Gadgetory

over the last few years I've driven plenty of electric cars many of which probably deserve to be on the golf course this however is not one of those if it's not a hole-in-one it's at least a 300 yard drive I read it up with the golf parallels let's drive the 2013 Honda Fit Evy all electric I check the tech now as you can see the fit Evy is built on the outgoing fit not the radically redesigned 2015 it's easy to spot a fit Evy it's got graphics all over it screaming that which you'll want to pay a body shock to remove the day you bring it home at least I would also slightly higher ride height because they packed a bunch of batteries underneath now the most important thing to notice inside the cabin of the fit Evy is a very different instrument panel fresh and really well laid out as electric cars go let's take a quick tour on the left is your charge or discharge gauge down means you're getting energy into the vehicle with regen up means you're expending it on acceleration in the middle great big speedo and then the key thing you're gonna look at all the time right underneath there is the range indicator and we're gonna talk about that little icon next to it in a moment and then on the far right you've got this giant gasoline gauge style charge indicator and then something interesting to the left of that you've got two parasitic discharge areas on the upper left shows climate control and how much it is sapping your battery turn on things like heater or air conditioning and you're gonna show more blue bars there that's a bad thing below that or things like lights or maybe a lot of things plugged into your power outlets so that tells you what you can get rid of to take less out of the battery and extend your range now look over here on the far left side there are three mode control buttons you've got the Eco at the bottom norm in the middle and sport at the top we'll get on the road and see how these really work sometimes they're almost kind of the same thing you can barely tell a difference in this car I think we're in for a surprise the only place this display breaks down is in that centre LCD you can get into way TMI when you go through some of these historic charge versus average discharge this is for the high per mile crowd you don't care now on to the head unit I want to show you the key feature on this now watch carefully it's right down here you see that look right in there see what that is that's where you're gonna put the crowbar and rip this POS out and throw it away the first thing you bring the car home because that sucks this is a tired old design that dates back to when scene that first started reviewing cars the better part of a decade ago it does nothing very well and it's completely out of place in an Eevee in 2014 so let me tell you get rid of this it's a double din head unit you can pop in one of the new pioneer or Alpine units that have mirror link to more intelligently bring your phone in there's a Honda Evy link app that lets you control charging find charging stations and range precondition the cabin etc I've never gotten it to work because Honda's online reg system is amazingly complicated now down here under the snout not a whole lot little tiny electric motor an inverter an electric air-conditioning compressor and a whole bunch of room as well what's happening here is a motor fed by a 20 kilowatt lithium-ion battery mostly packaged flat low under the car that 20 kilowatt battery is able to get this electric motor to crank out 123 horse but 189 foot-pounds of torque torques the story with v's remember the guy weighs thirty two hundred plus pounds that's six hundred and thirty more than a standard gas fit with an automatic so ain't going hence Xun 260 is okay at nine seconds but v's tend to feel faster than they read will see on the road epa says you'll get 82 miles on a full charge out of this guy that'll vary depending on your terrain driving style and how many of those parasitic systems you use that we saw on the dash that's why they're there that charge will take you anywhere from 15 long hours on a 120 outlet that's survival stuff as all that is to just three hours on what they call a level ii or 240 volt outlet 118 MPGe is the EPA number for the miles per gallon equivalent compared to the energy cost of gasoline now to get a full charge at hu 80 miles it's about 2 bucks here in California at the lowest overnight rate that same 80 miles covered in the 2015 gas engine fits gonna run you $8.50 so it's night and day the cost of getting around on this car wait she / however its range and charge time have to work for you oh by the way in addition that app I showed you check out this dongle that comes with the fiddy v it's basically a shortcut version that lets you do things like check your state of charge you push that button it goes over the wireless data network and tells me I've got 24 percent battery right there I can tell it to charge by hitting this button right here I can also tell it to pre charge the climate all for those who don't want to use an app now my first impression is not a favorable one I'm a little disappointed with the amount of motor and gear wine is coming through this cabin that makes us not like a golf cart quite literally I'm not just saying that as some kind of a disc it sounds like an electric golf cart it's not horribly intrusive but it's more than a lot of electric cars I've driven lately so they need to address that however once you get past some of that intrusive wine what a nice driving little car it's nicely planted it doesn't have a brittle suspension it's very well sort of modulated of course all that weight down low that extra 600 pounds in the belly makes it handle better than I recall a gas engine fit if not quite as sharply you know what I mean now about these three magic buttons over here on the Left eco normal and sport what a difference more than any car I've ever driven that has similar buttons Eco is really tepid I mean you can't get much out of this car but boy does it make the range improve when you go to normal boom you feel an immediate difference in responsiveness and when you go to sport another huge jump but what you also notice is a big change in those predicted mile ranges there on the gauge I'm looking at roughly 12 to 15% different between each of the steps so if you go from eco to sport ballparking you lose about a third of your range okay let's price our fiddy v it's 37 4 gulp it's a lot of money for a fit but it doesn't matter because you can't buy one you can only lease them to 59 a month and for only 3 years at which point you got to give it back Honda gives you a number of things for free I think sweeten the deal free level to charger although you're on the hook for the installation that can run 5 to 1500 bucks typically unlimited miles that's fairly unusual for these kinds of cars and you're gonna get collision insurance thrown in that's interesting as well brings your bill down so it's really a $9,300 experience to get in the car now on the downside this car has got a crappy head unit and as I mentioned kind of a lot of gear and motor whine that surprised me in a bad way however it's got a lot more upsides in its overall packaging handling performance and the way they've put the deal together for you