Over in Japan, sales of Honda’s battery-swapping stations are underway. Meanwhile, here in Europe, we’re still waiting for the motorbike giant to release its first electric two-wheeler. The Honda EM1 e: should apparently be with us by next summer.
Honda launched the world's first commercially available electric motorcycle, the CUV-ES, in 1994. Unless we’re missing something (and you certainly shouldn’t rule that out), this e-moped was less-than-swiftly followed by another, the EV-neo, in 2009.
The EV-neo got a bit of an airing in Barcelona where the city council leased a handful, but it’s largely been confined to Japan and a few other Asian countries. These countries have also had the Honda PCX Electric motorbike since 2018.
However, Honda’s stated aim is to introduce 10 or more electric motorcycle models worldwide by 2025, which brings us to the annoyingly-punctuated EM1 e:.
The ‘EM’ stands for ‘electric moped’. The ‘e:’ bit comes from the fact that it’s powered by the Honda Mobile Power Pack e: – the battery that’s compatible with those new battery-swapping stations we mentioned above. (We presume that the ‘e:’ in the battery name also stands for ‘electric’ so it kind of feels like they could pare back the EM1 e: name by at least one letter.)
The EM1 e: is aimed at younger riders, living in cities. Honda bill it as being, “Perfect for short hops around town and for making journeys to work or college efficient, quiet and emission-free.”
A single charge promises range of somewhere around 40km. You can then either remove the battery for charging or swap it for a full one if you happen to be within range of one of these battery swap stations. (As things stand, European riders will be about 9,000km away from their closest one.)
