welcome to the launch of the Honda II in not so sunny Spain it really is raining quite a
lot here so apologies if that affects the video in any way but this is the Honda II
it's Honda's first ever all-electric car so it is incredibly important for the manufacturer
and it might actually be incredibly important for you to so keep watching and find out what
we think of it in this review we will look at the driving of the Honda II or
look at the technology practicality and then give a verdict at the end
now much like the exterior of the Honda II the interior you can see that the designers have
gone through a huge amount of effort to make it feel contemporary and modern and new in here it
is unlike any other Honda cabin or even any other car cabin that I've ever really seen it definitely
feels like Honda has looked to the future and actually delivered it a few years earlier which
is a really good thing an example of that is that you've got five five screens in here and that's
because we've got the virtual mirrors which you'll have seen on the outside of the car instead of the
normal mirrors which stick out and affect the amount of drag that the car produced is these
are just basically little bits of metal that stick out and there's a camera in them they face behind
and they project an image here and here so you can see what's going on behind you you can have a
wide view as well so you get that little bit more visibility and I've got to say that it sounds like
it might be a bit of a controversial concept and it does take some getting used to but the image
when all the time that we've been driving this car has stayed nice and crisp but nice and clear
and you do see just about enough but it will take some getting used to on to the next screen you've
got an eight point eight inch digital dashboard display in front of you here and that basically
gives you all the crucial driving information so I've got the range I've got the battery charge
level or speed that I'm doing a traffic sign recognition and there's also there I say a Tesla
style graphic which shows you a little Honda II and then the car in front and has to do all the
safety systems and were they activates if there's a collision a collision mitigation for example and
I also quite like on this screen here and you'll see it in a cutaway that when you indicate little
an indicator comes on on the car when the brake lights come on they come on the car that's quite
good fun and a nice little detail on to the main screens there's two twelve point three
inch central infotainment screens if you're not if you like they actually move onto the passenger
side as well and this is basically the hub of the Honda II it's where all the main stuff goes
on so you've got the tiles down the side here for your shortcuts of navigation the Honda a personal
assistant which I'll get onto in a second everything to do with the Eevee so you click
on that and that brings you preach our geing so preconditioning for your charge you can schedule
it to charge at certain times in electricity it's cheaper move on from that HDMI a favorite of Honda
and Japanese cars in particular and all the usual things that you'd expect and I've got to say that
this is the best Honda infotainment system that we've seen because usually it's not particularly
intuitive the graphics aren't great it's a bit slow but on this it's a really nice crisp screen
you've got some ice wallpaper backgrounds there as well and it reacts to your touch really really
quickly so that's a definite improvement from what we've seen on Honda's before you've also
got something nice where you can switch the screen from the passenger side to the driver
side and vice versa so just with this little function here so say if you get apple carplay
going but you've also got the sat-nav going on the main screen you can push the apple carplay across
to the passenger side and have the sat-nav going on the main screen so you can fiddle with that
and the passenger can choose the songs or maybe not they have a good taste of music but it's a
nice idea and it just too forged that little bit more interaction and customization that you can
get with the screens I mentioned at the Honda personal assistant this is becoming a lot more
common in cars now you've got hey Mercedes on a Mercedes you've got an equivalent system on
BMW Honda's got their very own you can summon it using a voice command and it's meant to be
an intelligent personal assistant in the way that it learns commands and it learns your voice over
time so it gets more familiar and more intuitive the more you use it and you can ask it say to go
to an Italian restaurant that's nearby and then in the press presentation that we had you could
filter that for Wi-Fi and free parking and in all honesty we haven't tried it yet but in theory it
should work quite nicely you can also get the my Honda Plus app which is something that a lot of
electric cars have got now it basically allows you to check the amount of range you've got in
the car you can set the climate control so that it comes on morning's again to get into a nice toasty
car and also got geofencing features on it too and talking of your mobile phone you can get a virtual
key or you can send a virtual key to someone so that they can get into the car drive the car off
without actually having the physical key and you can limit how much time they have it for so say
if you just want to lend the car to your son or your daughter for half a day you can do it like
that and they can't take the proverbial and just drive off and use it for the whole day so that's
a nice handy feature it's also worth mentioning that instead of a regular rearview mirror you've
got a central camera mirror system which is basically just like the side mirrors to the
cameras but instead it's your rear-view mirror and it's not as good as the ones on the side because
these all it takes some getting used to they've stayed very sharp and very clear in all the time
that we've been driving this car even in the rain the centrally mounted rearview mirror that hasn't
stayed as clear it's got fogged up with water and although they're all all the cameras are supposed
to have a hydrophobic film on them it hasn't worked as well with that and the image isn't quite
as clear so I've got to say it would probably be a bit easy if we just had a regular mirror there
however it's worth noting that that is only fitted to the advanced spec car the regular base spec
Condor II gets a regular rearview mirror finally the general cabin feel we've got this nice leather
lined wheel here there's no spokes on the lower section so it feels nice and retro we've got the
wood almost a wood shelf going across all the way across as no interruptions going from the driver
to the passenger side and it comes down on the central console to the center console obviously
there's no gear lever you've just got buttons to choose which gear you want you've also got the one
pedal button for the way that you drive the car we'll get onto that in the driving section and
overall you know this is actually a nice comfy place to spend time in because you driving the
car for you know a couple of hours now we've got plenty of support on the lumber of the seat it's
got a lot of adjustment in it so you can boost it up or lower it down as much as you want and
visibility as you can probably tell from the outside design is very good apart from a fairly
chunky c-pillar but then you do have the cameras which give you the wider view and you've got the
blind spot monitoring system as well so no real complaints there climb into the back of the Honda
II and you probably won't be expecting that much because it is a city car after all but I've got
to say I'm one point seven eight meters tall and I can sit up straight my head isn't touching the
ceiling I've got a little bit of space left there I've got enough knee room behind my own driving
position it's a bit tight on my feet just sliding them underneath the driver's seat but overall
I've got to say I've been in worse city cars so the amount of space you get back here of course
it is for seat only so there's no middle seat but then that basically means that those in the
back don't have to feel cramped with some in the middle they've got a bit more space to spread out
and you've also got a nice spread of practicality aids we've got cup holders in the doors we've got
little area there to put bits and bobs bits of change you can probably reach your way up front
and use the storage compartments just behind the center console and there's two USB points located
in the middle there so actually it's a bit of a pleasant surprise back here it's not too bad
at all the e comes with two trim levels from launch namely base spec and advanced power and
range vary between both as does equipment advanced models benefit from a heated front windscreen and
steering wheel Honda parking pilot's a premium audio system cross traffic monitor blind spot
indicator and the center camera mirror system now before we start this driving section proper
I just want to pick up on a couple of things that I said when we were in the interior and the first
is that although there is plenty of adjustment in the steering wheel as no complaints about
that if you've got it too low down you can't see the speedometer which is an ideal you've gotta
have it higher up or at least that's the case for someone who's my height also that virtual rearview
mirror or the camera based rearview mirror as it's called it does still get clogged up with water but
you can just flick it into normal mirror mode so that gets round that problem nicely every Honda
II uses a thirty five point five kilowatt battery but only advanced models get the 113 kilowatts or
154 horsepower electric motor entry-level models use a 100 kilowatt 136 horsepower unit nought to
sixty two miles an hour takes eight point three and nine seconds respectively while range is up
to 137 miles on the smaller 16-inch alloy wheel available on both trims charging times vary from
eighteen point eight hours for a full refill using a 2.3 kilowatt home charger to 4.1 hours
on a Honda power charger or 30 minutes for an 80% top-up using a 50 or 100 kilowatt rapid charger so
with all those figures in mind you'll probably notice that they're not quite as impressive as
you might expect for an electric car in 2020 but Honda isn't shying away from this they know
that the range isn't particularly high but they believe that it's enough for what the majority of
customers will need and instead of adding much more weight to the car it's 1.54 tons as it is
they've kept it a little bit lighter and a little bit simpler so we'll see if that's a good strategy
when it comes to driving the Honda II you've got a couple of choices so you've got regular driving
mode where you've got an accelerator to make it go faster and you've got a brake to make it go
slower very very normal there nothing really to shout about you can know put it in one pedal mode
with the button down here and what that basically means is that you still accelerate as normal but
when you come off the pedal the car slows down a lot more aggressively than it would if you were
just you know freewheeling to a stop in normal mode intended to make driving in town easier the
level of braking can be adjusted using the paddles behind the wheel just don't confuse them for gear
selectors and the other choice that you've got when you're driving is the regular drive mode
that we've all seen on other petrol and diesel and hybrid cars and it is normal or sport normal
just being your average comfort setting in sport when you want to have fun with the car and sharpen
up the steering well sharpen up the weight of the steering make that heavier sharpen up the
throttle response and just get the car feeling a little bit more peppy however it will start
in normal mode which is probably what you'd use when you're driving around town which is where
this car probably spend most of its time and I'm really quite impressed because we'll start off
with conventional things like ride comfort and refinement and this isn't the smoothest Road in
the world roads and Spain are usually pretty good but this one is a bit bumpy and the e is
taking it very well indeed it's got on this one it's the advanced trimmer so it's got the larger
alloy wheels but I'm still comfortable there's no crashing through potholes and the road noise is
in line with what you'd expect from a supermini a city car as well as for manoeuvrability when
you've got a nice light steering you've also got a very tight turning circle which I believe is three
point four meters which is very good indeed and actually this car is smaller than a Honda Jazz so
if you've ever driven one of those you know that they're very maneuverable and this just improves
on that because without those side mirrors taking up an extra bit of space on each side you can go
for gaps that you really wouldn't think you could but actually the Honda II will squeeze through
them what I really like though about driving the Honda II around town is that instant hit
of torque and power that you get from the electric motor because I knew a traffic light so you just
want to nip into a lay you just need that instant acceleration there's no gears to mess around with
you don't have to wait for the turbo to spool up you just put your foot down and then suddenly you
gain you know 1015 miles an hour without even thinking about it that makes it very useful and
very nippy in the situations and the circumstances when you really really need it then when you get
out of the city and put it into sport mode and this is where Honda's engineers are very proud of
what they've done with the e because they wanted to give it a sporty character and they wanted it
not just to feel like something which you'd push around city streets in the week and then leave at
home at the weekends you've got that rear wheel drive drivetrain you've got a 50/50 very even
weight distribution and you've also got to know how a Honda who have made some pretty good sports
cars in their time and it shows because although this is still a city car and a supermini and
it does roll a bit in corners and as I said it weighs 1.5 tons which is pretty heavy for a car
of this size you can't have genuine fun with it it feels real wheel drive when you turn into a corner
and get on the power a little bit early the back just push it around ever so slightly it's not too
hair-raising it's just enough to make you feel like wow this actually is rear-wheel drive and
the electric motor I know there's a big question over how fun electric cars can be when you compare
them to petrol cars and petrol sports cars but I really think it helps it out it suits this kind of
car and Honda's integrated it really nicely indeed I've had a fair bit of time in the Honda II now to
get some really good first impressions of it and I've got to say that first off it won't be for
everyone this isn't the electric car that's going to solve every issue but if you want an electric
city car an electric supermini this has got to be very near or at the top of your list and what I
really really like about it is that it seems we've now got to the point or honda has announced that
we've got to the point with electric cars of it not all being about how much range it's got or
how fast it is because as we said this has got a fairly moderate range it's not hugely quick
but it's quick enough and the range it should be enough for most buyers what Honda's done instead
is stopped apologizing for this being an electric car and actually made it something which feels
comfortable in its own skin and a car that I can't really imagine it not being electric I don't think
it'd be as good as you know if it was petrol or diesel and they've made something which has got a
genuinely unique cabin it's got genuinely unique styling it's packed with technology with safety
kits with connectivity and there's enough room in the back for a couple of passengers it's gone
beyond that cutesy retro styling that everyone was so impressed with when we first saw prototypes of
the car and it's actually followed it art with what feels like a really well sorted little city
car and I'm really pleased to say that because I actually hope this thing would be good and it is