In yet another example of want-it-can’t-have-it from companies which sling cars on both sides of the pond, Honda has introduced a Limited Edition of its spellcheck-vexing ‘e’ all-electric city car. Appearing next to the machine is one Max Verstappen, who appears to somehow be standing on his own without support from ex-F1 race director Michael Masi.

This so-called Limited Edition is essentially a paint and wallpaper job, since it adds items like a unique Crystal Red paint shade unavailable on other trims, snappy black accents, and a set of 17-inch alloys (also dipped in a pot of inky paint, of course). The LE is built from a top-spec Advance trim which includes tech such as clever multi-view cameras on the doors and a heated windshield.

As an aside, does anyone else recall Ford’s Insta-Clear windshields from the late-‘80s and early-‘90s? It was a technology which essentially sandwiched the basic guts of a rear-window defrost system between two panes of glass so the driver could hit a button and be rewarded with an ice-free windshield in jig time. This author vaguely remembers being able to spot them on Crown Vics thanks to their pinkish or copper-like hue. Surely such a feature on an EV must hoover plenty of electrons from the limited supply in the 35.5 kWh battery of a Honda e.

That battery is, most likely, one of the reasons Honda does not offer this car stateside. Even the wildly optimistic WLTP estimates place the e’s range at a maximum of just 137 miles, a round-trip distance most midwesteners must travel to get a fresh gallon of milk in the morning. With cars like the Chevy Bolt and Hyundai Ioniq 5 getting nearly double that distance on a full charge, it’s easy to understand why Honda thinks the e won’t make a go of it in this country. Witness the Mazda MX-30, a otherwise slick-looking and attractive EV with a battery capacity roughly equal to the Honda e and an EPA-rated driving range of just, um, 100 miles. Last month, Mazda sold 23 of them in California. Hyundai sold 2,853 Ioniq 5 models in twenty-six states.

But we will maintain the Honda e looks tremendously retro in a forward-looking sort of way. If the little scamp had a bigger battery or range extender, it’d probably make bank on its looks alone (for comment on that phenomenon, we go live to the TTAC studio in Hollywood). The e makes 136 horsepower, if you’re wondering, and 232 lb.-ft of torque. It is priced at about 35,000 pounds in Britain, translating to roughly 42 grand at today’s exchange rate – about ten large more than a base MX-30.

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No Instaclear on any Panther that was exclusive to the Taurus and its siblings.

An EV is the perfect application as it will use much less energy that trying to heat up some coolant, pump that around through a heater core to heat up the air and use that hot air to clear the windshield. Yes it is a high current draw item but it is only used for a very short time period. On the other hand a resistive heater, or heat pump, is going to draw much more current for a much longer time.

It’s listed as an option for the 1991 Crown Vic in LX trim – link below – but maybe it was a Canadian thing. Thanks for reading!

https://www.xr793.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/1991-Ford-LTD-Crown-Victoria.pdf

Our early Leaf has a resistive grid as the main heater (the heat pump style heater came on later models). Yes, this is why even on a base “S” trim model all 4 seats and the steering wheel are heated…It is way less energy than firing up the main cabin heater.

This would be an ideal car for short trips like to the grocery store and short commuting. Honda should offer this with a 200 mile range battery.

… then it wouldn’t be so compact and urban-y, with a presumably much larger battery.

I can’t have one? That’s fine, I don’t want one.

I would replace my Bolt with this in half a heartbeat if it were available here. The range is fine for the way we use the car and the looks are just brilliant.

On the Instaclear thing… my Highlander has a feature like that. But it’s not for the entire windshield, it’s just for the area where the wipers rest, to unstick them if they freeze in place.

It’s also very small inside.

Cute cars end up as internet/media darlings that people don’t actually buy. Nissan Cube, Nissan Micra, and Fiat 500 come to mind first. Honda is wise to not bring it stateside. Mazda is wasting their time with the MX-30, as usual.

Now it’s happening with small EVs. People see the range, then the dimensions, then the price, and ask what else they can get for that money. In parallel, small EVs tend to be money-losers, so mfrs prefer to go larger.

KIA Soul doing good – But generally in the US, anything with charm and any sort of grace, will not make the cut. Maybe they could mount a machine gun on it and have a best seller.

With giant ICE powertrains, the benefits from shrinking the car built around it, is generally not that great.

For BEVs, the benefits huge. Doubly so for rwd ones like this. This thing has a turning radius accommodating clean u-turns in back alleys. For an urban car, that’s a very unique selling proposition. And one that’s almost impossibly hard to match when you have an engine between the front wheels. Harder still, when you also need to direct power to those wheels.

Once you get to “main car” sizes, ICEs and hybrids are almost invariably a better choice than BEVs anyway.

Cars like this, is what BEVs should be. Unless you live in the absolute middle of nowhere (further out than “suburban” Dawson City. Even there I could see taking this, at least during summer festival season.), you’d likely take this sucker for small errands instead of the Suburban, if you had both. In the process “saving the environment” (from soda bubbles, but still….) from exactly the worst sort of trips as far as large ICE engines are concerned.

If it wasn’t for the pointless idiocy of promoting monster BEVs weighing more than said Suburban, half of that weight consisting of nothing but scarce Lithium being moved back and forth, back and forth like some sort of transportation-idiocy groundhog day: Lithium may just about have remained inexpensive enough to allow more people to afford such a second car as well.

“Appearing next to the machine is one Max Verstappen, who appears to somehow be standing on his own without support from ex-F1 race director Michael Masi.” El droppo del Mic-0. LOL

Missed that part about it not being available state side. No big deal I am in no big hurry to get an EV, I can wait.

“must travel to get a fresh gallon of milk in the morning”

Here’s a life tip for the Non-Very-Wealthy: – Cow’s milk expires pretty quickly – Organic cow’s milk lasts longer (because of the treatment process) – Almond milk lasts longer than that

So if you like having milk on hand, but your teenagers grew up and ran away from home, and you spent all your grocery money on gasoline and car parts, there you go.

Ultra-pasteurized cow milk is a miracle. It has long since become the default milk in Europe and it should be here too. It will last many weeks before opening and at least a couple of weeks after opening, and the taste is also more consistently good.

If you are really into environmentally conscious milk, oat milk is a much better choice than almond milk because almonds are such a water-intensive crop. I think it tastes better, too.

I got the store brand almond milk because it was exactly the same price as the (low-rent) store brand dairy milk, and I won’t have to pour half of it out. And then I bought more ATF+4 because the Jeep isn’t done with me yet (sing along: “trans oil cooler connected to the… a/c condenser”).

But I will add oat milk to my list of Aspirational Goods to Try Someday if and When the Economy Bounces Back and My Savings becomes Worth Something Again. (Oat milk and maybe a Telluride — or one of them Teslas. Another 50 bucks lost to Big Oil today, and I only drove six miles.)

Oat milk also tastes sensational in coffee.

But I agree with your first paragraph wholeheartedly: as a DINK household, the extra time allowed by ultrapasteurized milk more than makes up for the price difference, and standard non-organic lowfat tastes like watered-down skim milk by comparison.

Having fairly recently switched from dairy milk to almond milk your recommendation of oat milk has raised my curiosity. Will now have to try it. As for dairy milk, the milk in the UK to my mind tastes better than that in Canada. And Canadian dairy milk has far less exposure to ‘additives’ (antibiotics and growth hormones than American milk. However in Ontario our milk comes in plastic bags. Which I still find off putting.

You haven’t bought factory cow milk recently, have you? The use-by-dates are well into the future!

Unpasturized water buffalo milk makes the best mozerella though.

The range on the compliance Fiat 500e was 87 miles which for many people is good enough as a city car or light commuter. It’s replacement has a range of 199 miles. If there was a market for city cars like this Honda with a 137 mile range I can see a case for it here in the states but seems unlikely which is too bad because I do like it’s retro non electric car styling.

Hilarious Max joke. I’m sure Max and Horner are looking for someone to lobby this year. They’re a bunch of manipulative cry babies.

Just wondering… for $165,400, will they make mirror image wheels for the right side of the car?

Or will the passenger see those exclusive blue brake calipers behind 22″ wheel spokes that point backwards?

Preludes and CRX’s had spinny rims solved in the early 90s. Can Audi match Honda’s effort in the ’20s?

( Reference: https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/tag/directional-wheels/ )

If you want to look like a bigger jerk-stick than a Tesla owner, then Honda has a solution for you!

• No garbage comments lying around here!

You know, I get it…grass is always greener and car guys always want the forbidden fruit, but I honestly would get one of these for commuter duth given the chance.

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