that I put it over there because the passenger could then be watching something or messing around and then I can bring up whatever I want here so let's say I want to my trip computer to bring brought up here on my TV mode so I can be dealing with that sensible stuff got a home button up here a physical one but you've got a couple of tactile buttons @p got a lovely little old-fashioned volume control there so they go got your physical buttons here for doing my D D misters and screens and my heated seat so I can go to that without going in the in there that's a smart EQ that's a new smart EQ what coincidence it's only talking about those this morning when you turn the one peddle driving function on which have just done the the regen is aggressive much more up to one point 8 g of of regen apparently you know that's quite harsh isn't it so no more creep when I come in it comes to a stop and I can take my feet off the pedals without putting it into park without holding my foot on the brake the car just comes to a stop so if I didn't have it on one pad Monica use the brake hold button like I do in the Eagle from other cars you can flit from one pedal movement to just normal movement and then with one with the normal movement I can I can go for different stages of regenerative braking with these pedals on the steering wheel I like a bit of regen not quite as hardcore as the is the one pedal and the one pedal takes away the creeps that you get in in traffic like an automatic gearbox so I'm gonna leave it off one pedal and just put the the regional a bit more the charge port now this is a real focal point of the front of the car it's glass for a start it's really high-quality and they've made a point of not hiding it inside this black sort of concave frontal Mars so what they're saying is they're proud of the fact this is electric it want owners to be proud of it I'm a bit worried about rain coming in here but presumably Honda they do think of stuff like that and it was up to 100 kilowatts DC so you've got CCS here feels good to the touch now we are pulling up to do a quick lunch stop and a rapid charge just gonna give her a quick squirt of CCS rapid charge lovely weather really nice yeah just get back in get back in the little Honda lounge quick get in I'm gonna have a look at my aquarium um of course you've got these screens to play with and you can watch stuff on the screens but one thing I do particularly like is Honda's it's Honda's party piece the aquarium now I'm a keen fish keeper I've been since I was a boy and you can also modify the aquarium because let's face it it's a Japanese car company so I'm going to go from a Coral Sea water environment to a planted kind of mangrove situation like that and I'm going to increase that breed of fish and I'm gonna save that watch and if I tap the screen because if it wasn't silly enough I can feed the fish look I'm dropping pellets in food pellets look and the fish are attracted to it but I just think that's really cool it's so Japanese in fact it'd be even more Japanese if they were caught by Dave from there our koi carp may be the next generation they will I've plugged it into charge and you can see on the - it's 78% charge it's going to take 29 minutes so 100 kilowatts is the fastest you can you can charge it but what's weird is it will do 0 to 80 percent in 30 minutes at 100 kilowatts but at 50 kilowatts it does zero to our 80 percent in 31 minutes and I checked with Honda whether this is a typo and they say no and I do not understand why it's hardly any quicker must be to do with the battery management or something like that which i think is just a bit weird and at 6.6 kilowatts one of these wall chargers it'll take for just over four hours see this gap here though between the air conditioning or heater outlet that gap there I keep looking at it thinking I want to have the Honda a beautiful chrome script badge from the boot I want one of them on there you know like the old like classic Fords and things would have gear or something written on their little crest like Honda on their minor gripe it reminds me of right at the beginning of the dr. Dre album 2001 the intro I forgot what it's called the low-speed mandatory noise that the Honda remakes reminds me of the harmonizing voices in the hit seventies single by 10cc I'm not in love [Music] while I was charging the e up and having a coffee one of the Honda a project team were sitting in the car you saw playing a Nintendo plugged into the HDMI cable socket down there now he said the reason for that is to encourage people to either watch television or gaming and that kind of stuff while they're charging so use charge time as a bit of hobby time if you're not wanting to work or have lunch or whatever else and I guess he also reminded me that in places like Tokyo where space is at such a premium a space and so G car is like a little bit of private sanctuary because Honda like so many other manufacturers believe that connectivity is the future for cars and probably the future for engaging younger people with cars or gearing everybody up for autonomy one thing this has is a personal assistant see that button there and I can just say any point ok Honda what is the Latin for cowfish I'm sorry I didn't forget that did you say that again I just want to know the simple things how far away is the airport the remaining travel distance is twenty point zero kilometers of the car I could not recognize the utterance for example you should try saying play FM radio or how much gas do I have left tell me the performance you can ask about topics such as searching for destinations operating the audio system I really struggle with a source map operations car functions operating the instructions and the weather have you finished tell me how far away Christmas is there are 11 months 4 days 9 hours 17 minutes and 51 seconds until Christmas Day turn off navigation voice navigation that's no it's not what I said you'd make a rubbish lawyer that isn't what I actually said I love you but you're useless I love exist just I'm not the kind of guy that needs this stuff in a car it's not for me I like a car to just be good at driving I can't help thinking that this is when tone ology is not necessarily helpful this is working learn learn rain repelling lenses on the side cameras the back camera is having issues same conditions see the headlights of the car that's following me mirror technology because I test a car for only a short space of time I have to try and learn quickly so I struggle with some of the the tech of the Honda here but in terms of just a driver's car I think it's a really good drivers car feels very promising something I don't quite understand is Honda have made a point of saying this car was always designed for urban use and they've made it small and they don't see the point in in in making v's physically bigger because people seem to be chasing range and only range and they don't think that's the way to go but and this is the thing I don't quite understand but also in the same breath this is one thousand five hundred and forty two kilos that's the thing so it's heavier than all the cars it competes with but all the cars it competes with have a better range than it even the mini electorate which I probably see as its direct competitor when the mini electric is launched as a piddly thirty two point something kilowatt hour battery pack but a better alleged real-world range the Honda a in fact all of its competitors can do more miles of range and some of them are quicker in terms of 0 to 60 - like the Peugeot a 208 I think it's quicker 262 but Honda have said yeah but like you don't want a car that goes too far because that makes it heavier and this doesn't even take into account Volkswagens shortly available id3 model which is going to be rear-wheel drive rear motored and aggressively priced difficult to make a choice because it depends what your priority is is it pure range and nothing else with a good warranty is it is it driving characteristics on paper this car loses almost to everything that it gets put against but yet you're still left desiring one and forgiving it for its foibles I am forgiving that boot for being so dance stupidly small and I'm thinking ahead already going well I could probably fit a little you know rideable on it a little right a little electric scooter or I could you know maybe remind Honda that they brought something out called the Moto compo many years ago which is a folding beautiful little suitcase moped and they actually got back and I think 2011 or 2012 at the Tokyo Motor Show did an electric concept of that bike so Honda look you brought a car out many years ago called the city jazz in the early 80s and it came with a folding moped that fitted in the boot build another folding electric moped to put in the boot of my II this is a car that will always have a cult following whether this is a success or whether it isn't but I hope this car will be a massive success for Honda and even if you see someone driving past in it and you look at them and go you could have bought a car for the same or less money with better room performance and better range but you chose not to because you wanted a car that was interesting when it comes down to this it comes down to the fact though we've both been looking at this car I'm thinking the range just is not quite good enough for me the rapid chargeability is good the design is beautiful it's odd it's got brown seatbelts with grey seats no other car could get away with that no other car I actually want to own it I think my wife would absolutely love to own a car like this we have cars in our family that are flawed but we're attracted to them because they have something about them and this has something about it this is not a car for everyone but Honda kind of know that but I hope you've enjoyed this video please subscribe and you'll see some it's a new material appearing quite soon thank you bye bye

Channel: The Late Brake Show

Views: 3,430,003

Keywords: honda electic car, jonny smith 4k review, honda-e ev, honda-e review, jonny smith car review, honda e ev, honda e electric car price, ugly electric cars, bring back fifth gear, jonny smith electric car, honda car review, honda e first drive, stylish electric vehicle, electric vehicles future, honda ev, inksharkman, honda e turning circle, 2020 honda electric car, honda e electric car, future electric vehicles 2020, electric cars 2020, camera wing mirror, honda prototype e

Id: x6G-3_Aasao

Length: 27min 7sec (1627 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 27 2020