Honda has been doing big things with alternative fuels for decades now. While models like the game changing first-gen Insight and the Accord and Civic Hybrids from the early 2000s put Honda’s electrification efforts into the mainstream public’s awareness, few may realize that Honda started down this path right before the turn of the century with a small electric city car called the EV Plus.
Friend of the site and now Motor1 staff writer Victoria Scott got to check out one of the last remaining EV Pluses at Honda’s Southern California museum recently. If you’re unfamiliar with what exactly the EV Plus is, it’s understandable considering it was only ever sold in the golden state. In the 1990s, California’s Air Resource Board sought to do something to clamp down on vehicle emissions, so it passed air laws that required two percent of an automaker’s sales had to be zero-emission vehicles by 1998. This sent some automakers scrambling, resulting in vehicles like the first-gen Toyota RAV4 EV hitting California roads in the late 1990s. Honda quickly got into the game, and EV Plus production started in mid-1997.
For a small EV from the late 1990s, the EV Plus was pretty advanced. It had features like regenerative braking, an AC/heat pump, onboard conductive charging, HID headlights and a heated windshield. A single electric motor put out 66 horsepower and 203 pound-feet of torque, and thanks to a small 28.7-kWh battery, initially Honda said its range was 60 to 80 miles. After Honda’s testing of the EV Plus on Southern California roads and freeways, that increased to 78.8 miles in freeway driving and 105.3 miles on city streets. Charging times were long, with a standard 120V outlet taking a full day to charge, but a 240V charger saw near-modern charging speeds of reaching 80 percent in just two hours.
Not many people got to experience the EV Plus. It wore an MSRP of $54,000, but customers couldn’t just purchase the EV Plus outright. Instead, Honda offered three-year, $455-per-month leases. To make matters worse, those that did lease an EV Plus were told the battery would need to be replaced on a three-year cycle, and at an estimated $20,000 a pop, you’d essentially have to get a whole new car. Just 300 were ever made, most of which went to entities like universities.
Unfortunately, after the leases were over Honda took the cars back from customers and destroyed them. There’s way more to the history of the EV Plus than what I detailed here, so head on over to Motor1 and check out Victoria’s detailed video on this groundbreaking EV.