Sam Burnett
HONDA e:Ny1 ADVANCE
Is this Honda’s first proper EV? Put it this way, if you set off in a Honda e now, it would need charging before you got to the end of this sentence. The name of the new car isn’t a clever acronym and it’s three characters too short to be a password – it’s the Japanese carmaker’s first EV off its new e:N platform. So there. Apparently it also stands for ‘energise yourself’, which is like getting down with your bad self but with fewer emissions.
The company is energising itself for a bright new electric future with a white badge up front and Honda written on the back of the car in a different font to show how really different it all is. Only it’s not really different, it’s all Honda by numbers here. The latest interiors from the firm are nice enough – minimalist, quite smart, decent quality. Although the effect is marred somewhat by the enormous 15.1in central screen that doesn’t even function as an enormous central screen, but is permanently divided into thirds. Now listen, we don’t ask much, but if you’re going to have a bit of touchscreen that’s permanently allocated to the aircon, just put some buttons in. Easy peasy.
The e:Ny1 has a 62kWh battery, with the cells distributed underneath the floor of the cabin and beneath the seats – which slightly compromises the front passenger experience. It has an official WLTP range of 256 miles, and on mixed roads in mild wet weather we got around 4mpkWh from the car, which is fairly respectable. It’ll do 0–62mph in 7.6secs, which is speedy enough for a family ru
