Hond E

LIFE with the little Honda e, given the rather trying circumstances we’re all living through at the moment, is a genuinely uplifting experience. It’s a car that puzzles, delights and shocks people every day; some laugh, some point and some try to grab a picture with their smartphone. Wherever it goes, its presence provokes a reaction I’ve not had with any other car in the eight years that I’ve worked at Auto Express.

But behind the cutesy looks and pop-out door handles is a car that does require some sacrifice to live with – although day to day, in and around West London where I live, the Honda is a breeze to run. There’s a public charger 30 seconds from my flat, where it can be charged overnight for about £10, and its dinky dimensions and hilariously small turning circle make parking and battling London traffic fun. Almost...

Outside of London, however, things do get a little tricky. Last summer, not long after I collected the car, I had to make a 550-mile trip from Milton Keynes, Bucks, up to Newcastle and then back down to London. Knowing that the Honda was going to spend the majority of its time within the confines of the M25 the rest of the time, I thought it would be an interesting – and anxiety-inducing – test to see how the Honda fared.

With a bit of planning and plenty of patience, the journey was not as painful as I had imagined. The first 240-mile leg, for example, involved five and a half hours of driving and just over an hour and a half of charging to get to the North East. It was cheap, too, costing me only £15.18 in electricity, and getting around 120 miles out of a charge was much better than I had expected on the motorway. On average, I was seeing around four miles per kWh.

One thing I did have to adapt was my driving style. It seems there is a sweet spot, at around 60mph, where you can maximise the Honda’s range. Any quicker and there’s a noticeable drop off in terms of economy, so sharing the inside lane with HGVs and other thrifty EV owners is something I had to get

used to. But the Honda is a great cruiser with superb refinement and a brilliant ride quality for such a small car.

In fact, the Honda almost did much of the driving for me, because the trip gave me the opportunity to use the car’s decent adaptive cruise control and lanekeep assist systems. Again, finding this sort of kit on a car this small is quite rare. But then again, the Honda is far from cheap.

Fast forward several months to the winter, and life with the Honda becomes a very different ball game. During the warmer months, getting 120 miles on a full charge was little effort, but once the temperature drops to single figures, the range falls to around 80 miles – that’s quite some difference and requires another level of planning if you intend to make longer journeys.

No matter how carefully you drive, or how good you are at leaning on the regenerative braking and reading the traffic ahead, winter is not the electric car’s friend. I even inflated the tyres to 40psi to see if that would make any difference, but it didn’t. However, this isn’t a problem specific to the Honda, because most other electric cars suffer from the same ‘phantom’ range during the winter months.

I’ve also found that the estimated range from the Honda’s trip computer is quite the pessimist. On a cold day with a full battery, the readout has often said that only 60 miles will be possible, when in reality I’ve driven closer to 80. Having said that, if the readout was being optimistic it would be a far greater issue.