Honda announced an ambitious plan to introduce at least 10 electric two-wheelers by the year 2025 earlier in 2022. Since it’s almost 2023, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of time—but of course, a company like Honda wouldn’t make an announcement like that if it didn’t have at least a few models already up its sleeve.
On November 8, 2022, Honda Europe introduced its first electric two-wheeler for European customers, the EM1 e:. The “EM” part of the naming designation stands for “Electric Moped,” and for those who’ve been following Honda’s global electric two-wheeler journey thus far, you’ll already know that Team Red likes to use that “e:” on the whole range, including the Benly e:, Gyro e:, and Gyro Canopy e:. For the sake of consistency, the formal name of Honda’s swappable battery packs that power all these scoots is the very simple “Honda Mobile Power Pack e:.”
Now, to be clear, the EM1 e: won’t be available in Europe until summer, 2023—so Honda was quick to note that this is just an introduction, not a full and detailed launch. So far, we can tell you that Honda’s claimed riding range on a single Honda Mobile Power Pack e: is 40 kilometers (just under 25 miles) or greater.
Gallery: 2023 Honda EM1 e:
That may not sound like much, but for commuting purposes, it could be enough—particularly as Honda begins to roll out its swappable battery exchange stations in markets where it offers vehicles that are powered by its Mobile Power Pack e: batteries. The whole point of these swappable, removable batteries is also that they can easily be brought indoors with riders when they get to their destination—whether it’s school, work, or home. It’s not too difficult to see a reasonable use case for a scoot like this as an urban commuter runabout.
Mind you, without full specs about speed, braking, price, availability, and so on, there’s only so much speculation we can do about how it will be used. However, given the popularity of similar form-factor scoots in Europe, as well as the continued uptick in electric scooter adoption, it’s not at all difficult to see what kind of niche this first two-wheeled EV from Honda could occupy—if it deploys its infrastructure right.
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Source: Honda