In the era of intelligent trams, Japanese brands seem to have collective aphasia.
It wasn't until December last year that Toyota made up its mind to fully enter the electric market: by 2030, Toyota will launch a total of 30 pure electric vehicles, and Toyota will invest $35 billion in the development of pure electric vehicles by 2030.
It was followed by Honda, which announced in March the establishment of a joint venture with Sony to jointly develop and sell high-value-added electric vehicles. And just this past April 12, Honda announced that it will launch 30 pure electric vehicles around the world by 2030, and will invest about $40 billion in electrification and software in the next 10 years to accelerate the electrification process.
In fact, the Japanese electric road started very early. In 1988, Honda began to think about which drive technology was the most promising in the 21st century. Junichi Araki, who led Honda's first EV research team, said: "Pure electricity is the most likely candidate in terms of alternative power"
The challenges of electric vehicle technology, coupled with the release of the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Act introduced by California in late 1990, Honda decided in early 1991 to invest about 100 people to fully start electric vehicle research and development.
Finally, in April 1997, Honda's first mass-produced electric vehicle EV Plus officially rolled off the production line, mainly in California, USA, on a leased basis.
But the strategy of electric vehicles did not last long, and after Honda launched its first hybrid in 1999, the Insight, the EV Plus was discontinued. Subsequently, Honda's strategy began to shift from electric vehicles to hybrid and fuel cell vehicles, and in 2006, Honda launched the FCX Clarity fuel cell sedan. But Honda did not say to completely abandon electric vehicle research and development, then Honda R & D president Tomohiko Kawanabe said: "We are in the development of electric vehicles, but I can not say that I will fully recommend them, because whether consumers can accept limited battery life and time charging is still a question." ”
In 2011, Honda unveiled an all-electric version of the Fit at the Los Angeles Auto Show, and some small pure trams of the same era became popular, such as the Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Smart ED. However, Honda stopped production of pure electric fit in the fall of 2014.
In the following time, Honda did not mass-produce new pure electric models, and did not usher in the launch of the Honda e until 2020. However, in order to tell the outside world that it has not given up pure electricity, Honda will put some concept trains every three to five days, such as the EV-Ster in 2011, neuV in 2016, sports EV Concept in 2017 and so on.
In China, Honda launched the VE-1 with the concept brand in 2018, and in 2019, it launched the X-NV two trams based on Binzhi and XR-V oil.
Although Honda has not had much accumulation of electric vehicles and intelligence in recent years, in the face of the Chinese market, which has ranked first in the world for 13 consecutive years in terms of total production and sales, Honda also has to keep up with the changes in market trends, that is, electrification and intelligence. The two electric vehicles launched before may have shown too obvious traces of oil to electricity, so Honda launched a new compact pure electric SUV: e: NS1 from Dongfeng Honda and Guangqi Honda e: NP1. The two models belong to the brother models, and this time we will first experience the e:NS1 of Dongfeng Honda, which has begun to be pre-sold.
01
Platform/driving feel
e:NS1 is based on Honda's intelligent and efficient pure electric architecture e:N Architecture, e:N Architecture, integrated drive motor, power battery, pure electric vehicle exclusive frame and chassis platform, e:N Architecture has F (front front drive), W (rear rear drive, front and rear dual motor four-wheel drive) three versions, respectively corresponding to different levels of models.
Although from the data point of view, this platform has not yet involved the innovative breakthrough of electronic and electrical architecture (that is, the key to software-defined cars), but compared with the previous oil to electric paddling models, this is Honda's small sincerity, at least a pure electric platform product. Intelligent pure tram, intelligence is the first, the basis behind this is the transformation of electronic and electrical architecture, the use of domain centralized or more advanced cross-domain fusion, vehicle fusion architecture, in order to meet the intelligent function of the information transmission interaction, improve the extensibility of the car function, to achieve the vehicle software OTA.
Putting aside these electrifications and using the e:NS1 on the new platform, there is really an improvement in driving up. This progress is compared to the previous M-NV, the previous oil to electricity products, may be due to the weight of the battery pack, the suspension seems to be "unbearable", you will feel that the suspension can not pull the body, shaking leisurely. The e:NS1 will be better supported, and the suspension can be stabilized quickly when undulating.
The suspension has a relatively thick texture, and the vibration is not transmitted into the car very sharply. However, the weight of the battery pack can never be ignored, so in the continuous steering, rapid steering, or more than the same price of fuel models to have a sense of weight, the body is not so light. If it is compared to the Xiaopeng G3i at the same price, honda's adjustment ability is still better.
e: The NS1 motor is in the front cabin, while the motor power is available in two versions, which are 150kW and 134kW, and I experienced the 150kW version this time. And the change of the motor, the front cabin is not good for you to see, so the manufacturer directly covered with plastic plates, saying that such a neat Honda cabin is really not used to.
PS: This honda logo on the cabin is a bit too elegant, or the red head logo can make Honda fans more moved.
With the use of the motor, the power side is not the short board of e:NS1, which is faster than the Honda car at the same price. e: NS1 workers have three driving modes: Sport/Standard/Economy. In the standard mode, the tuning is somewhat similar to the self-priming Honda, and it is also the first stage that appears to be very "fierce", and there is a feeling of channeling out, but if the full electric gate, you will develop the acceleration of the middle and rear sections without the obvious sense of the front section. I prefer to use the economic model when the city is stop-and-go, and it will be more comfortable to drive.
Sport mode electric gates are expected to be more sensitive, but what is unexpected is that Honda has given this acceleration wave. Honda's team investigated the sound of Chinese favorite tram acceleration, and the result was that the Chinese prefer futuristic sound, so they integrated this sound effect in the sport mode.
There are two paddles behind the steering wheel, which are used to select the kinetic energy recovery gear, Honda provides the driver with 3 kinetic energy recovery levels, the driver can choose according to his needs. The kinetic energy recovery gear is not fixed, and unless it is in a deceleration or coasting state, it will automatically exit after speeding up. This mode is exactly the same as the Honda hybrid, this setting I think is more flexible than the fixed kinetic energy recovery mode of other trams, and the driver can control the kinetic energy recovery state of the vehicle at any time.
Well, Honda also said that the car motor control assembly has become up to more than 20,000 scene algorithms, which is more than 40 times that of ordinary pure electric vehicles. Although traditional brand trams have many shortcomings, they will respect the driving texture and feel that they have been formally calibrated and adjusted. Many times when we buy electric vehicles, we may only pay attention to the electric part, and the part of the car is gradually ignored, which is a bit of a feeling of putting the cart before the horse.
In the actual test, e:NS1 zero hundred acceleration time is 7.57 seconds, the brake is 39 meters, this performance is obviously not fast in the electric car, but it is enough for the family, after all, if you want to accelerate the powerful tram, it is also costly, between the performance and the price, Honda did not hesitate to choose the latter.
02
Exterior/interior
As for the appearance, when I saw e:NS1 at first glance, I felt familiar, and I looked at the picture to find that the design originated from the third generation OF HR-V (overseas), which translated into the next generation of XR-V and Binzhi (not unveiled) in China. e: NS1 on the basis of the original design of the net completely closed, personally feel better than the model with the net.
e: NS1 is the first electric vehicle with Honda standard in China, Honda thought about it and always had to make a difference, so it replaced the car label with a luminous style. In the past, the red head mark was a performance symbol, and it is not possible that in the future, this luminous mark can also burst the meter with the performance of the motor, and after the sign is the interface of fast and slow charging.
The rear of the car adopts a through-type light strip design, and the focus of the rear is actually this string of honda letters. I remember that this is the first time that Honda has used letters instead of logos to paste on the rear of the car, which is estimated to have been learned from volkswagen.
At the time of writing the article, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology put on a new car declaration catalog, which has a new generation of Dongfeng Honda XR-V, which obviously has an unusual relationship with e: NS1 and it.
In terms of interior, let's take a look at the contrast between the original design and e:NS1, and have to sigh: "Damn, it's loaded again". After replacing the 15.2-inch large screen, flat full LCD dashboard, and button shift, the traditional flavor was immediately lost. Honda is still quite serious this time, the central control screen is not only large, but also the border is narrow enough, and the visual texture comes up at once. In addition, the big screen on the central control is actually a practice of killing two birds with one stone, which not only makes you look tall, but also saves the cost of a lot of physical buttons, which is really wonderful.
Honda has also added atmosphere lights to the interior for the first time, and it is true that these light strips are relatively roughly implanted in the inner cabin, but some are already very good. It's like a straight man, he can think of sending flowers on Valentine's Day is very remarkable, don't worry about whether it's a red rose or a starry sky.
The front row space is reasonable, but the rear door panel has only one water cup shelf, which is not enough for long distances. The rear seats can be proportionally reclined or fully reclined, and the tail box space is also sufficiently regular, at this point Honda is still that Honda, the space is not too casual.
The front and rear seats are thicker, and the comfort of sitting up is good, that is, the length of the backrest of the rear seat is not enough, and you must open the headrest to lean back when sitting. And Honda also worked hard, adding a long slit pattern to the surface of the seat, which is a treatment that other Honda fuel vehicles do not have.
e: NS1 also has to mention that the sunroof, it has two sunroofs in front and behind, the front sunroof has manual sunshades, but the rear row is no sunshade, what if it is too sunny? Don't worry, Honda sent you two boards, thinking that the sun can buckle the roof. I think this thing may be the most unwanted configuration on this car, and if you cut this one cheaper, I think everyone will be happy.
03
Smart cockpit/smart driving
E:NS1 is equipped with a full-stack intelligent control ecosystem e:N OS, which includes Honda SENSING 360 intelligent driver assistance system and Honda CONNECT intelligent guidance interconnection system. The 15.2-inch screen is equipped with this car machine system, which can be said to be a bit overkill, because the car machine system is relatively rough to divide the screen into three functional areas, the upper part is the entertainment function, the middle is the vehicle setting, the lower part is the air conditioning setting, and it is not well used to the highlight of the large screen.
In terms of functions, online navigation (with AR real-life navigation), QQ music, cloud listening, car home interconnection, car machine system OTA upgrade are all supported, voice interaction recognition capabilities are also good, air conditioning temperature, location search, window control can be quickly identified and executed. I suggest that Honda is still honest and directly integrates CarPlay and HiCar into the system, so that the big screen software level will feel better.
But I still have to give this car a thumbs up, because it will give you a fresh feeling, compared to the previous Honda small screen, this is an epoch-making progress. unbelief? You see the Toyota next door has worked so hard for so long or a small horizontal screen that doesn't look good.
Honda SENSING 360 intelligent driver assistance system is also a highlight of e:NS1, compared to Honda's Honda SENSING safety super sense monocular camera + 1 front millimeter wave radar solution, Honda SENSING 360 uses a monocular camera + 5 millimeter wave radar (1 front medium and long distance + 4 ring angle radar) solution, which will perform stronger at the perception level.
In the actual experience, although the function of this system is also the adaptive cruise and lane keeping function of the full speed domain, the lane keeping force is stronger, the body can be more stable in the middle of the lane, and the driver's sense of security will be better. In addition, there will be a dynamic model of the vehicle in the 3 lanes ahead on the dashboard.
04
summary
Honestly, my biggest dissatisfaction with Dongfeng Honda e:NS1 is the name, please ask the manufacturer to quickly find a Chinese name, e:NS1 is not only difficult to play but also difficult to read. For the car itself, e:NS1 has made progress, and it can also be seen that Honda is not willing to do salted fish in the new energy era, I believe that e:NS1 is just the beginning, and the pure electric product experience that has been launched later will be more interesting.
Also, does Honda really not consider putting the Honda e in? This is the pure electric Honda that people can't help but pay for!
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