So back from a test of the Honda e
Fun
I spent some time sat in the car. Playing. My iPhone paired easily. Adjusting camera mirrors, in car mirror, seats, wheel etc all easy
It was raining. Side cameras coped well. Rear camera does get wet from road spray, but rear wiper clears the view
I don’t make 5’8” so plenty of room for me
There is storage under the boot cover for the two Charge cables I believe, so they don’t need to flap about in the nine too big boot
Reasonable sized glove box for manuals and u recon my cheap game console I purchased. Didn’t get chance to plug this in
Like the driving position and the feel of the leather steering wheel.
So I drove out for about 1/2hr. Mix of country, village and 60mph roads. Ride is firmish but well damped. Better than Mini I would say. Steering quite light. Turning circle is hilariously tight. But good. Switching to sport increases performance/acceleration as expected. But does not firm up the steering as my previous Mini
Not an energy efficient car (or at least the previous drivers) but had only done 22 miles. 2.8 miles per kWh. Not good. Good would be 5
In terms of driving fun. For me it is this or the Mini e. Ahead of e208 and Corsa e. Much better than Leaf or E-Niro. I have not driven Kona or Zoe or M3
I will aim for a follow up test in the week with my wife
e test drives
My order is delayed as stated elsewhere until Aug. I spent time talking to the dealer Principal. Said this is a halo car for Honda like the Type R. Not included in their targets. Less margin. So less opportunity for discount (but he say that).
He made the point that the car should keeps it value better than the likes of Zoe or Corsa. But he would say that.
Honda have partnered with Keba (never heard of them) for charger boxes. But no price info or service info Other than the fixed price deal (will aim to get that halved again).
Nothing about apps or updates free charges included
He made the point that the car should keeps it value better than the likes of Zoe or Corsa. But he would say that.
Honda have partnered with Keba (never heard of them) for charger boxes. But no price info or service info Other than the fixed price deal (will aim to get that halved again).
Nothing about apps or updates free charges included
No I didn’t feel hands blocking the camera mirror screens were an issue
There was a bit of reflection off the centre camera mirror. But not an issue
Left hand stalk end button pressed adds marks on the side mirror display to show distance/perspective
There was a bit of reflection off the centre camera mirror. But not an issue
Left hand stalk end button pressed adds marks on the side mirror display to show distance/perspective
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londiniumperson
- Posts: 1786
- Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 2:37 pm
Same here with no issues of hands blocking camera, the only way that you'd block them is if you held the wheel in an very abnormal manner.
Also the side mirror marks appear when you indicate so it can help you judge how close a car is in the other lane, with the nearest line shown in red which I presume indicates too close to avoid a collision.
2020 Advance in Crystal Black Pearl on 17's - 08/2020-Current
2015 VW Tiguan (Pure White) - 04/2018-Current
1991 Honda Beat PP1 (Festival Red) - 11/2022-Current
2015 VW Tiguan (Pure White) - 04/2018-Current
1991 Honda Beat PP1 (Festival Red) - 11/2022-Current
I think the interior is good quality. Maybe not quite as good as the Mini E. but much better than every other EV (excluding Taycan, iPace & EQ Merc 
Honda has gone in a different direction with the interior compared to every other car manufacturer. You either like it (I do) or you think it’s a bit kitch.
I found the graphics of sufficient quality. And the IT reacted fast enough.
I do wonder/ hope Honda continues to invest and develop the interface and apps. I think it’s used in the Jazz. Here’s hoping it gets added to future models. Else it will die like Windows 95 and HP WebOS & the TouchPad
Honda has gone in a different direction with the interior compared to every other car manufacturer. You either like it (I do) or you think it’s a bit kitch.
I found the graphics of sufficient quality. And the IT reacted fast enough.
I do wonder/ hope Honda continues to invest and develop the interface and apps. I think it’s used in the Jazz. Here’s hoping it gets added to future models. Else it will die like Windows 95 and HP WebOS & the TouchPad
I posted this on SpeakEV, but I'll post it here too.
I was able to bring my test drive forward from Saturday morning to this afternoon, so here are my brief observations. It was only 30 - 40 minutes driving at the start of the rush hour traffic (you can tell lockdown has more or less ended now - the traffic's getting congested again
). The car was a yellow Advance with the 17" wheels.
As soon as the driver's door was opened and I looked in, I thought it looked smaller than I was expecting. Sitting in the car it also seemed narrower than I was expecting, and the side mirror screens looked smaller than I was expecting. I guess watching all these YouTube videos doesn't convey the size very well. As Bjorn commented in one of his videos, I liked that there was no lip to stepping into the car - the floor was level with door entrance, so there is nothing to step over getting out, or stepping down into the car getting in. The steering wheel is a little slimmer than the LEAFs and it felt nice to hold.
As soon as I started driving faster than parking speeds, say around 20 - 30 mph, I could instantly tell that it was not as quiet as my 40kWh LEAF. I could hear the tyre noise very noticably - it was nowhere near as quiet as the LEAF, however, it's not too noisy - just not as quiet as the LEAF. I eventually drove on a stretch of dual carriageway so that I could take it up to 70mph, and thankfully it doesn't get much louder at the higher speeds.
The ride quality over the bumps was quite good, possibly just as good as the LEAF. There were some large bumps that I went over that I was expecting to feel quite a bit, but it absorbed the bumps well, possibly slightly better than the LEAF, certainly not worse. I was perfectly happy with the bump absorption. I was driving fairly sedately around town in a lot of traffic, but nevertheless I could tell that it had less body roll than the LEAF. It felt a bit hot hatch like, and I think it would be fun zipping round bends and corners - I like how it felt and responded. I also drove over some speed bumps, thinking that if it's slighly narrower than the LEAF that it might be bumpier over them, but again it seemed just as good as the LEAF, so I'm happy with that.
I did a couple of tight turns (turning round on a T junction, and turning right into a queue of traffic) and it managed it superbly. Great turning circle, as expected.
I used the one pedal mode most of the time, as that is what I use most of the time in the LEAF. It was very similar to the LEAF, perhaps a fraction less strong regen. It was quite smooth, perhaps just slightly grabby on the brakes when stopping and starting on a couple of occasions, but fairly comparable to the LEAF's e-pedal. I only briefly tried sport mode, and the accelerator pedal felt a little more responsive, but probably much less difference than between eco or e-pedal and D or B in the LEAF. Putting my foot down, it felt perhaps not quite as punchy as my LEAF, but I guess it's fairly close (traffic conditions meant I couldn't try it for very long, and only at lowish speeds).
Back at the dealer and I reversed into a parking space, and I liked the reversing and bird's eye view displays - it worked similar to the LEAF. I didn't try the auto parking.
Then there's the range! I was driving similar to how I would normally drive my LEAF so that I could compare the economy, or efficiency. As expected it's not as good as I'd hoped. I only managed to find the economy screen (instant and average miles/kWh) after I had been driving for a while, and it was indicating 3.3 miles/kWh. I think one or two people had already driven it, so it already had about 45 miles on it, I think. I eventually reset it so that I could get a reading for the rest of my drive, and it ended up at 3.6 miles/kWh (that included some town driving and driving on dual carriageways at 50 mph and a short stretch up to 70mph). In my LEAF my average was 5.2 miles/kWh (on the 5.2 mile journey home, admittedly overall downhill, I managed 7.5 miles/kWh). Looking at the instant miles/kWh reading, it seemed to use more power than the LEAF when driving gently, even at low speeds. It looked to be getting about 1 mile per 1% of battery charge (a bit like a first generation LEAF). I think overall I drove about 18 miles and used about 18% of charge, which equates to about 100 miles of range, and at 3.6 miles/kWh indicates about 27.8 kWh of usable battery capacity. Not as good as I had hoped.
One slight problem on the drive was that at one point it came up with a warning saying Radar, and some of the safety features were no longer working. Turns out the trade plates had moved and ended up blocking the radar!
Despite the poor range and it not being as quiet as the LEAF, I think I'll go ahead and buy one
. They offered a not too unreasonable amount for my LEAF in part exchange. The car that I ordered (with 16" wheels) back in December they said is showing on the computer system as being delivered on 25th August (so maybe worth waiting a week longer to get the 1st September number plate - a 70 reg?). I'll be going back on Tuesday to do the paperwork, so I guess I have until then to think about it and still have a chance to change my mind!
I was able to bring my test drive forward from Saturday morning to this afternoon, so here are my brief observations. It was only 30 - 40 minutes driving at the start of the rush hour traffic (you can tell lockdown has more or less ended now - the traffic's getting congested again
). The car was a yellow Advance with the 17" wheels.As soon as the driver's door was opened and I looked in, I thought it looked smaller than I was expecting. Sitting in the car it also seemed narrower than I was expecting, and the side mirror screens looked smaller than I was expecting. I guess watching all these YouTube videos doesn't convey the size very well. As Bjorn commented in one of his videos, I liked that there was no lip to stepping into the car - the floor was level with door entrance, so there is nothing to step over getting out, or stepping down into the car getting in. The steering wheel is a little slimmer than the LEAFs and it felt nice to hold.
As soon as I started driving faster than parking speeds, say around 20 - 30 mph, I could instantly tell that it was not as quiet as my 40kWh LEAF. I could hear the tyre noise very noticably - it was nowhere near as quiet as the LEAF, however, it's not too noisy - just not as quiet as the LEAF. I eventually drove on a stretch of dual carriageway so that I could take it up to 70mph, and thankfully it doesn't get much louder at the higher speeds.
The ride quality over the bumps was quite good, possibly just as good as the LEAF. There were some large bumps that I went over that I was expecting to feel quite a bit, but it absorbed the bumps well, possibly slightly better than the LEAF, certainly not worse. I was perfectly happy with the bump absorption. I was driving fairly sedately around town in a lot of traffic, but nevertheless I could tell that it had less body roll than the LEAF. It felt a bit hot hatch like, and I think it would be fun zipping round bends and corners - I like how it felt and responded. I also drove over some speed bumps, thinking that if it's slighly narrower than the LEAF that it might be bumpier over them, but again it seemed just as good as the LEAF, so I'm happy with that.
I did a couple of tight turns (turning round on a T junction, and turning right into a queue of traffic) and it managed it superbly. Great turning circle, as expected.
I used the one pedal mode most of the time, as that is what I use most of the time in the LEAF. It was very similar to the LEAF, perhaps a fraction less strong regen. It was quite smooth, perhaps just slightly grabby on the brakes when stopping and starting on a couple of occasions, but fairly comparable to the LEAF's e-pedal. I only briefly tried sport mode, and the accelerator pedal felt a little more responsive, but probably much less difference than between eco or e-pedal and D or B in the LEAF. Putting my foot down, it felt perhaps not quite as punchy as my LEAF, but I guess it's fairly close (traffic conditions meant I couldn't try it for very long, and only at lowish speeds).
Back at the dealer and I reversed into a parking space, and I liked the reversing and bird's eye view displays - it worked similar to the LEAF. I didn't try the auto parking.
Then there's the range! I was driving similar to how I would normally drive my LEAF so that I could compare the economy, or efficiency. As expected it's not as good as I'd hoped. I only managed to find the economy screen (instant and average miles/kWh) after I had been driving for a while, and it was indicating 3.3 miles/kWh. I think one or two people had already driven it, so it already had about 45 miles on it, I think. I eventually reset it so that I could get a reading for the rest of my drive, and it ended up at 3.6 miles/kWh (that included some town driving and driving on dual carriageways at 50 mph and a short stretch up to 70mph). In my LEAF my average was 5.2 miles/kWh (on the 5.2 mile journey home, admittedly overall downhill, I managed 7.5 miles/kWh). Looking at the instant miles/kWh reading, it seemed to use more power than the LEAF when driving gently, even at low speeds. It looked to be getting about 1 mile per 1% of battery charge (a bit like a first generation LEAF). I think overall I drove about 18 miles and used about 18% of charge, which equates to about 100 miles of range, and at 3.6 miles/kWh indicates about 27.8 kWh of usable battery capacity. Not as good as I had hoped.
One slight problem on the drive was that at one point it came up with a warning saying Radar, and some of the safety features were no longer working. Turns out the trade plates had moved and ended up blocking the radar!
Despite the poor range and it not being as quiet as the LEAF, I think I'll go ahead and buy one
. They offered a not too unreasonable amount for my LEAF in part exchange. The car that I ordered (with 16" wheels) back in December they said is showing on the computer system as being delivered on 25th August (so maybe worth waiting a week longer to get the 1st September number plate - a 70 reg?). I'll be going back on Tuesday to do the paperwork, so I guess I have until then to think about it and still have a chance to change my mind!
Last edited by keithr on Sat Jul 04, 2020 12:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Nice review Keith. You have obviously driven the Leaf a lot more than me. But I didn’t get on with the Nissan.
I used one peddle driving quite a bit and got on well with it. Someone here said about the paddles seeming reversed - pull on the minus one for more braking, plus for less. Agreed it’s the wrong way round, but you’d son adjust.
Another thing is coasting - if one peddle driving is engaged, and then dis-engaged then there seemed very little slowing or braking - coasting? I’m not sure. It was the most rolling I could find.
Agreed on the view out and slim forward pillars. I didn’t find the interior smaller than expected/videos
I used one peddle driving quite a bit and got on well with it. Someone here said about the paddles seeming reversed - pull on the minus one for more braking, plus for less. Agreed it’s the wrong way round, but you’d son adjust.
Another thing is coasting - if one peddle driving is engaged, and then dis-engaged then there seemed very little slowing or braking - coasting? I’m not sure. It was the most rolling I could find.
Agreed on the view out and slim forward pillars. I didn’t find the interior smaller than expected/videos
