Performance & drive
What it’s like to drive, and how quiet it is
The Honda e’s cheeky looks are backed up by genuinely fun driving manners. It feels really darty around town, with plenty of grip for zipping around roundabouts and a ridiculously tight turning circle, so you’ll hardly ever need to make a three-point turn.
Even when you’re out for a jaunt in the country, it corners in a composed manner without much body lean. And no matter what speed you’re doing, the steering gives you a good sense of connection with the front wheels, thanks to its accuracy and natural weighting.
The single electric motor gives it 152bhp and and official 0-62mph time of 8.3sec. That’s very slightly slower than the e-208 but one second slower than the Mini Electric. Even so, acceleration feels urgent when you put your foot down at relatively low speeds, making the baby Honda ideally suited to the urban cut and thrust.
A push of a button enables one-pedal driving, so that lifting off the accelerator pedal turns the car’s regenerative braking system up to its maximum level. That slows the car quickly without you needing to press the brake pedal at all, and recoups energy to recharge the battery. When you do use the brake pedal, you’ll find it easy to judge how much pressure to apply to slow the car smoothly – something that isn’t the case in many rivals.
Now for the Honda e’s Achilles' heel: its range. Officially, it can travel just 131 miles between charges, and in real-world driving, we’d expect that to be more like 100 miles. The cheaper Fiat 500 has an official range of 199 miles, while the Zoe's is 239 miles and the Mini Electric's is 145 miles.
