Honda debuts new global EV series, Honda Zero, coming in 2026
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/9/24030236/honda-zero-ev-global-series-concept-cesOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works325
Comments99https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/9/24030236/honda-zero-ev-global-series-concept-cesOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works
I really wish car companies would actually release production models that looked like the concept models. These look so goddamn cool.
I don’t need to see out the back if I’m staring into the future!
No you don't. They look cool and get you thinking you want them. However if you ever had to live with them instead of just looking you would quickly discover some of those cool looking things make for very annoying compromises and so you wouldn't want them.
"hi, dealership, I'm looking for a car that looks like an oversized Amazon package and rides like I'm in a trashcan being kicked by a mule. You say you have plenty of jeeps available? Perfect."
If people actually wanted that, Jeep wouldn't keep making it more complicated and awkward to do with each new generation.
At that point just get a normal car and a dedicated UTV for offroading
I rented a jeep (Cherokee?) for the first time recently. Literally a worse driving experience than my old 2000 Mitsubishi Galant. Which was the worst ever, prior to the jeep.
lol, my first car was a Jeep. Fun car.
never bought another one, though.
'96-’01?
given your story, it sounds like you did your best to drive that thing into the ground (not judging). I’m glad you had fun with it, as that’s what they’re for, although, you probably would have gotten many more years out of it had you actually driven it like a car and on the street (also, regular maintenance). just sayin’.
given your follow-up, it was obviously not a long-term choice (is it for anyone?), and I’m glad you’ve found what works for you. I discovered that my vehicle of choice is the NYC Subway! But, fuck, I REALLY miss my 2001 Honda Accord EX Coupe! That car was the shit!
edit: I changed out the headers, injectors, and spark plugs, had a friend replace the muffler, and replaced the air intake, and took that ca from 195HP to 245hp. it was so light, that such an increase was huge, and the transmission was delightful, with a trick in the accelerator where you could get it to shift up or down if you knew how to tap it just right. and that spoiler? smoooooth.
Look, Jeeps are only for fun, and if you buy one, knowing that, all the more power to you. Enjoy it.
As for living in NYC, that’s a lifestyle choice, and you either love it or hate it. I loved it, and it was the lifestyle choice that worked for me. It is not for everyone, I repeat: it is not for everyone, but if it is for you, It’s the only choice for you.
But I will say, my favorite car was my 2001 Honda Accord ex coupe. That car was fucking awesome. If I were in the market for another car right now, it would be between that, and a 2023 or 2024 Toyota Corolla hybrid.
I would go for EV if I could afford it, but I cannot at the moment. And, frankly, I’m trying to get back to New York, so I don’t even want to buy a car at all right now.
I also think they're cool. I also wouldn't own one because of how incredibly out of place they look.
Chrysler used to do that. Did you ever put your money where your mouth is and buy a P.T. Cruiser, Prowler, or Crossfire?
I really wanted a crossfire, but couldn’t afford one at the time
Hell yeah, I owned a PT for about a year, that car was fun to drive. Never been able to hold the gas pedal to the floor for as long in any other car!
LOL, I see what you did there.
Fiat 500, my friend.
If in was in my 50's having a raging midlife crisis, I would totally get a prowler
Tron: Legacy soundtrack comes preloaded
hans zimmer actually made a soundpack for some BMW models, imagine having hiroyuki sawano make one for their cars.
Daft Punk for the Honda Tron Remix 2.0 album or gtfo
How wonderful that would be
That wss Louis Armstrong
Doubt
Does cruise control and lane assist count as "partially autonomous"?
They'll say anything buzzwordy to hype investors
Fully Autonomous is nowhere near ready
Just make a regular looking car that happens to be EV. I don’t know why manufacturers have to make the dumbest looking vehicles for their EV cars.
Styles are changing, I guess they're focus grouping it and people want cars from blade runner. No longer requiring a radiator or exhaust has actually produced some interesting designs.
I would rather just have more storage. I think lucid did it right for EV design, same with Rivian. Seems like the legacy car manufacturers always make a goofy design. The lucid air for example is a foot shorter than the S class but has more space.
Practical EVs exist too. It's an open market so there will be something for everyone I'm sure. If you really hate EV design you can buy the conversion kits for a classic.
Lots of visibility with such a small front end, but it’ll make head-on collisions scarier, also, imo. Looks aerodynamic, too. I’d have no issue rocking this for my daily.
Money would be the issue for me.
Just give me a standard car with an electric engine.
Depending on your commute, a used Nissan Leaf will get you back and forth for 5k to 10k. If you have a long commute, used Model S can be had as low as 20k, but it comes with some negative connotations.
If you don't necessarily want to plug in and efficiency is good enough, old reliable Priuses are getting pretty cheap.
I wouldn't worry about it too much, the concept cars always look sleek and then the manufacturers poop out something that looks way more standard. See: the Chevy Volt.
I'm with you on this. I feel like manufacturers still feel like people are wanting to make a statement by making EVs look like their suited for spaceflight. I'd rather have near similar looking models to what we've already got with the combustion engine, with aerodynamic considerations for efficiency baked in.
Marginally nicer looking than the cybertruck. I would steal this in GTA if I played GTA and it was a car in the game
Don’t worry, folks. Most of the time, concept cars exist solely to look interesting and get people talking, especially when it’s from a major manufacturer. I’m sure the production model will be much more
boringappealing to the masses.I just want the damn Honda E little hatchback thing in the US
Looks amazing, but is also $48,000 USD for a very small car. I drive a 89 CRX so I do love small cars, just that is way too much.
All evs are overpriced right now sadly
Ever notice how all the new selling points for cars are all things to avoid the experience of driving a car:
-self driving (because why would you want to drive a car)
-giant screens (because why would you want to look at all the shitty strip malls)
-tinted windows (because you wouldn't want to be seen driving this piece of shit)
Don't use it/pay for self driving option
People have been putting screens in cars for a very long time.
People have been tinting windows for a very long time
Are you trying to counter what the other commenter said or trying to make a point or something? Because you really have not at all.
That’s all that cars have become. It’s great for anyone who doesn’t like driving, it sucks for anyone who enjoys it
It looks like the head of a vacuum cleaner. Or a Star Trek TOS phaser.
They look great imo, but the full self driving is a pipe dream.
I dunno. If there is a culture that I think has innovated great ideas into reality it's the Japanese car companies. They took what we wanted in the 80s and made it happen. Then kept doing it.
So the car will be terrible for several years, then they'll bring out a model that's amazing with sales going through the roof, and then they'll immediately pull out of the market.
Continuing the trend of completely butchering the rear end of the vehicle as is the case with many other modern cars aswell.
Seems they looked at nature for inspiration and baboon rear-ends were their take-away.
Oh yeah, when you see a lady driving one of these things around, you'll know she's in heat with her swollen red rear-end. boom-chica-wowow
Make a CRX-E
I'll second that!
I really hope that back end is the charging port and you get to park you car like one of those toy cars that you you 'charge' up and fire across the room.
Someone at Honda looked at the failure that is the Cybertruck and was like "Huh... not bad"
The difference here is that the car in the picture is a concept car, which very very rarely ever makes it to production as is. The Cybertruck is the exception to that rule...
Oh don't worry, the real Cybertruck is much worse than the concept!
Looks like someone watched The Wraith recently.
I wasn't gonna bother to click through, but now you sold me.
It's only list! Just got it
Why do these concept vehicles always have to look this dumb and impractical? Why can’t we get EU sized personal electric vehicles? Think Fiat 500 or the Renault Twingo?
Cuz you guys don't buy them. Got another easy question?
Also because of the way emissions standards are enforced in the US, SUVs and trucks are held to lower emissions standards making them more profitable. They receive the heaviest marketing and therefore sell the most.
Holy fuck, do I love capitalism.
Doesn’t BMW have a little electric commuter?
What do you mean? You will have an electric Fiat 500 in 2024.
I'm never getting my EV 1989 VW GTI, am I?
As a resto mod? Possibly.
As a modern EV? Never.
Fine! I'll make my own 1989 VW GTI EV! With blackjack! And hookers!
All things considered that would be a doable e-swap. I'm not sure you're getting AWD, or much battery life, but it would be doable.
Why would I want AWD? How would I put cafeteria trays under the rear tires and do donuts?
Wait, no side mirrors AND you can't see out the back? I guess you can only ever go forward in this thing or just hope there's nothing behind you ever (I'm guessing they have rear-facing cameras, but those suck).
Prototypes look cooler without mirrors, they always add them after
Still tops the current gen civic...
We need some more future cars like this.
Why does all our shit looks like someone just smoothed out the cars from the 90s?
Because making cars more aerodynamic was way easier than making ICEs more efficient.
Because the "smoothed out the cars from the 90s" are practical, serviceable and (American pickups aside) not gargantuan space hogs.
Hey, you leave Space Hog outta this. I miss those guys.
Because this looks like shit? Its an even uglier cyber truck.
Someone chopped the roof off?
And the side mirrors.
It’s so ugly
I’m sure I’ll see a ton of them, but they’re horrible looking
They're concept cars. Concept cars always look weird. The actual production models won't look anything like them; they never do.
Yup. Bumpers are a thing.
They are awesome! It’s like what I imagined the future would be when I was a little kid. They’re ugly and weird, but the sporty one is cool. Shit, I’d even take the van if the range is good.
I'm been hearing about all sorts of electric vehicles that will be available "a few years from now" for over five years now. The few that have come out are expensive and have compromises. Guess I'll be sticking with my plug-in hybrid for quite a while longer.
Countach vibes…
Back to the Future II vibes. Never mind that its "future" setting was nine years ago...
Did they license the trademark from Mitsubishi?
Give me an electric Element - something with cargo space and rapid reconfigurability.
It seemed like Honda was going in the right direction with the eCity, but so much for that, I guess.
This is revolutionary, folks: e-Axles! Can you believe it? They made an electric car!
They're describing an electric car.
Then they gave it a fancy proprietary name so gullible tech writers think it's Technology™️ and regurgitate their ad copy as news articles.
To be fair e-axles are actually a thing. You can mount the electric motor where an engine would be and use largely the same components as a traditional car to get the motion to the wheels. Instead e-axles basically wrap all the motion components around the axle. Motor trend had an article about it a while ago.
www.motortrend.com/news/e-axle-vs-central-drive-motor-layout-commercial-evs
So it's basically a fancy Technology™️ term for a layout decision which was called motor on axle for decades until a marketing department decided they needed some Innovation™️, and this tech writer described it so poorly I couldn't even identify it even though I've programmed quad motor torque vectoring systems myself.
Electric motors have this interesting property where they require such minimal supporting components - basically a couple of power wires and some sensors - that they can scale to any size with very little overhead, and so you can do 4 motors. That's it, electric cars give you this possibility for free.
"Motor-on-axle" is descriptive and helpful. In fact it's too descriptive, because it reveals that nothing special is going on. "e-Axle" is opaque nonsense for gullible tech writers, and this one tried to make it sound special but ended up opting for such vague language that they literally just described an electric car.
This entire article is just ad-copy. It's fashion writing for tech nerds.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
I've programmed quad motor torque vectoring systems myself
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Many of the EVs hitting the US market this year are big, heavy SUVs and trucks, complementing a broader trend in car buying that has seen some companies stop making sedans altogether.
A marketing video featured a retractable steering wheel that emerges from the dash when needed, suggesting that customers will be able to toggle between human and robot driving as the mood fits.
Honda is also aiming for optimum battery efficiency through its use of e-Axles, a system consisting of a motor, inverter, and gearbox that converts electric power into energy for driving.
Overall, Honda is aiming for 30 new EVs by 2030 with 2 million units sold, 100 percent zero-emission auto sales by 2040, and carbon neutrality “for all products and corporate activities” by 2050.
And Cruise, GM’s autonomous unit in which Honda is also an investor, has paused all public operations after a pedestrian was injured by one of the company’s driverless vehicles.
The Prologue SUV is set to reach customers this year, Honda’s first major effort to sell electric vehicles in North America since the oft-maligned Clarity.
The original article contains 807 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I'd be all over it, but only if it wasn't full of log collection and self driving bullshit like all EVs. EVs are a step to buying a rental. It's not yours. Cameras will be watching. You driving habits, tracks, conversations, etc, all sent to god knows where. This is the future of vehicles and it's bullshit.
What? I own an EV and it has 0 self driving. It doesn't track anything more than a normal car because it has exactly the same system (basic automatic lights and 'keeping in line' alarm). Just say you don't like modern cars all of which have those features, getting angry specifically at EVs is silly.
I guess what they were trying to say is: with fossil fuel cars, there can be zero electronics, heck, if you are willing to drive the least optimized car, and start the car mechanically, you can have zero electrical system. With EVs there will always be electronics. They simply can't function without. And who says electronics, in our societies, says DRM, subscription based features, etc.
But yeah, I had a 1997 Honda civic hatchback, it already had electronics. I got a 2004 Volvo V50, it had more electronics. And when I see modern cars, they are choke full of electronics, and many have "features" such as GPS tracking, constant connectivity, internal cameras, …
It's like TVs really, it's nearly impossible to find a modern TV that doesn't need to connect to the Internet, and that doesn't carry the risk of its microphone or camera recording when you are unaware or unwilling.
Everyone: ewww the Cybertruck is so ugly
Honda: hold my beer