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The Honda Super-N is one of the most fun electric cars to drive, being Super-Lightweight, Super-Engaging with its (simulated) sporty petrol engine noise, Super-Small on the outside but spacious on the inside, and Super-Affordable compared to most EVs.
Over the years Honda has demonstrated flashes of genius; the brand has given us some amazing cars, but also some cars at the other end of the spectrum that haven’t quite hit the mark. This has been the case with the company’s two previous EVs. The Honda e city car was brilliant, but the subsequent Honda e:Ny1 SUV had a name that was as unmemorable as the car. Honda’s third electric car, the ‘Super-N’, is now here, with an interesting name, and an even more interesting driving experience…
The Honda Super-N is built on Honda’s N ‘Kei’ car platform, and is based on the N-ONE e: kei car which is only available in Japan, and it takes its inspiration from the 1980s Honda City Turbo II. The Super-N is a compact A-segment city car measuring 3,599mm in length, and 1,573mm in width, which is 100mm wider than the standard N-ONE e:
The Super-N is only a four-seater, but it has more rear legroom than many larger cars. The boot is only 162 litres in size but it feels bigger than you might expect. We even conducted an experiment which proved that you can fit two medium sized dogs in the boot. If you fold down the rear seats you get 967 litres of space. There’s a very small compartment under the boot floor, unfortunately not quite big enough to store the charging cable.
The Super-N features Honda’s ‘Magic Seats’, where the rear seats can be folded in two ways: ‘dive-down’ to create a flat floor, or ‘tip-up’ to allow the rear seat cushions to be lifted-up to accommodate taller items.
Visually, the Honda Super-N certainly commands attention, with its boxy body with wide wheel arches and small 15-inch wheels, all of which is accentuated by the Boost Voilet Pearl paint colour of our test car.
The Honda Super-N features a thin 29.6kWh battery delivering power to the front wheels.
The Honda Super-N delivers a Super-Fun driving experience. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, the EV is Super-Lightweight, weighing just 1,097 kg. This means that it’s one of the lightest EVs on sale, at around half of the weight of the average new electric car, which is approaching two tonnes. It’s also small, at 3,599mm in length and 1,573mm in width. All this ensures that the Super-N is Super-Agile.
You would imagine that such a diminutive city car would feel and sound like an eco-car to drive, which makes it all the more bizarre – but brilliant – that Honda has endowed it with ‘Active Sound Control’, a simulated engine noise. But this isn’t just any engine noise – it sounds like a serious petrol performance car (inspired by the Honda City Turbo II and the Integra Type R). Unlike the noise in some other EVs, the ‘engine sound’ is convincingly matched to the inputs on the accelerator.
Then you’ve got the drive modes, selected via a switch on the dashboard, with the options of Econ, City, Normal and Sport. Sport gives you the simulated engine sound. Then there’s another drive mode: ‘Boost’. This isn’t accessed via the small drive mode switch; instead there’s a purple Boost button on the steering wheel (which is a bit lost amongst other controls, it would be better being a stand-alone button). This is the important button, because it increases the Super-N’s power output from 47kW to 70kW, the virtual rev-limit is raised by 30% compared to Sport, and the 0-62 mph time is reduced from 14.5 seconds to 10 seconds. Unlike Boost buttons on some EVs which only operate for a short time, the Super-N’s Boost mode stays on permanently.
And there’s more: the Super-N has a seven-speed simulated transmission, which is activated in Sport or Boost modes. This allows the car to ‘change gear’ automatically, or you can change gears manually using the steering wheel-mounted paddles. The gear changing might not be real, but with the changing torque and noise characteristics, it feels realistic. The basic gears are selected by buttons on the dashboard (you press a button for D and pull down a switch for Reverse), which isn’t as user friendly as a conventional gear lever.
And then there’s the handling. The Super-N is front-wheel drive (whereas the Honda e was rear-wheel drive). If you accelerate through a corner, the Honda-specific Yokohama Advan Fleva tyres have good levels of grip, but if you want to have fun, you can push it beyond its limits, when the tyres can lose traction, but the car is extremely controllable in an entertaining way – like a well-sorted race or rally car (yes we can’t believe we’re comparing an electric city car to a race or rally car). Although wheelspin is possible when accelerating from a standstill, torque steer is reasonably well controlled.
The Super-N is 100mm wider than the standard N-ONE e: with the increased track helping to give the car more stability than you would expect from the narrow and tall body shape (and the thin battery in the floor helps to give a low centre of gravity).
Despite the handling being brilliant, the Super-N’s ride quality is also extremely comfortable.
The cabin features a touchscreen with some physical controls next to it, which is fine, but we miss the excellent cockpit of the Honda e, which had a touchscreen stretching across the entire width of the dashboard, with big digital buttons that worked really well.
The Super-N also has physical climate controls, which are user-friendly, but watch out for the heated steering wheel button which is located completely separately, low down on the dashboard to the right-hand side of the steering wheel.
Very unusually in a new car, there were no annoying beeps from the driver assistance systems, despite none of the settings being switched off.
The main ergonomic issue with the narrow interior is that it’s easy for the driver to hit their right elbow on the hard plastic of the interior door trim.
The Honda Super-N has a WLTP combined electric driving range of 128 miles. Driving the car sensibly (which is a challenge because it’s so much fun) resulted in a real-world range of 106 miles. This can easily drop below 100 miles if you play with the car’s performance and dynamics. It has a WLTP City range figure of 199 miles. Consumption (WLTP) is 4.2 miles/kWh.
The Honda Super-N has a maximum DC rapid charging rate of 50 kW, which is very low compared to virtually all other EVs, but because the 29.6 kWh battery is so small, this still delivers a 10% to 80% charge in 30 minutes. A 7.4 kW AC wallbox can charge the car in 4.5 hours.
The Honda Super-N is available in just one trim level, ‘Advance’, priced at £18,995. Standard items of equipment include the essentials for an EV in winter – heated seats and heated steering wheel, a Bose audio system with eight speakers and Honda’s CONNECT infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
The Super-N is available in five exterior colours: Boost Violet Pearl (as per our test car) (apparently inspired by the ‘electrical intensity of a bolt of lightning’), Platinum White Pearl, Crystal Black Pearl, Seabed Blue Pearl and Mono Grey. Boost Violet Pearl, Platinum White Pearl, Seabed Blue Pearl and Mono Grey can be specified in a two-tone specification that includes a contrasting gloss black finish for the roof panel and rear spoiler.
The Honda Super-N is one of the most fun electric cars to drive. It’s light and compact, helping to deliver agile handling, it generates a noise that sounds like a petrol performance car, and you can enjoy the interaction of simulated gear changes. Although it has a small footprint on the road on the outside, there’s more space on the inside than you might expect, with more rear legroom than many cars in the class above. It’s also at the affordable end of EV pricing, at £18,995. The main downside is its driving range, which is officially 128 miles, but if you enjoy the car’s driving experience, this will drop to less than 100 miles. The Honda Super-N is an example of one of the brand’s genius moments and is awarded a Green Car Guide rating of 8 out of 10.
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Paul Clarke, GreenCarGuide Editor
