Honda City-Hybrid

Honda City e:HEV

              

HONDA CITY requires no introduction in Indian auto world. The combination of  classy look and its silky smooth i-VTEC  engine are the major attraction of this car. Now this beautiful sedan is also available in Hybrid version with a slightly different name-Honda City e:HEV.

EXTERIOR

It looks like the regular Honda City. A blue shade around the Honda badge is provided in this Hybrid version. There is an e:HEV badge is provided at the back. It has beautiful 9-slot LED headlights and L shaped turn indicators. Fog lamps are well placed inside the black cladding on the bumper.With all these the car looks beautiful as always from the front.

From the sides we can see 16"alloy wheels and body coloured side rear-view mirrors with turn indicators. Lane departure system camera is placed under the left rear-view mirror. Door handles are chrome finished.

At the back, the tail lamps looks beautiful. There is an integrated spoiler on the boot door. A black skid plate is provided under the bumper makes it different than the regular City.

Due to the battery pack, this car's boot space is reduced to 310 litres, but it is sufficient for a normal family trip. There is a  shark-finn antenna at the top as in the regular City. All these features makes this car beautiful and elegant from outside.

INTERIOR

As usual this City is also comes with typical classy Honda interior. This car having a very spacious cabin. It can accommodate 5 people comfortably. Both front and back seats are excellent and well cushioned. These seats provide good comfort and having very good thigh support. Driver seat height can be adjusted manually. Back seat headrests are integrated but it is sufficient for the safe and comfortable journey.

Comfort and storage spaces

At the centre of the dash board we can see a nice 8" touch screen infotainment system with 8 speaker surround sound. Lane departure system camera is also integrated with this infotainment system.

Honda's new Honda Connect connectivity features are also integrated with the infotainment system. This system can be paired with smart watch and thereby we can remotely operate the car like- lock/unlock, make A/c ON/OFF etc. The regular parking brake is replaced with new electronic parking brake in this car. As storage, we can find 2 cup-holders at the front of the gear lever. Bottle holders are provided on all four doors. Charging sockets are provided at the front. A/c vents are provided for back passengers.There are 2 power sockets are also provided for back passengers,which is placed under the back A/c vents. 

A nice 7" TFT screen is provided at the driver side looks very beautiful. This screen provides various drive related informations like energy flow,re-generative braking functions etc. on the go to the driver.

DRIVABILITY

The new city is coming with a beautiful steering wheel.Cruise control and wireless telephony switches are placed on it. The car comes with paddle shifters for an enthusiastic drive. As it is a Hybrid vehicle it comes with 1.5 liter petrol engine 2 electric motors which produces a combined power output of 126 BHP. It has 3 electronic drive modes-

• EV Drive mode
• Hybrid mode &
• Engine Drive mode

All the modes are selected automatically by the vehicle itself by assessing the driving characteristics. It has a self-charging 172.8 Volt Lithium-ion battery pack. The car can run purely on EV mode up to the speed of 40km/h, then between 40km/h to 80km/h it runs on Hybrid mode and after 80km/h the petrol engine will take the charge for those performance oriented drives.

The new e:HEV City has a claimed mileage of 26.5km/l. It is an excellent figure for a 4.5 meter sedan.

SAFETY

It comes with various safety features. The car have ADAS-2 features also. Some of the safety features are:

• 6 Airbags
• Collision mitigation braking system
• Road departure mitigation system
• Auto high beam
• Tyre pressure monitoring system
• Auto-Dimming IRVM
• Lane watch camera
• Rear view camera
• Hill-hold assist
• Vehicle-stebility assist,and may more...

For more details you can check all the features from Hondaindia website.

With all these latest technology and advanced safety systems and good mileage it costs Rs.19.50 lakh ex-showroom. As it is a Hybrid, it is a good choice for that long distance journeys without any range anxiety of a pure EV.

If you want to know about one of its perfect competitor then click here to know about the VW Virtus GT Plus. and check the Skoda Slavia.

Be safe Drive safe.

Note: All images shown in this blog have been taken from Hondacarindia website for presentation purpose only.