RE: Honda e | Driven

[RobDickinson]

I actually think it's pretty cool..

But you need to find enough people who'll overlook it's shortcomings and with cash

[croyde]

defblade said:

Given that water and electricity famously don't mix well, I'm bemused by the design/location of the charging port...

First thing that struck me

[NAS]

Munter said:

Why are people still not getting it's not supposed to sell on range, or price, or practically.

It's supposed to sell on style, and tech. Hence the cute looks, and the screens/hdmi/full plug socket etc.

You may as well say "this Versace clutch bag is rubbish, can't get much in it, and no shoulder strap". You'd have somewhat missed the point.

Agreed. I rather like it.

[kurokawa]

The interior feel like “home” when I was a kid, the exterior styling look familiar and remind me my dad old civic when I was a kid
This eastern oriental retro styling might be appealing in some western countries

[AppleJuice]

Gameface said:

The dashboard is unusual. The lack of proof reading isn't.

Pistonheads: Proofreading Matters

[DonkeyApple]

virgilio said:

mmm, this for 32k (or 28k?) or a tesla 3 for 38k?

i think this sums up the problem: the only electric car that really makes sense vs petrol remains the tesla.
It looks like tesla believes in EVs, while the others are just trying to prove EVs are pointless compared to their traditional ICE offering.
If true, it’s a frighteningly stupid strategy for a business...

Edited by virgilio on Tuesday 28th January 06:20

I suspect that what it really shows is that if the goods don’t have a Tesla badge on them then actually very few people are remotely interested in EVs while they remain hugely over priced and so contended in regards to use.

There is no legislation forcing anyone outside of China to buy an EV and unless you have money burning a hole in your pocket, are wealthy enough to own the land to charge them, wealthy enough to have other cars or have a very predictable and average daily usage or are just a petrolhead who really wants an EV then they serve very little purpose at this moment in time.

It’s not that the manufacturers don’t want to build and sell EVs but that they know there simply aren’t the efficiencies of manufacturer yet, nor in many cases are there the trade deals in place or political stabilities and as not one consumer specifically needs an EV there isn’t the viable consumer demand as of yet.

Huge numbers of commuters could actually commute very easily with a Twizzy. No one has really bought any Twizzys because they are ludicrously over priced toys.

Plenty of households do have off street parking, multiple cars and shortnpredicatable routines for which a generic utility box powered off the domestic mains would just be so much easier and nicer to use but because primarily of very crude 20th century battery technology and the politics around the raw materials required both for batteries and motors they simply cannot be manufactured at a low enough price yet to be competitive and almost all car companies have a strict mandate from their shareholders to generate profits and can only borrow money at low enough rates to be viable because they exist to make profit. Only when a firm has a mandate from its shareholders to sieze market share regardless of losses and is willing to borrow at junk rates can you have a different outcome or in the case of Chinese firms, operate under State mandates with artificial economics and forced consumer purchases etc.

We have some good EVs available and quite a few more joining over the next couple of years and as consumer volumes grow then economies of scale should improve but the one thing that won’t change is that whereas if we want to keep petrol in the forecourt tanks we just need to occasionally murder some women and children in the Middle East if we want to keep our rare earth minerals flowing to our factories then we must keep fondling the ballbag of Xi Jinping and hope he will keep selling them to us and at a stable price.

Ultimately it’s having to load a car up with comically inefficient bricks that is the true inhibitor. With ICE we have a super efficient way of storing, transporting and procuring energy. With EVs we have to fill a car up with a load of enormously heavy and very expensive bricks and then carry them around with us the whole time whether we need them or not. It’s a really clunky 20th century, practically 19th transport solution.

These Victorian bricks mean that EVs are heavy, compromised in their use, more politically toxic than petrol and ludicrously expensive.

It doesn’t matter how many seriously cool words or branding or imagery you apply to modern Li batteries the cold hard truth is that they are a seriously st way to propel a car. Pretty much every common sense issue against EVs is actually to do with those Victorian bricks.

We have massive subsidies, massive grants, whalloping tax breaks on the fuel and huge regulation just to try and overcome the problem of these Victorian bricks. And even then the dirty, highly taxed, nasty historical waste product of the oil industry is the superior economical choice. Without the legislation, tax breaks and subsidies no EVs would be sold despite an electric motor just being so monumentally superior to an internal combustion engine.

The electric car blows away the ICE car in every single direction in every single way. It’s those rediculois bricks that instantly render the EV commercially unviable.

The moment we have a 21st century commercial solution to energy storage the internal combustion engine is dead overnight. The EV will be released to be the infinitely superior mode of transport. Cheaper, quieter, cleaner, more efficient. Just better at absolutely everything other than the lovely fart noises that a very small number of petrol heads love.

Until then EVs will only grow where the legislation and tax support permits them and where there are enough wealthy consumer to indulge in the inconveniences and manufacturers will continue to build vast numbers of ICE cars to sell around the globe every year.

The next five years is going to see very steady and clear changes in the UK as we are offered more and more EV choices and more and more who can use an EV decide to do so. An awful lot is growing to slowly and steadily change but so long as these cars have to lug about half a tonne of comedy Victorian bricks just to enable them to move one foot forward it’ll remain a slow, silent and very heavily subsidised and legislated revolution that drags along with it a loadnof political and extremist baggage just like petrol.

[Mackofthejungle]

Nobody's going to buy this. It's FAR too expensive and has a tiny range. For the distances involved in the urban areas we're talking about you'd be better off cycling. I mean, 32 grand?! Where's the extra 17 THOUSAND POUNDS over a Jazz coming from?! An electric motor and a battery?! We're replacing a complex technology with an older simpler one, and manufacturers are taking the piss.

[anonymous-user]

Mackofthejungle said:

Nobody's going to buy this. It's FAR too expensive and has a tiny range. For the distances involved in the urban areas we're talking about you'd be better off cycling. I mean, 32 grand?! Where's the extra 17 THOUSAND POUNDS over a Jazz coming from?! An electric motor and a battery?! We're replacing a complex technology with an older simpler one, and manufacturers are taking the piss.

Yes they will. If everybody simply made their car purchases purely rational, Dacia would be the only cars we ever saw.

[rampageturke]

A1VDY said:

Yeah, save the planet with Ev cars... only slight downside is increased emissions from power stations & more nuclear waste to be buried for the next 10k years..

ok retard

mstrbkr said:

Yes they will. If everybody simply made their car purchases purely rational, Dacia would be the only cars we ever saw.

i bought my abarth over more sensible, cheaper options like the fiestaST basically because it came in yellow. some people dont realise there are people like me and even worse than me out there

Edited by rampageturke on Tuesday 28th January 09:13

[Dave Hedgehog]

Mackofthejungle said:

Nobody's going to buy this. It's FAR too expensive and has a tiny range. For the distances involved in the urban areas we're talking about you'd be better off cycling. I mean, 32 grand?! Where's the extra 17 THOUSAND POUNDS over a Jazz coming from?! An electric motor and a battery?! We're replacing a complex technology with an older simpler one, and manufacturers are taking the piss.

It costs a billion $ on avg to develop a new car, divide that by the low numbers of these they are expecting to sell, best case the battery packs cosing 5k as well.

cycling is not an option for a lot of people, the real world is not a lefty utopia

[DonkeyApple]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I suspect you’d see a clear split in the data between provincial inhabitants and affluent urban inhabitants.

In the Cotswolds you see a lot of Tesla’s now as they’ve become popular weekend exodus status symbols for Londoners as much as anything but the area is generally highly affluent so lots of educated people with the means to buy EVs but the requirement that they can cover longer distances. Lots of Tesla’s and iPaces. The absolute last thing anyone wants to do if they’ve worked hard to have the luxuries in life is to then pay money to hang out at a forecourt with the truckers.

But, if you are near one of the arteries in central London around rush hour these days then you see an awful lot of i3s and the other lower range EVs.

If you have a home in say Zone 2 out to 5 and work, shop or socialise in Zone 1 and you are wealthy enough to be able to home charge and pay over the odds for an EV and get the perks that it offers you then it starts to become a bit of a no brainer and you only need a range of a few miles in reality and you’d be a bit thick to lob tens of thousands at a load of bricks you have no need for unless overwhelmed by image or brand etc.

The Honda is clearly a city car. Maybe not a town car or provincial city car but more for metropolitan cities. But the Mini is coming soon and how many people will want a Honda badge when they can have a Mini badge? But then the Mini isn’t going to obviously announce to the world that you’re a superior human because you care so much about the environment you just rented a brand new consumer good that you didn’t really need to save the polar bears that are all being killed by people who keep renting brand new consumer goods that they don’t really need.

[Butter Face]

Mackofthejungle said:

Nobody's going to buy this. It's FAR too expensive and has a tiny range. For the distances involved in the urban areas we're talking about you'd be better off cycling. I mean, 32 grand?! Where's the extra 17 THOUSAND POUNDS over a Jazz coming from?! An electric motor and a battery?! We're replacing a complex technology with an older simpler one, and manufacturers are taking the piss.

Interesting that you put the Jazz in there. Most of them bought by low users.

The difference is price from a Jazz (top spec auto) to an e is about £160pm with the same deposit/mileage allowance over 3 years.
Half the fuel cost (roughly £400pa for electric compared to £800ish@ 40mpg), no RFL to pay (years 2+3 @ £145), the 'prestige' of a new model, EV etc etc. Effective cost is probably a lot closer thant you actually think (still £100+ though )

[RemarkLima]

Some interesting points and sorry to just jump on one, hopefully not out of context...

DonkeyApple said:

Ultimately it’s having to load a car up with comically inefficient bricks that is the true inhibitor. With ICE we have a super efficient way of storing, transporting and procuring energy. With EVs we have to fill a car up with a load of enormously heavy and very expensive bricks and then carry them around with us the whole time whether we need them or not. It’s a really clunky 20th century, practically 19th transport solution.

I would have agreed with this statement, but having been looking very hard for a replacement for the i3 there really is a poor showing... But the weight argument just isn't true. A new 3 series is between 1500 KG and 1800 KG... A Tesla Model 3 is 1600 KG for a standard range, and 1800 KG for a long range so pretty much the same.

The Model S is heavier, at 2200 KG, but then a big engined 5 series is 2000 KG... Before you get onto the monster SUV's etc.

One final part, that is always ignored - and as you say is more political than reality, given the dependencies everywhere for oil companies, the middle east rare earth metals (and don't for all the catalytic converters, and forged parts require these as well), China and shareholders wanting a dividend, not market cap, is that getting 6.4 litres of diesel to the pump uses 44kWh of energy: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/45538/37341

wiwo said:

The total emissions of petrol and diesel are sugarcoated in this example.

For oil extraction, refinery and transport on tankers, in pipelines and trucks 44 kWh of energy was used for our 6.4 liters of diesel fuel. In other words, with this energy, an electric car would have driven 250 kilometers before the diesel fuel even reaches the tank.

Source in German: https://www.wiwo.de/technologie/mobilitaet/hajeks-...

So I think EV's are genuinely the way forward, and given 100 years of ICE development has us here, 100 years of battery development should yield similar increases in weight and power density.

Edited by RemarkLima on Tuesday 28th January 09:40

[Munter]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I'd disagree. I'd say they don't sell because they are not fashionable or look too big.

23yo, size 10, designer clothes, Blondie McBoobie living in the chilterns, doesn't want dads Tesla. She wants a Fiat 500 because it looks cute, is small, and fashionable (or was until they started to be old and cheap 2nd hand). Or an MX5 because she's "quirky" and a tom boy (in her eyes). But they are not electric. Which isn't cool.

So what small city car, that's 100% electric, that looks cute and stylish, and not something her dad (or a peasant) would own, is on the market for her, at say £3-400 a month of daddys money? For me the obvious answer to that is the Honda.

[DonkeyApple]

RemarkLima said:

Source in German: https://www.wiwo.de/technologie/mobilitaet/hajeks-...

So I think EV's are genuinely the way forward, and given 100 years of ICE development has us here, 100 years of battery development should yield similar increases in weight and power density.

Yup. Manifestly the way forward. Just hindered by the really clunky energy storage solution that we’re having to resort to. The electric motor is just so much better than our beloved ICEs in every practical way. Energy storage is the big game changer.

Don’t forget though that we have been developing the battery for longer than the ICE and after over 100 years of intense development and trillions of global investment and huge state backed commercial competition we are still basically building milkfloats. The battery still remains a massive, heavy, inefficient and hugely expensive brick just as it was in Victorian times.

Obviously that is hyperbolic to get the point across in a mildly amusing manner but if you are truly objective about how we currently store electricity it really is incredibly archaic to the point of farce.

The point in the future in which efficient energy storage reaches commercial viability is the point in the future when the entire world changes overnight, seismically with ICE instantly consigned to the bin because on no level can it compete against the electric motor if that motor can be powered in a 21st century manner rather than a 19th century one.

[RemarkLima]

DonkeyApple said:

RemarkLima said:

Source in German: https://www.wiwo.de/technologie/mobilitaet/hajeks-...

So I think EV's are genuinely the way forward, and given 100 years of ICE development has us here, 100 years of battery development should yield similar increases in weight and power density.

Yup. Manifestly the way forward. Just hindered by the really clunky energy storage solution that we’re having to resort to. The electric motor is just so much better than our beloved ICEs in every practical way. Energy storage is the big game changer.

Don’t forget though that we have been developing the battery for longer than the ICE and after over 100 years of intense development and trillions of global investment and huge state backed commercial competition we are still basically building milkfloats. The battery still remains a massive, heavy, inefficient and hugely expensive brick just as it was in Victorian times.

Obviously that is hyperbolic to get the point across in a mildly amusing manner but if you are truly objective about how we currently store electricity it really is incredibly archaic to the point of farce.

The point in the future in which efficient energy storage reaches commercial viability is the point in the future when the entire world changes overnight, seismically with ICE instantly consigned to the bin because on no level can it compete against the electric motor if that motor can be powered in a 21st century manner rather than a 19th century one.

You see, with respect I disagree with that statement - I'd say only until recently when all alloy blocks started appearing we have had lumps of pig iron in the front of the cars, with some very volatile liquid high energy storage, and can only release 30% of it's chemical energy into motion - so really is a crude Victorian technology, a pig with lipstick if you will. So to stop it being so crap we have to add rare earth metals in catalysts, inject urine, recycle exhaust gasses, add a ton of sensors and ECU's to manage it all... Add to that, every year we have to drop 8+ litres of oil into the bin and stick in more!!

As said, the weight differential isn't that great and whilst there has been battery technology development, it's not been at the pace of recent times - or at least being targeted for a different market - Over the past 10 years batter density has doubled, and whilst we've started to get a bit more energy from each litre of fuel it's still vastly inefficient and those gains are only seen under optimal conditions.

Likewise, I'm being contrary but I really think it's a closer call than we think and it's politics and vested interests are doing a lot of stalling!

[Vocht]

For me, it's not retro enough!

When then concept first came out, I was absolutely sold, the modern/retro styling, the front bench seats, everything about it was unique and I wanted one. Unfortunately though, as is always the case, the production model is nothing like concept and it's just become a bit vanilla.

Why now get this over an I3 where there are deals to be had, the models teething problems have been resolved, there's an active community full of great advice/guides and most importantly, you can get a range extender moped engine generator thing.

[RemarkLima]

Vocht said:

For me, it's not retro enough!

When then concept first came out, I was absolutely sold, the modern/retro styling, the front bench seats, everything about it was unique and I wanted one. Unfortunately though, as is always the case, the production model is nothing like concept and it's just become a bit vanilla.

Why now get this over an I3 where there are deals to be had, the models teething problems have been resolved, there's an active community full of great advice/guides and most importantly, you can get a range extender moped engine generator thing.

No more range extender for the i3 - but it does have a 180 mile range... And everything else holds true. And is a lot lighter to boot!

[DonkeyApple]

Vocht said:

For me, it's not retro enough!

When then concept first came out, I was absolutely sold, the modern/retro styling, the front bench seats, everything about it was unique and I wanted one. Unfortunately though, as is always the case, the production model is nothing like concept and it's just become a bit vanilla.

Why now get this over an I3 where there are deals to be had, the models teething problems have been resolved, there's an active community full of great advice/guides and most importantly, you can get a range extender moped engine generator thing.

The exterior did look a little more funky but I can’t say I was ever sold on the Leyland steering wheel and London Transport seats.

It’s still a good looking car even if it has been smoothed off a bit.

[Smitters]

Munter said:

Why are people still not getting it's not supposed to sell on range, or price, or practically.

It's supposed to sell on style, and tech. Hence the cute looks, and the screens/hdmi/full plug socket etc.

You may as well say "this Versace clutch bag is rubbish, can't get much in it, and no shoulder strap". You'd have somewhat missed the point.

That's why I'm disappointed. It's not as good looking, in, or out as it should be.