In the era of the internal combustion engine, people who know how to use cars buy Hondas, and in the era of electric motors, is this still true? Standing in this wave of almost "crazy" electric waves in 2022, Honda, which has a low sense of participation, cannot give a positive answer.
The Beijing Auto Show was postponed, the "Cloud Auto Show" relay, the recent blockbuster electric vehicle, is really a bit much. First Mercedes-Benz BMW released its flagship, and then smart "resurrection", and then the Japanese also played pure electric cards, Honda e: N, Nissan Aria, Toyota bZ to follow.
Honda is also the first time to officially show the determination of All in electrification, and launched the e:N brand in China, the keyboard is not friendly brand name, not only and catchy, even the brand's first model, is also highly suspected of being an "oil to electricity".
Honda itself has been slowed down a few beats in electrification, and after watching Honda's recent release, the "sense of contrast" with the era of fuel vehicles is full of doubts.
The big factory of the new electric map "electrified" 2022 series continues to pay attention to the transformation of the car giant.
1, how to view the "oil to electricity"
The native electric vehicle platform has not yet been launched, but the electric car can no longer be delayed, Honda released e: N last year, and announced the launch of the first Honda standard pure electric model in two joint ventures. However, the ensuing "oil to electricity" controversy has never subsided.
How do you see this wave of controversy? After watching Honda's press conference, Honda's current "oil to electricity" operation can be understood as a temporary measure for regional markets such as China.
The e:NS1 and e:NP1, developed by Honda Chinese engineers and aimed at the Chinese market, were born out of the e:N Architecture F, a front-facing, all-electric architecture.
Looking at the pure electric special platform of many car companies, it is rare to separate a front-drive architecture, but this front-drive platform is common in fuel vehicles. As can be seen from Honda's official e:N Architecture F schematic, the shape of the battery pack at the bottom of the vehicle is not flat, and it is still the "old tune" of the fuel tank to the battery from the layout point of view. In addition, the wheelbase data of the two new cars is also consistent with the fuel version of Binzhi/X-RV, which is 2610mm, and the body posture is relatively close, coupled with the battery pack that protrudes downward from the chassis, is it full of "oil to electricity" taste?
However, the official words for this architecture are as follows: it integrates a high-efficiency and high-power drive motor, a large-capacity high-density battery, a exclusive frame for pure electric vehicles, and a chassis platform. Honda is not without effort, and unlike some of the previous crude "oil-to-electricity" vehicles of the joint venture brand, the e:N Architecture F is still as compatible with many of the characteristics of the tram as much as possible, and in the words of Honda China Minister Katsushi Inoue, these two cars are honda's first models launched with "absolute confidence".
However, when Volkswagen has MEB, GM has Ultium, and Toyota has e-TNGA, Honda's pure electric architecture cannot meet everyone's expectations for "technology Honda".
The reason why we say that this is a stopgap measure for the regional market is because the information that Honda has revealed so far shows that this architecture is currently more focused on products in the Chinese market, while in the North American market, Honda simply does not bother to come by itself, sharing Ultium from its old friend GM, and launching 2 medium and large pure electric vehicles jointly developed with GM in 2024.
In summary, before its native pure electric architecture was put into production, Honda used a "flexible" way to launch electric vehicles. Adapting to local conditions is a positive word in itself, but when used in Honda, it has more of a helpless color.
2, the heap parameters are not shameful, there is no "cool point" is terrible
After the whole conference, Honda focused on "reshaping EV driving fun" and also cue the "vertigo feeling" of other electric vehicles.
How can I eliminate motion sickness? Honda's approach is that for the daily actual use scenarios of Chinese consumers, the electronic control assembly has become more than 40 times that of ordinary EV models, and there are more than 20,000 control scenario algorithms, which can easily cope with various driving environments. Whether Honda can perfectly solve the problem of motion sickness, to be handed over to subsequent users, as far as many media test drives are concerned, the driving experience of e:NS1 is more like a "smooth" oil car.
If an electric vehicle is delicate like a fuel car, it will not be "silly and fast", then this is not unique to Honda, including the Volkswagen ID. series, luxury brand BBA, and even Toyota, GM's EV on sale, all have such characteristics, they inherit the advantages of the brand oil car itself, of course, some are also "oil to electricity" models.
In the era of electric vehicles, it is somewhat untenable to take "driving fun" as the biggest selling point. Electric vehicles do not have a gearbox, linear acceleration is commonplace, like Tesla Model 3 models, control beyond the vast majority of oil vehicles, is also a consensus, the driving fun of electric vehicles, the wheel can not be a car company to "reshape", too much to talk about driving fun, but also to avoid the heavy and light approach.
This is not to deny the driving sense of Honda trams, we have reason to believe that no matter what kind of architecture, Honda will continue the advantages of fuel vehicles and hybrid vehicles in the driving sense, to achieve the first echelon of electric vehicles, but such a front-drive architecture, the problems brought by it are also obvious, that is, the freedom of the architecture, the upper limit is not high, all kinds of performance, endurance, intelligent "monsters", and even more advanced battery technology, etc., there is a high probability that such a platform will not appear.
What is even more puzzling is that Honda says that its EV does not rely on simple parameter stacking, but to exceed the "unique value" that customers expect. Are there any wrong parameters for electric vehicle stacking?
EV is the best carrier of ICV (intelligent car), which is already the iron law of the development of the global automotive industry, strong computing power, far beyond the intelligent experience of fuel vehicles, has become one of the absolute standards for the quality of an electric vehicle, and the parameter stacking is a major foundation for intelligent electric vehicles. Again, we don't deny that Honda has a great experience in the driving experience, but for a good EV, it is far from enough.
Intelligently, Honda has been working hard to tear open its own traditional label, e:N first bomb model equipped with a 15.1-inch thin bezel central control, 10.25-inch color full LCD digital dashboard, etc., Honda CONNECT 3.0 pure electric vehicle exclusive version, but also integrated AI voice assistant, car home interconnection, OTA online upgrade and other functions, the new car is also equipped with DMC driver status perception system for the first time, this aspect is still to give Honda's breakthrough praise.
We have also experienced the first e:N model, although it is already the current "ceiling" of Honda's mass-produced EV, but in the Yunyun intelligent electric vehicle, its intelligent experience is far from excellent.
Today, Honda has put its latest achievements in electrification in the Chinese market, but in terms of product strength, the e:N series has not yet shown enough "cool points", it is still like an upgraded version of binzhi /X-RV, the price is a big circle, but far from a new "species".
3. The courage to fight back and the confusion of latecomers
Honda can't be without anxiety.
Its main rival in China, North and South Volkswagen has its own MEB pure electric platform exclusive factory, even in the sale of pure electric architecture models have reached 3 (ID.4, ID.6, ID.3), Volkswagen's start is equally difficult, but ID. has been stable monthly sales of more than 10,000, can not say how excellent, but has achieved the first joint venture, or far ahead of the kind.
Japanese Toyota, just through two joint ventures to pre-sell bZ4X, the new car based on e-TNGA architecture BEV exclusive platform to build, full flat battery layout, battery life, four-wheel drive off-road, etc. has become a technical label, electronic steering-by-wire steering, special-shaped steering is a surprise work, said bZ4X is a new species of Toyota, there should be no objection.
Therefore, the layout of electric vehicles of Volkswagen and Toyota has been roughly unified globally, and Honda's "local conditions" are very different, and Honda, which has always been good at breaking through, can only act as a "latecomer" now. Even in the Chinese market, the system strength of Honda electric vehicles is currently inferior to volkswagen and Toyota, compared with Tesla? That's even more unnecessary.
Honda is also well aware that the e:N Architecture F is a "transitional" solution, and there is no new solution based on pure electricity at the moment, and this practice of absorbing the essence of the oil car and emphasizing the driving experience is just a compromise.
Of course, Honda will not sit still, and has even carried out internal organizational system innovation, from the existing organizational structure divided by motorcycles, automobiles, and power products, separating the "electric products and services, batteries, energy, mobile power packs, hydrogen fuel" with future core competitiveness, and the "software and networking field" associated with this, and established a new organization - "Business Development Headquarters", thereby improving flexibility and enhancing cross-domain collaboration of products.
Starting from 2026, Honda will launch a product using "Honda e: Architecture", which is a dedicated pure electric platform, where the software and hardware will be restructured and combined, by 2027, Honda will launch a total of 10 pure electric vehicles in China, and by 2030, Honda will launch 30 electric vehicles worldwide, with an annual output of more than 2 million. Over the next decade, Honda said it will invest about 8 trillion yen (about 400 billion yuan) in research and development, and it expects to invest about 5 trillion yen in electrification and software. Numbers are only the goal, and a lot of software and hardware integration problems in the future still need to be solved by Honda.
With the advent of the era of pure electricity, Honda is no longer on the altar, and to obtain the equivalent status of the fuel era, Honda's bow must turn faster.