Just when Honda’s restrained approach to the EV rush of the early 2020s was more or less vindicated, the company showed a wild looking pair of EV concepts at last year’s CES. The company said at the time that the 0 Series cars represented a rebirth, or a fresh start for the company; a Honda 2.0, shall we say. Last week in Japan, I saw that Honda intends more than just concept car fluff for the Saloon and Space-Hub — it is actually on track to build at least one of them. I spent hours with engineers, sat in round table discussions, watched a lot of demonstrations and was shown a lot of Powerpoint slides. I even drove a prototype for the 0 Series.
I saw production techniques that are new to Honda, and one welding technique that’s entirely new. I was told that the 0 Series cars would deliver a heretofore unknown type of driving satisfaction. I was shown a number of new ways that these cars will interact with my phone, and given time with Honda executives to ask questions. I saw an awful lot, and the car is interesting and in many ways, impressive. But some fundamental questions, like “will these cars find a market?” remain unanswered for now.
We saw the Saloon concept up close along with some engineering cutaways. It appears that in production form, the Saloon will be a large EV station wagon, but that sells the actual shape short; it’s more like a dustbuster or a sleeker, less utilitarian transport shuttle from “Star Trek.” It should be said that the cutaways we saw featured an A-pillar that was more upright than that of the concept. I’d expect something more upright when we see the production car, which also fits with Honda’s stated desire to create lots of interior space while maintaining a low roofline. What does not fit with the interior space thing is that it has a transmission tunnel, despite having no transmission. We were told that the tunnel houses electronic components.
The philosophy that underpins this car, and Honda’s EVs going forward, is “Thin, light and wise.” The structural battery pack isn’t huge, relatively speaking. It’s cast out of aluminum, will contain pouch cells and its shell can be expandable for applications that require more pouches. On the bottom side of the pack, a plate with cooling channels pressed into it is attached via friction stir welding. Other manufacturers build cooling channels into the pack case itself, which makes them thicker than the one that Honda has developed here. Honda aims for about 300 miles of range, which it believes is enough to make the cars useful for the average buyer.
Honda invented a new welding process to incorporate more high strength steel into the body structure, which will make it lighter and thinner. The automaker also says the battery pack provides additional crash protection in the event of a side impact, and that the front of the car is designed to redirect the energy of impacts away from the passenger cell. Of course, the car will carry the standard driver-assist systems that you’d expect from a premium EV.
Apart from some clever details, what you see looking at the cutaway is more or less standard EV fare, except at the front where things get pretty weird. The strut towers angle inward from the wheels and there’s no real structure tying them together from the top. Honda says this saves weight, and I’m sure that’s the case, but more importantly it allows the front end of the car to flex. After years of hearing carmakers brag about increasing structural rigidity, I have been confronted with one that flexes at the front. The car’s suspension will use that flex to press down on either wheel, exerting force on the tire and supposedly improving traction and the sensation of control. A steer-by-wire system will inform the steering, but also the suspension and brakes. They’ll all work together with sensors derived from Honda’s extensive robotics activities to deliver a heretofore unknown sense of control, or man/machine oneness.
To experience that, I drove a prototype that was a CR-V body riding on a 0 Series chassis. I had ten minutes in it consisting of three laps around a short test track. I will say that it felt different from other EVs. The prototype felt surprisingly flat through corners, and on a lefthand hairpin going uphill I could feel the individual wheels working to direct the car through the turn. For a CR-V it felt sporty, though not in a conventional sense. After sitting through a long technical briefing about how the powertrain and suspension worked I was trying my best to get a sense for what it felt like in real driving, but I don’t know that I got all the way there in my short time with the car. The rear would also unload dramatically over bigger bumps in a way that reminded you that this was indeed a cobbled together prototype. Overall, I’d say the driving experience was different enough to be interesting. I could see with some refinement how the system could deliver a comfortable, pleasurable drive. It will be interesting to see how regular drivers who haven’t had the full briefing perceive it. Will it register to them at all? I wonder if the average EV buyer thinks much about driving dynamics.
We won’t know more about this car until January of 2025 at CES, and it seems there’s a lot about the 0 Series that isn’t set in stone. Honda told us that it will be positioned as a premium product, and that it will carry a Honda badge in the U.S., but we don’t yet have pricing or a final name yet. All that’s fine and not at all abnormal, they’ll figure it out.
The car we saw, currently known as “Saloon,” is scheduled to hit dealerships in 2026 and will be built in Ohio. It’s obviously impossible to know what the market for EVs will look like by then, maybe the world will be ready for a pricey, wildly ambitious Honda EV in a year and a half.