The press release chronicles the early development of Honda’s electric vehicle program, and makes it very clear that not only did Honda lack the expertise to build an EV, but the company was one of the last to the game, too: Honda put together a team, led by Large Project Leader (LPL) Junichi Araki, and work began on an EV prototype. Using an off-the-shelf motor and lead-acid batteries, the team converted a three-door Civic and demonstrated the working proof-of-concept car to Araki in July of 1991. It was soon apparent, though, that several companies in Japan and overseas had already commercialized the concept of an electric vehicle. For this, the staff at Honda had the first and second oil crises to thank. In fact, Honda was the last to join the race.”
Now, most carmaker-written histories would describe an early development project like this by saying things like “from these humble beginnings, a great project grew,” or “a great deal was learned from these early experiments” or something like that. Something that puts a positive spin on things. What you’re not likely to see is something like this: and Araki then spent about two hours explaining the reason for his outrage, saying that at first glance it was obvious that the car was “a compromise; an excuse for having had no previous experience.” “As long as we continue trying a variety of measures in a project, each car we produce must constitute a learning experience that leads to the next step,” Araki said. “If a car doesn’t lead to greater experience, we might as well not build it. I was so disappointed that they hadn’t put more passion into the project.” and also Holy shit, right? I mean, that converted Civic prototype, called the Clean Urban Vehicle 4 (CUV-4) was, charitably, garbage. With lead-acid batteries the thing only had a range of about 30 miles, and the packaging, as you can see in that diagram up there, sucked. I can’t think of another time I’ve read anything this stark and brutal from a carmaker’s own mouth. Shame, regret, mortified, chucking a car into a hole – hot damn, this is some spicy stuff for the normally eye-rollingly upbeat world of what car companies write about themselves. And, even if Honda isn’t quite the go-to name for EVs just yet, the unflinching harshness did pay off in innovation, as was seen in the car that was the direct successor to all of the shame and mortification: the 1997 Honda EV Plus, which was the first commercial EV to be sold that didn’t use lead-acid batteries – sure, General Motors’ EV-1 got to market in 1996, but it used those heavy, old-school lead-acid batteries at first, where the Honda used the then-new nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries. The EV-1 switched to NiMH batteries in 1999.
The Honda EV Plus also was the first to really define the layout that almost all modern EVs use today (though it’s fairly logical, really): pack the batteries into the floor of the car. The strange, kinda-tall look of the EV Plus was due to the fact that its kinda thick NiMH battery pack was set low, under the floor of the passenger compartment, just like it is on something like a Tesla Model Y or VW ID.4 or even Honda’s new Prologue, built on GM’s platform. This was the template for all future EV design to follow, and, significantly, even GM’s EV-1 didn’t do it like this. I just have to hand it to Honda for not just its early technical achievements in EVs, but for having the corporate ‘nads to tell the whole story, and show how sometimes making something that is so unignorably crap is what has to happen to get people motivated enough to make something that’s actually good. Speaking as a geologist, this is an entirely accurate description of how Nature produces geologists. Either way well done Honda for not feeding us the usual PR BS Anyway, at least Honda learns from their mistakes. After a year of irritating battery recalibration events Honda grudgingly replaced the IMA battery under warranty. Things were fine for a couple years then the events began cropping up again and Honda replaced the battery, this time without as much push-back. Another couple years passed, the battery warranty ended and exactly one week later the dread IMA Error light came on. Honda told me to go pound sand. I then purchased and installed a Bumblebee Battery myself for an eye watering $2500 cha-ching. That battery had a two year warranty, failing a month before its warranty was over and the vender sent me another. Two years later and THAT battery failed. All this over 150,000 miles. I’m thrilled to see NiMh batteries in cars recede into the dim pages of history books. That really soured me on hybrids & Hondas for a long time, and I was a platinum grade Honda fanboi. If someone made a Li-Ion or LiPo battery conversion for the 1st gen Insight I’d totally buy another as they’re really cool cars. Point being: I’d like to kick whoever spec’ed NiMh batteries in the taco. They really should’ve been forward thinking enough to make the system more future proof, perhaps with open specifications and a more accessible battery pack. The problem with the Insight was Honda didn’t sweat the details to get the battery management right. I’m betting that when Toyota announced the Prius there were a number of people at Honda who threw similar temper tantrums to the one in this article. So he had no business yelling at his team in my view. The only time I need to yell at work is if somebody is about to get hurt. Otherwise, quiet words can make my views as clear as crystal. These engineers were probably forced to stand on a street corner wearing “ribbons of shame” while screaming their failures out to passersby. I’ve taken enough Anthropology classes to have been introduced to the concept of cultural relativism, and I’ve been a thinking person in the world long enough to have concluded that it’s a bunch of bullshit. Don’t be a dick. No excuses. This is how I work. “Gods, I hate that, why didn’t I do better?” Then I proceed to spend about 10x the cost and 50x the hours doing it. No wonder none of my shit is finished There were no EV Plus cars actually sold, they were all leased, just like the EV1’s. And upon lease termination, they were all crushed, just like the EV1’s. Funny though, no one ever made a movie vilifying Honda as the most irresponsible car company of all time for having done so. Alan Cocconi, founder of AC Propulsion who not only designed the inverter for the GM Impact, but also the control/motor technology that Tesla eventually licensed for use in its first Roadsters, around the same time that Honda made this craptastic prototype, Alan made an EV conversion of a Honda CRX that still holds up okay by today’s standards. In 1992, he converted a CRX HF to electric, did some aerodynamic modifications to lower the drag coefficient to 0.25(mainly, underbody panelling, grille block, and wheel discs), and then reinfored the chassis to allow it to fit more than a half ton of lead acid batteries. Using 28 Optima D750 Yellowtop batteries in series for a 336V pack, with his drive system, he was able to build a conversion that could accelerate from 0-60 mph in around 6 seconds. The car had 200 horsepower. Range per charge in city driving approached 140 miles, although at 70 mph on the highway it was somewhere around 80-100 miles(at least in good weather). No fancy battery technology needed! You’d think a multi-billion dollar conglomerate like Honda could do better. And really, they could. The people tasked with the EV prototype really had no vision. The NiMH batteries used in the EV+ could have doubled Alan Cocconi’s range with the right engineering talent behind the product.
