New Honda Compact EV illustration.
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Honda has been mentioning an affordable compact EV for years now. It seems we will finally see what they have in mind in just a few days at the upcoming Auto Show in Tokyo.
Honda will unveil 2 new EV concepts at the show. One will be a “new Honda 0 Series model”. Which is pretty vague and could be anything. No official word yet, but it would be a preview of a third member of the 0 Series family. Which already includes a sedan and an SUV. The 0 Series SUV is scheduled to come out very soon and will be built in the US starting next year. With a production version of the O Series saloon sedan coming later.
This new, 3rd model, will probably be another SUV. However, it was reported last July that Honda had canceled a larger 3-row EV SUV. Depending on what that new concept is, the report might have been wrong.
Honda will show a second concept at the show, and it will be a small EV. A “Prototype for a compact EV”. It seems the compact, affordable EV market is heating up, even in the US. The new 2027 Bolt and the new Nissan Leaf were just introduced, and the Kia EV3 is still scheduled to come over here as well. And I am sure Honda will want to participate in the festivities.
A few years ago, Honda announced a partnership with GM to build a small, affordable EV for the US market. One that was probably based on the Chevrolet Bolt. Instead, we only got the Prologue and ZDX. As the smaller model was canceled.
It seems Honda wasted no time developing their own compact EV.
The illustration above shows what a new small Honda EV, with a bit of a retro flair, could look like.
Honda has seen relatively good sales with the Prologue, especially compared to the Acura ZDX counterpart. Yes, they’ve had to incentivize it. But we should expect that a Honda prototype version of the coming Acura RSX will debut next year. It will have largely the same body-in-white proportions as the compact class RSX. These are both considered 0-Series. I don’t believe the Saloon will end up being produced and I highly suspect the Afeela1 will be cancelled pre-production around the start of next year.
The larger Honda worldwide organization has already been hard at work producing a Kei class EV – already debuted in Japan. I expect a subcompact size EV product to follow that may or may not come to the US.