Sporty cars have always been a part of Honda DNA. Whether it’s the S800, Civic Type R, NSX, S2000, or one of the other countless examples of fun-to-drive Hondas, the company just has a knack for making engaging cars. It can certainly leave you wondering what’ll happen when the company does (eventually) make a bigger push toward being all electric. Well, during a roundtable sit-down with CEO Toshihiro Mibe, we got a little more insight into some possible plans Honda might be working on.
Through a translator, Mibe told a group of journalists and me that Honda has already made “many prototypes,” and dammit, I would like to see them. Unfortunately, we probably won’t for some time, and you can thanks to — you guessed it — President Donald Trump. Because of the slowdown in the market, brought on by the end of EV subsidies and a generally less-EV-friendly environment, it doesn’t really make sense to put a mass-ish-market EV sports car on sale. At least one of these prototypes was the Sports EV Concept the company released back in 2017. It didn’t get much past the design phase, and that’s a shame, because it was a cool little thing.
Full Disclosure: Honda flew me to Japan, paid for my food and my hotel stay, all so I could check out some of its latest projects.
BEVer say BEVer
With all of that being said, from the way Mibe spoke, it did sound like crazier things have happened than Honda releasing an EV sports car. I mean, the company just unveiled the Super-One prototype at the Tokyo Motor Show, and that little guy has been a hit with everyone who has seen it, so there’s at least some appetite for a sporty electric car.
“We have to decide on timing on when to make that available sometime in the future,” Mibe said. That doesn’t sound like a total no to me, does it? Mibe also spoke about what the company hopes to learn as it reenters Formula 1 next year as a works team and engine supplier for Aston Martin. The power unit is going to be half internal combustion and half electric, so there are a lot of valuable lessons to be pulled from that space. Honda also wants to use the platform to demonstrate that it’s serious about electric power and knows how to build winning power units. “With that demonstrated, and I think we will, I hope that we can find the right timing to launch a sports-type EV car,” he said.
Of course, Honda is no stranger to an electrified sports car. If you count something like the CR-Z, it has at least 15 years’ worth of experience. Of course, there was the second-generation NSX, which had a twin-turbocharged V6 that was teamed up with three electric motors. Now, Honda is on the precipice of releasing its third hybrid sports car, the Prelude, and Mibe himself has bought one, so he’s gotta be somewhat into the idea.
