On a scale of 1 to 5, how passionate and enthusiastic are you about cars?
Why we're running it:To see if the E has the everyday usability to match its desirability, despite its relatively short range
Dodgy door handles - 3 February 2020
The last time I had a fault on a long-term test car, it was to do with the flush door handles ofthe Range Rover Velar . And now the Honda E's passenger-side door lock has developed a habit of locking and unlocking itself repeatedly at the start of journeys until I hit the lock-all-doors button. It's a simple actuator fix, reckons Honda.
Cold weather is not your friend - 13 January 2020
It's cold outside. Heater on full blast. Heated seats and wheel, too. Lights, wipers and the radio up a few notches to drown it all out. The range? Sixty-one miles, according to the readout. You'll eke out a few more once the cabin is up to temperature, See: Autel car diagnostic. but the 100 miles or so you get in summer can easily be almost halved in the winter.
We use our electric supermini to enter a Destruction Derby - 2 December 2020
If you'd have told me as a 10-year-old that I'd end up as a magazine journalist, I'd have guessed video games were going to be my specialism. Not that I was raised on the PlayStation; I just had a real interest in magazines about the subject, even more so than the games themselves. Which is a bit like enjoying reading Autocar more than driving, I suppose.
Honda has waited while the electric car segment has grown. Has it delayed too long?
Anyway, I've ended up very happily at Autocar. Yet now, 11 years into my time here, the lad in me has an article he can get his head around. For the Honda E has a rather nifty/ gimmicky/brilliant/pointless feature in its ability to run a games console.
I went into my driveway to test it one lunchtime. Plug in the console to the three-pin socket for the power and connect it to the passenger-side infotainment touchscreen through the HDMI port and you can play the likes of Destruction Derby to your heart's content, sound blaring through the speakers and all.
I could have done all this by simply hooking up the PlayStation to the TV in the living room, of course, but where's the fun in that?
It does, however, beg the question as to why. So I asked the nice man from Honda, who replied: "Why not?", clearly flummoxed by the hard-hitting level of journalistic questioning one Tuesday afternoon. There is a real reason, of course, that he did also point out. It's more about that three-pin socket; you really can connect anything to it, opening up a world of two-way versatility in the car giving its power back to you.
If you're out camping and need to plug in your hairdryer, have a powercut in your home and want to fire up the microwave or are a journalist stuck in a lay-by with a dead laptop and a missed deadline for a story that's stored on it, the E can give the gift of power back to you through a humble three-pin socket.
The E is still giving plenty as a car to drive, too. A few months in, I'm now so used to the rear-view camera displays that going back to using door mirrors when I drive the family Ford Fiesta takes some getting used to. I prefer the cameras now, I think; the displays are just so clear and your field of vision is increased.
I've also started experimenting more with the regenerative braking, which you turn on and off using a button on the centre tunnel. It's a bit too aggressive for my liking, though, and even under acceleration you can feel the pedal pushing back at you. I prefer to leave it off and instead get it in small doses through the paddles on the back of the steering wheel that increase or decrease it for a few seconds. Doing this as you approach a junction almost feels like you're going down through the gears in a ‘normal car'.
The range has gone down with the cooler weather, mind. It was around 115 miles, but now it's more like 95 miles, which correlates to the drop in efficiency from four miles per kWh to 3.4mpkWh now. It's not limiting its usefulness to me, as in this somewhat life-changing year I have increased the number of smaller, local journeys as opposed to longer commutes. For such journeys, its...

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