Honda Says No to EVs With Handbook Transmissions

Whereas different automakers similar to Mercedes have already stopped promoting automobiles with handbook transmissions, Honda’s one of many few courageous sufficient to promote a automobile that’s manual-only: the Civic Sort R. However that doesn’t imply you possibly can anticipate future sporty Honda EVs to supply a handbook driving expertise. In actual fact, Honda just lately confirmed that you simply shouldn’t maintain your breath ready for Honda EVs with any type of handbook.

Chatting with Automobile and Driver at a roundtable interview, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe and Shinji Aoyama, Honda’s head of electrification, threw chilly water on the thought of a sporty EV with a standard handbook or perhaps a simulated one. “Artificially, we will do it. Mechanically, it’s not simple,” mentioned Aoyama.

In case you’re confused by the thought of a man-made handbook transmission in an EV, it will probably be just like the system Toyota just lately patented that features “a clutch, a gear shifter, and ‘digital” gear ratios’” to imitate the sensation of driving a standard handbook. Aoyama doesn’t like that strategy, saying such an thought was “like an extension of energetic sound management.”

That mentioned, Honda nonetheless plans to supply EVs which might be enjoyable to drive. Mibe mentioned he desires Honda’s EVs to be “edgy” and drive otherwise than their competitors. However like Aoyama, he likes the thought of direct-drive higher. “I’m unsure if we will substitute the handbook transmission,” Mibe mentioned.

As an alternative, Honda plans to concentrate on “battery know-how, in addition to the packaging, programming, and general engineering of electrical motors and direct-drive items as essential differentiating components for electrical autos and the way they really feel on the highway.”

Presumably, they’re speaking about sportier electrical automobiles, not the upcoming Honda Prologue EV, which is constructed on GM’s Ultium platform and Honda just lately admitted would drive just about the identical as every other crossover constructed on the identical platform.