Honda Worldwide | CSR | Special Feature 2011 | 1. Living with low-carbon mobility

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Special Feature 2011
1. Living with low-carbon mobility
Usefulness of mobility in people's lives

What should Honda do to realize mobility as a convenient capability that plays a useful role in people’s lives in order to reduce CO₂ emissions. We found that the answer was to develop a business-use electric motorcycle that could be used immediately—specifically, the EV-neo electric scooter for business use, a low-carbon mobility solution with no muffler and no engine sound. The name combines EV, or electric vehicle, with the Greek word for new, highlighting the product’s status as a completely new concept in electric scooters. This product that was released in December 2010, which will be available for lease by the general public starting in April 2011 at an annual volume of 1,000 units after testing 10 prototype vehicles and monitoring 100 vehicles in the actual business use, will contribute to the widespread adoption of next-generation personal mobility solutions.

Electric scooters emit no CO₂ while being ridden, and they offer dramatically higher energy efficiency than their gasoline-powered counterparts. Engines, which generate kinetic energy by burning gasoline, lose about 60% of the fuel’s energy in the form of heat. By contrast, electric scooters, which are driven by motors, don’t burn anything and benefit from a motor design that reduces the complexity of an engine, allowing them to convert energy into drive power at a very high level of efficiency. In fact, the energy efficiency of electric scooters, which has no transmissions and other complex mechanical components and therefore enjoy low energy losses, can be boosted as high as about 90%.

Additionally, the motorcycle motor generates more torque than a gasoline engine when accelerating from a standstill, making the EV-neo suitable for use as a business scooter in applications that require transport of heavy cargo. This business type electric scooter is the EV-neo.

The EV-neo is manufactured at Honda’s Kumamoto Factory, its leader motorcycle plant. Its motor is manufactured on the same production line as the Monpal electric cart.

Koichiro Honda Researcher, Motorcycle R&D Center, Honda R&D Co., Ltd.

Koichiro Honda
Assistant Chief Engineer
Motorcycle R&D Center,
Honda R&D Co., Ltd.

The EV-neo’s normal charger can be stowed under the seat, providing an elegant and convenient solution for charging.

A compact, normal charger that can be stowed under the seat. Special features include a 45dB quiet design and easy operations by just pressing the start button.

Koichiro Honda (Assistant Chief Engineer, Motorcycle R&D Center, Honda R&D Co., Ltd.), who overseas the EV-neo development program, explains, “There are limits to technology, but the key is pursuing an ongoing program of steady research to produce products that exceed these limitations with a focus on the customer.” As with gasoline engines, electric scooters are subject to trade-offs between power and cruising range. Our development team gave priority to achieving the necessary cruising range with the selected battery capacity. The ability to accelerate from a standstill smoothly on a hill while loaded with cargo is also another requirement for business motorcycles. As a result of various trial and error, the EV-neo achieves a cruising range of 34 km* per charge with enough performance that it can accelerate more quickly than a car after stopping at a traffic light. This is almost the same distance as traveling from Tokyo Station to Yokohama Station or Osaka Station to Kobe Station. The EV-neo can also accelerate smoothly on a 12 degree incline even with 30 kg of cargo and use one-fourth the electricity consmption of scooters in the same class.

*Test value obtained during 30 km/h proving test.

“Compared to gasoline-powered motorcycles, which are the product of 100 years of incremental technological advances, electric scooters are just being ridden for the first time,” says Koji Murakawa, who oversees motorcycle sales (Assistant Manager, Honda Motorcycle Japan Co., Ltd.). “Unless Honda, the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer, approaches this new market as a completely new endeavor, it will be difficult to truly inspire joy on the part of our customers.” Since electric scooters are a new mobility solution just being used for the first time, we at Honda believe we must facilitate the evolution of the technology on the basis of sincere dialog with customers.

Notwithstanding differences in how the products are powered, our philosophy of playing a useful role in people’s lives remains the same and the EV-neo electric scooter for business use is a product that has surely inherited Honda’s DNA, which cultivated the Super Cub.

Koji Murakawa
Assistant Manager, Honda Motorcycle Japan Co., Ltd.

The first time an EV-neo was delivered to the store, I sensed how serious Honda is about pushing this product into the mainstream when I looked it over and found that it doesn’t differ appreciably in appearance from its gasoline-powered counterparts. When I first took it out for a ride, I found myself smiling at its powerful acceleration and solid riding comfort. In that instant I felt that Honda motorcycles are easy to use and fun to ride.

Our head office in the United States, where deliveries are made by car, is taking notice of the EV-neo that we are using. It is my hope that this Japanese experiment will spread throughout the world, minimizing environmental impact and allowing more customers to enjoy our pizzas.

An EV-neo being used to deliver pizza and Mr. Hajime Shiraishi