AMAZING small EV, with an ENORMOUS weakness! Honda Super N 1st Drive!

So I parked the car somewhere around here while we were setting up the cameras. I can't find it, it just blends into the background, it's so subtle and quiet. It's here. So we just drove through a supermarket car park in this car and do you know what, people stopped and stared and they went like that as it went past and then two young lads asked about what it was and you know, I haven't driven a car like that for a long time which people notice. You notice this car. One of the reasons might be because it's purple which is quite bright, you don't miss that, but also much more importantly it's under £20,000. This is a £19,000, just under £19,000. £18,999. There's one type, there's no clever special extra trimmings, there's only one variation of it and it comes with all the same stuff. We've looked at it first when it was first released, we looked at it in a studio, this is the first time I've driven it. I've driven about 80 miles to get here and I was achieving five miles to the kilowatt hour easily and most of that journey was on a motorway so I was fanging it down a motorway at the legal speed limit which for this car is quite fast but it's very stable, it stuck to the road, it was not having any problems, it's got adaptive cruise control but five miles to kilowatt hour is very very energy efficient. Most electric cars get between two and maybe four, that's sort of really average for lots and lots of different electric cars we've driven. This one is really exceptional at that speed. Any car can get five miles to the kilowatt hour if it's going downhill with the following wind. This was going uphills, downhills on motorways. It's very light, it's incredibly light for an electric car. The Renault Twingo which has just come out which is a super compact super lightweight car is 200 kilograms heavier than this. That is the Honda N and this is Everything Electric Cars. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean energy tech are funded by our fun-packed test drive-tastic events in the UK and Australia. Next up Everything Electric Greater London and then Sydney. All events include a B2B EV day and commercial vehicles too. And now back to the episode. So the Honda Super N, I mean I don't know why it's called the Super N, I'm sure it is because it's it's potentially sporty and one of the reasons it could be classified as sporty is because of this little button on the steering wheel called the boost button. I shall press it now. That is quite, this is very cute. I've got to be careful because there's cows wandering around on this road because we're on a common. The Hyundai 5N makes a noise, you can turn it on so it makes noise and it genuinely feels that it's going faster when you have the noise on than faster than when it isn't. But the thing is that car is incredibly fast, it's really really quick and the difference between not having boost on and having boost on in this car is quite difficult to discern. It doesn't make a massive difference, I mean it's quite cute but it's not like oh my god that's spectacularly powerful. Now here's something I really really love, quite a few electric cars have paddles on the steering wheel where you can increase and decrease the regenerative braking so that you don't have to use the mechanical brakes and this car has those. I'm going to increase the braking on using the plus paddle now so I'll just keep putting it on, there you go, that's maximum. Will it come to a complete stop? No it doesn't, so that isn't one pedal at the moment and that's setting I haven't found yet. But what happens is it immediately goes as soon as you press the accelerator, the regen's gone now, now it's free wheeling. I think that's really clever, it confused me to start with because I thought it was on regen because I'd put it on with the thing. It only stays on while you're slowing down, as soon as you've slowed down it turns off and actually that is really good because if there's one thing regen can do it's make passengers feel a bit because you know it gets a bit lurchy. I always use a lot of regen when I'm driving on my own so now we're just freewheeling, I'm not putting my foot down on anything it's just flowing along very nicely and then I can put the regen on and that slows it down quite noticeably but then as soon as I put my foot down all the regen's gone. You only want regen when you're slowing down, you don't want it when you're you know like take my foot off now because we're driving and we don't need to go any faster, it's really really smooth. There's some little idiosyncrasies with this car that I've never come across on other cars and I think other manufacturers should have a look, I think they've got it really quite well done. Now we've got a massive queue of cows it's fantastic they've all decided to stand in the middle of the road they're all having a chat oh it's very cute, slightly annoying if you were say late for the dentist. So we did review this car when Honda first revealed it earlier this year so we've kind of discussed the overall look and the sort of the aesthetic of it so if you want to see that the link is in the show notes but now I've actually driven it a few times and uh and you know I want to talk about the things I really like and the things that are slightly not so good. So it is a small compact car now it's a K car in Japan I've only really recently understood what that means that has to fit a very strict series of criteria in length in width in height and in weight and this car does fit all those except it's kind of got a bit wider because it's got the little flares flared wheel arches. So I want to show you some of the things I do like and it starts with this I know this is silly but it's for real this is the charging port so it's at the front I actually do like that wherever your charger is whatever side the charger is it doesn't matter you drive in front nose first and then you get here and you go oh it's got a little electronic catch as well it always opens it's chunky it's a thick chunky lump of plastic it's really good there's your two charge ports this rock hard that is that it's made of recycled Honda bumpers from old Honda cars that's clever isn't it and then it closes beautifully it just goes like that and you press it oh that is nice so you've got to remember this is a very very it's a very economic very lightweight car it's all about making it as light as possible but the doors now listen to this this is beautiful you imagine a Mercedes really high-end Mercedes and you shut the door on a Mercedes oh it's got that true sound now listen to this this is the front door imagine you've just delivered some bread to a supermarket and you're in a van and you shut the door that is a van door that's great Billy shut the door so I think the basic thing about this car is it's basic it's very very stripped down it's the minimum amount of stuff you can put in a car it's got lots of buttons physical buttons I'll tell you the things I've experienced because it's been very very hot in the UK recently that's not unusual anymore it's just normal is the air conditioning works it's really good that blasts really cold air out at you that works very well I watched the potential range it reduced by two miles when I had the air con on blatting out full blast because it was so boiling hot apparently I've heard from a reliable source that the steering wheel is covered with real recycled cow otherwise known as leather the seats though I really love this are made of recycled Honda employee uniforms so they're all issued with their lovely zip-up jackets and their special trousers in the factories and when they get a bit worn out they mash them up make them into a new material and that's what the seats are so they claim everything is plastic and light it's all about being lightweight the adaptive cruise control works really well very very reliable it's very easy to set up the information you get on the little screen in front of me very clear I know I've got 77 miles of pure electric range at the moment that's at 63 percent of the battery the mileage prediction and actual real world is very very close it says it has 128 miles of range I would say it was about 127 and three quarters it's really really close there's no sat-nav the car has no sat-nav it took me a while to work out that it really doesn't have it but it has all these different things and they click and they've got a bit of physical buttons that's the volume that works really well but the the screen is sort of it's quite responsive but you can look at the trip meter there I've done 5.1 miles to the kilowatt hour I can see that on trip a uh it's extremely basic so you plug your phone in whatever that happens and you've got your sat-nav on there and that's what you use because it doesn't have one what else has it got it has a heated steering wheel and heated seat as standard that one of the things that slightly annoys me and it's fine and it's just being fussy because other cars don't do it but when you get in this car and I sit there and wait for it to start nothing happens you've got to press a button to make it start that's fine I can deal with that but then I get out when I finish driving and you've got to remember to press the button which I always forget you've got to turn it off that is very 1990 the thing is I think again we're now used to cars that can do generally about 200 miles on a charge and this really can't this does like it would be about 110 in the winter and 120 30 in the summer you know that is kind of very very minimal it charges at 50 kilowatts that's as fast as it can charge on a on a rapid charger and 11 kilowatts at your house or seven it might even be seven so it's not a fast charging car you wouldn't really want to do a long trip in it you could but why would you just use it for driving around town brilliant for that but now we've got evidence of how popular this car is when people see it the people in that car over there are filming us filming this because they've just seen this little purple car parked on the common and it'll be all around the local town there'll be hundreds of people coming out here soon to take pictures so one of the abiding mysteries of the changes that have happened with electric cars over the last 15 years is japan's role in this because you know japan were at the very forefront of understanding how to use lithium-ion batteries ironically the battery was invented the lithium-ion rechargeable battery was invented in oxford in the uk in the late 1970s early 80s and it was that no one was interested in it it was completely ignored until some executives from sony flew over from japan and bought the rights to it and they first adopted the use of rechargeable batteries for their small electronics for camcorders and sony walkman and all these very early bits of electronic technology and somehow that didn't translate into you know more recently into into kind of being at the forefront of using electric vehicles they've been really behind the honda made the the um the honda e which is a fantastic little car but it was very compromised by by the size of the battery by its range it was also very very expensive it was kind of the the technology and it was remarkable and amazing but just it just didn't sell i think i would imagine they lost money in it and they haven't done anything and this is now many years later they've introduced this well this makes more sense i would argue because it's you know a small light urban car for really ideal for driving around towns in which is what i'm doing at the moment even though this is a very delightful old town but it's just perfect for for an urban environment it's incredibly easy to park it's very maneuverable it's very economic it uses virtually no electricity it would if you lived in a city and you use this every day you'd probably charge it once maybe twice a week even though it's got limited range so it makes a lot more sense than the honda re it's much much cheaper it's a sub 20 000 pound car in the uk it will be much cheaper than that in other in other jurisdictions i'm sure you know that makes more sense so that's why i kind of like this car and i've really enjoyed driving it's a great car to drive it really is it's a you know a pleasure to drive it i just wish they'd done you know a little bit more with them you know maybe try and work out how to get a little bit more range out of it a little bit more battery would have been a great help but look at that turns around so so easily it's you know that side of it is just amazing and i mean i could park any of these little spaces and gaps along here i can and park in them you wouldn't think twice i managed to park outside the busiest little town square the other day right outside the post office which is where i needed to go no other car would have been able to park in that space if you've got a car that's this teeny teeny it just makes it really easy and that sort of brings joy because a lot of the cars we've driven in the last 16 years have been pretty chunky hunky things amazing range lots of luxury lots of incredible technology but don't try and park it in italy oh my goodness this thing would be fantastic in italy so sadly this car is being picked up by honda tomorrow i won't have it anymore and i have genuinely really enjoyed driving it so uh you know i thought it's worth covering because it's an interesting little car it's not really expensive it's very light it's very cheap to operate it's beautifully made it's not a rubbish it's you know honda they're kind of so it's a it's a quality machine it's just you know just the peculiarities of the global transition to electric vehicles anyway that's all we've got time for i'm gonna go and have a nice lolly now uh please do tell your friends about the about the everything electric show please do subscribe if you haven't already and as always if you have been you know what thank you for watching