
2020 Honda E Has 148 HP and More Than 221 LB-FT - evo_9
https://www.motor1.com/news/357616/2020-honda-e-power-specs/
======
djaychela
It's great to see it looking so close to the concept car that was seen not
that long ago - it's a great mixture of retro and future Honda, and it's also
great to see Honda going for a full electric drivetrain as well as such a
great design.

Fully Charged got 19 minutes in one, and the video [1] is worth a watch - you
can see how quickly it accelerates when he floors it, and he was really
impressed with the car, the turning circle and the camera mirrors.

I think the bottom line is that most electric cars will be a blast to drive -
I'd love to have one as a rally car on single venue airfield-type events in
the UK, if I was still competing; it'd be incredible in the forests too, but
not sure range would make it possible for anything substantial, alas. [Totally
ignoring any other practicalities that are impinging on my daydream about
electric rally cars]

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKq8jmckz0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKq8jmckz0)

~~~
lozaning
Im sad at how much the design and look of the car that they're actually
bringing to market deviates from the model at the car show.

I _really_ liked how the concept looked, enough to have started investigating
the potential of importing one from Europe when they came out. With how the
actual car turned out looking, I've since cooled on that.

Pic of the original concept:
[https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/img/OpIioNgjBiNWWvlU9WYIn68Krcs...](https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/img/OpIioNgjBiNWWvlU9WYIn68Krcs=/2017/09/12/4db310b2-ea0a-4a15-a877-b197cf68d609/hondaatfrankfurt2017-9.jpg)

~~~
giobox
Not road legal in US with camera wing mirrors either as far as I understand. I
believe the camera mirrors are standard on all models so can’t be avoided.
Current US Department of Transport rules still require new cars to have two
traditional physical wing mirrors.

I’ve often heard that outside of the 25 year rule (if older than 25 years it’s
much simpler), importing cars not sold in the US to the US is basically so
hard as to be largely impossible for the most part. Most car enthusiasts
patiently wait for their favoured foreign car to hit 25 years old so they can
finally get it into the US, even for extremely valuable exotics. There’s lots
of websites out there that catalog when foreign models will hit 25 and be
eligible for US import.

~~~
aries1980
I hope this rule will be demolished in Europe as well. The driving side in the
UK makes the cars dangerous at takeovers on the continent and vice versa. With
video mirrors and a cam forward I could see ahead better regardless which side
I sit.

------
devy
This is presumably a VW e-Golf competitor and it seems to be European only
model (to meet the ever increasing restriction on emission standards there).
The Standard 35kwh battery option is not impressive at all as Fiat's compiance
EV 500e already achieving and or exceeding those ranges (yes I drove one
myself.)

The Korean auto makers have already made a strong push to longer range EVs
like Hyundai Kona EV, Kia Niro EV, all are in the range of 240miles. The EV
market outlook post 2020 is going to be massive, all thanks to Tesla's
demonstration of how you can make an EV the best possible vehicle with
technology and dedication.

~~~
Theodores
The battery isn't supposed to be impressive. It is not for travelling salesmen
or Americans. Honda have done their research and they know how far most people
drive most of the time.

It is also worth remembering that many in their target audience are in two car
households. So there is still the big car to visit the grandparents with.

This is not an e-Golf competitor. The e-Golf is a compliance car that is hard
to actually buy. Dealers don't stock them.

This car is designed from the ground up as an EV, it is not an ICE car where
the gearbox has been replaced with batteries - that is what the e-Golf is.

The EV options are not actually that huge post 2020. Most people are not in
the Tesla price bracket. If you watch any car show there will be plenty of
models that are new and do not have an EV option. There are grand promises
from all of the different makes but when it comes down to it, in the UK
(target market for the Honda) there is just Tesla that can deliver a nice new
car to your specifications in four weeks. Other than that you can get a Nissan
Leaf with the smaller battery pack in four weeks. For anything else you are
looking at 3 to 6 months. The Korean wonders are even further out, eighteen
months for them. That means 2020.

~~~
devy
> The battery isn't supposed to be impressive.

Range anxiety, cost and charging network are top 3 EV adoption hurdles. The
first is addressed by a larger battery pack which in turn help address the
cost via economy of scale. Giving the rate of lithium battery cost reduction,
the same price point of 35kwh pack you can buy 60kwh in 2 years. In other
words, for $35000 you can buy this E with 120 mile range or another EV with
60Kwh with 240 mile range, which majority of the buyers will choose?

Also EV efficiency matters - Tesla is the current king of efficiency. My Fiat
500e can have the same 120 mile range with a smaller 28kwh battery, which
means Honda E is less efficiency or have a poor battery management system
(BMS). This brings up the next point.

> This car is designed from the ground up as an EV, it is not an ICE car where
> the gearbox has been replaced with batteries - that is what the e-Golf is.

That's simply not true. If this car weren't designed as a compliance car why
doesn't Honda bring it to the North America market or sell globally? Having
50%-50% weight distribution and strong torque are native characteristics of an
EV, having less to do with redesign EV platform.

Honda/Toyota are known to be the two major Japanese auto makers that are EV
holdouts. They poured billions of dollars to bet on fuel cell and hydrogen
cars and invested heavily on hybrid technologies. Honda have never been fully
onboard with 100% Battery Electric vehicles (yet) and NEVER develop a EV
native car platform like VW Group's MEB[1] or BMW's i-Series[2]. Their last
attempt was a compliance car Honda Fit EV in order for them to give emission
credit in California.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MEB_platform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MEB_platform)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i)

~~~
dragonwriter
> If this car weren't designed as a compliance car why doesn't Honda bring it
> to the North America market or sell globally?

Because the North American market has a strong preference for big cars,
whereas Europe had more interest in small ones.

------
cmrdporcupine
Too bad we're not getting it in North America. I would buy this in a heart
beat, though I'd prefer a slightly larger battery pack. In the winter here my
Volt gets down to 50-60km range and I can't make it to work without using the
ICE; round trip on days when I can't charge at work would be dicey with this
Honda.

~~~
bduerst
The 124 mile range is a deal breaker for NA, when so many others coming out in
this class in 2020 are 200+. Europe it will do fine.

~~~
giobox
The 40kw 2019 Nissan Leaf is broadly in this ballpark, sells well enough at a
lower price point than the typical 200 mile+ EVs. This Honda is roughly price
competitive with the Leaf too, but given lack of US announcement hard to
directly compare. Worth remembering many quoted European launch prices will be
inclusive of sales tax in the 15-20 percent region.

For sure it's not enough for absolutely everyone, but 95 percent of US
commuters travel less than 40 miles to work. Its workable for a great many.

With rear wheel drive, I suspect this thing will be a riot to drive compared
to the Leaf though!

------
bitcurious
I don't entirely understand the market for the "city car." Living in the city,
the only times I need my car are when I leave it. Maybe half of those trips
wouldn't work with this car's range.

~~~
FreedomToCreate
Agree with this. Whenever I go to a city, I tend to leave my car in burbs and
public transport in (Cal train when going to SF and Go Train when going to
Toronto). Bring a car into the city is a hassle with parking and associated
costs. Everyone I know whose recently moved to the city, have usually ditched
they cars.

~~~
hangonhn
I think it depends on the city. I've lived in the Bay Area, New England, and
Dallas. For NYC and SF that's definitely but for Dallas it is not. NYC and SF
almost go out of their way to make cars difficult. But Dallas was developed
with cars in mind and is rather weak in public transit. I can see a car like
this working OK in Dallas, depending on the availability of chargers.

------
dv_dt
I see Honda too has fallen prey to the EV alien styling curse. It really seems
that conventional car makers are more susceptible, or is this some sort of
intentional thing to limit demand to keep production capacity from being
swamped?

~~~
bproven
Most of the time I agree that EVs looks stupid (and Honda designs of last 10+
years are not great), BUT to me this loks really cool.

~~~
Grazester
I came in here to say this car looks great! It's design is very clean which is
not something I could say about Honda's current over styled design language.

~~~
dv_dt
For some reason the original concept car actually looks pretty good to me, but
the finalized version seems much more amorphous blob.

------
cujo
And the available-right-now Nissan Leaf has 147 HP and 236 lb-ft of torque AND
gets 150 miles on a full charge. Price guesstimates put these cars in a
similar range.

I'm glad more of these cars are getting made, but this Honda is all about
style. There's nothing new "under the hood".

~~~
peteradio
Style? Lol did you look at the picture, looks like a turtle.

~~~
giobox
It also evokes the classic lines of many hugely popular 70s/80s hatchbacks.
Huge numbers of people have much affection for the hatchbacks of this era,
especially the so called “hot hatches” that many European brands are famous
for - cars like the 205 GTI etc.

I think Honda nailed the styling on this. Worth also pointing out that those
camera wing mirrors, while legal in most European markets, still aren’t road
legal in the US, I imagine the Department of Transport will have to relax the
rule that all cars sold in the US have two physical wing mirrors pretty soon.

I personally find this attempt at modern reinterpretation of an old design far
more successful than any of the Mini models BMW has done.

------
Shivetya
Hope the price is in line with that short range, 124 miles and that is
probably the more generous testing methods.

Is there a market for low hundred mile (two hundred KM or less) vehicles?
Perhaps if the price is seriously low as well. Wasn't long ago this range
would have been amazing but Telsa basically forced the industry as a whole
towards providing true usable range. I am of the opinion that three hundred
miles plus is where premium brands must land and mid two hundred is fine for
standard cars, for now. The sub 200 club is just not trying or needs to be
priced so well to create a market; commuter style.

~~~
djaychela
I think it depends where you are - if you're in a city, you probably do very
low mileage. Yes, of course, there are plenty of people who do 100+ mile
commutes or are traveling salespeople, but most of the people I know could
have a car with a sub-100 mile range and that would never (or perhaps once a
year on an airport run) be a problem.

I think we all need to think differently about transportation, and that it's
just 'tough' if you have to take a 1-hour break in a long (200 mile+) journey.
We've been spoiled by our ability to pollute our way around, and we need to
recalibrate that in the same way it's not socially acceptable to litter, drink
drive or the many other common behaviours that we now no longer do.

~~~
fffernan
It's even better you can get 200mi of range in 35 minutes now with a model 3.
Soon 300 miles in 15 minutes will be possible...

------
mertd
Does using cameras rather than sideview mirrors have any benefits? Surely they
add more modes of failure compared to mirrors.

~~~
la_barba
Yeah, but then you look at a modern car, and there are plenty of electronics
that are critical to its functioning, especially safety. We reply on those
every-time we drive. The car industry is probably 1000x more risk-averse than
your typical SV startup.

~~~
benj111
To be fair I don't think the typical SV startup is risk averse at all. So any
display of risk aversion would be infinitely more risk averse.

I'll return to my pedantic cave now.

------
ben7799
This thing would totally work for me, and I get both the Honda "small is
better" ethos & the design aesthetic.

I live in the Suburbs, my driving is usually ~10 miles a day on work days.
There are no busses that are helpful for commuting. I often have to pick up a
kid or do an errand that makes bicycle commuting tough.

There's charging at work. But even so I could go a week or more without a
charge. My use case is light enough I could probably get by on just doing slow
120V charging without upgrading the wiring in the garage most of the time.

Long trips that exceed the range of this or the leaf are probably < 10 days a
year for me. There's got to be lots of other drivers who are in the same boat
but don't really get it/understand.

------
lewiscollard
Hngggg...as someone that is not so big on modern cars (my background in cars
defines that loosely as "post-1995") I've gotta say that is ADORABLE. It
reminds me more than a little of the original Mini 1275GT! I can't remember
the last time I saw a new car whose styling I liked.

From my perspective, 221 lb/ft of torque is only slightly, as in single
digits, less than the legendary Toyota Celica GT-Four (ST-205) from the 90s,
and in such a cute car! If it's as small and light as it looks, that could be
an awful lot of fun. :)

------
arthurfm
For some reason the centre console has an HDMI port [1][2]. Does anyone know
what this is used for?

The lack of any USB-C ports is also a strange omission for a brand new car,
especially when many of Honda's rivals include at least one USB-C port on
their new cars.

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/TlvQQ5h.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/TlvQQ5h.jpg)

[2] [https://youtu.be/pEKq8jmckz0?t=313](https://youtu.be/pEKq8jmckz0?t=313)

~~~
Mikeb85
Why would you need a USB-C port when most USB-C cables have a USB-A connection
at one end? The HDMI port seems odd though.

~~~
asavadatti
Thats a chicken and egg problem. I would like to see more USB C ports on
purchases that are supposed to last a long time

------
benj111
"powered by a rear-mounted electric motor delivering approximately 150 PS (110
kW)"

If like me you wondered what a PS was

"Pferdestärke - German for horsepower, equal to metric horsepower and
sometimes referred to as 'continental horsepower'"

[http://www.statman.info/conversions/power.html](http://www.statman.info/conversions/power.html)

------
tracker1
I don't think it looks very good... looks like an early 70's euro hatchback
mostly.

~~~
TMWNN
In Arthur Hailey's novel _Wheels_
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheels_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheels_\(novel\))
, about the auto industry, an executive at a fictional US car company suggests
building a very homely city car. When others criticize its looks, he says that
if it's inexpensive and practical, people won't care.

~~~
tracker1
probably true enough... there's also probably at least half the people out
there that might like it. I drive a car I bet about half the people out there
hate anyway. To each their on on it.

------
auiya
Why can't Honda just normalize the EV drive train by releasing their top
selling Accord and Civic as an EV option? Why does it have to be repackaged
into some ugly little toad of a car?

~~~
gavia1
The platform on which the current generation of cars are built often does not
lend itself nicely to electrification. You have transmission tunnels, engine
bays with large firewalls, exhaust tunnels, suspension and braking systems
designed for chassis with certain weight distributions. Ultimately, you end up
designing a new platform with electrification from the get go.

~~~
auiya
That's fair. But shouldn't they at least get their top design teams on the
case? The styling on this car looks like the design team just phoned it in.

~~~
function_seven
No accounting for taste, but I look at the current Accords and Civics and
think those designs are gaudy and try-hard. Tons of creases and moldings and
little blings everywhere.

This design looks really nice to me. Not too weird, looks a bit like the
original CVCC, and it's clean.

~~~
auiya
I completely agree with you, I'm not a fan of them either. Those cars are
designed to blend into the crowd, that's why they sell so many of them. But
crowd-pleasing designs like that are quite difficult to develop. So why make a
polarizing car your EV flagship? Is it so they can later say "oh well it
didn't sell very well, EV must not be worth it"?

~~~
function_seven
Good point. I confused my idea of good with what’s actually popular.

There’s got to be some reason they do it. Back when hybrid cars were new,
Toyota’s design for the Prius was polarizing. But it worked for them, and they
established that model as “the” design for hybrid cars for some time.

So differentiation seems to serve a purpose, but I can’t say exactly what that
is.

------
jefurii
I love that the featured car has the same lime-green body and black hood as
Mr. Bean's Mini Cooper.

------
ChuckMcM
They seem to have learned a lot from the feedback on Nissan's Leaf. Exciting
times.

------
antonios
> It will have enough juice for more than 124 miles

Pretty low, even for city standards.

------
elchief
Your all-electric has to be your best looking car model

200 km is not enough

------
tosser0001
Doesn't higher torque directly lower fuel efficiency? It seems they could get
better range if they weren't trying to make the car a "blast to drive around
town". Having a car be a "blast" may be fun for the driver but certainly not
anyone else outside the vehicle.

~~~
FigBug
Not really. Efficiency doesn't change much based on torque. See here for Leaf:
[https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4106/4844105739_3795e703f2_b...](https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4106/4844105739_3795e703f2_b.jpg)

There is very little downside to putting a bigger motor than needed in an EV,
other than a bit of extra weight to move around. As long as you don't use that
power, (fast acceleration), you won't pay for it.

That said, 221 lb-ft of torque isn't very much. They don't say at what rpm
that is. Most EVs are electronically torque limited at low rpm. Assuming the
peak torque is around 2000 rpm, that's only 84 hp.

(My biggest pet peeve is torque without rpm -- it's meaningless!)

~~~
tosser0001
This rant about horsepower here has always stuck with me (and this is an 11
year old article):

[http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080909](http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080909)

(Unfortunately you need to search for the section "Hold Your Horsepower")

I assume the same would apply to electric vehicles. It seems insane to
continue the power arms race with cars given the detrimental impact is has.

