Seems the retro-cool concept was too cool to ignore.
Japanese marque Honda may have been caught by surprise at the 2017 Frankfurt show, when large crowds were drawn around their Urban EV compact car concept. Armed with a throwback design fitted over a future-is-now powertrain, the Urban EV was so unabashedly hip that Honda may have been forced to put it into production.
That’s right. Hopefully before the end of this year (hopefully), the Urban EV might be an actual thing that you can buy with real big-boy money. What joy.
At this year’s Geneva motor show that’ll be opening its doors in March, Honda intends to show off a late-stage prototype of the production car, which we reckon won’t be too far behind. The design & proportions are expected to remain faithful to the concept minus the look-at-me bits like the ‘communicative’ grille,’ but it will adopt a 5-door body style with conventionally-hinged doors though.
Honda says that the car will maintain a “focus on functionality and purpose” through design, which as far as we’re concerned means the design will (gasp!) consider how people use and interact with their cars. What’s interesting is that spotted prototypes in Europe have shown off a car without door mirrors, which suggests that Honda might just go the same path as Audi and can them altogether in the name of aerodynamics.
While the design will be groundbreaking, the powertrain may not be. We’re not expecting radically-different things under the skin, with the Urban EV (or whatever the hell they’ll christen it) expected to offer a range between 250-350km on a single charge with a large bank of lithium-ion batteries housed somewhere within.
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