Honda CR-V e:PHEV review | Is Honda’s First Plug-in Hybrid The Perfect Family Car?
Hello and welcome back to buckle up I’m Harry King and this is the brand new Honda CRV which historically has been Honda’s bestselling car so have they done as good a job with this one okay so we’ll start as usual here at the front first thing huge badge look at
That next to my hand huge Grill in general they’ve massively changed the styling of the CRV for this latest generation honda attempt to tell you that it’s an evolution but for me this is Revolution I do think it’s a rather handsome brute for the first time in a
Long time I don’t think the CV has looked good since the second generation but I like the styling of this one massive massive square flat Bonnet which might be slightly unnecessary obviously it looks great from a styling perspective but I do just want to show you I
Uh open up said Bonnet sort of this much of the car is unnecessary but it looks great so who cares um let’s see how it looks on the side you can really see now from the side just how long this Bonet is down here we come to the wheels they’re 18 in
And that’s your choices 18in Wheels only fantastic decision from Honda there look at that side wall this is what a car should look like it should have travel in the wheel also the wheels themselves look quite nice on this High specification they come in Black you also get black mirrors under here there
Is a camera there’s cameras all around this vehicle this has Honda’s most advanced Safety 360 Vision Pro whatever Max safety system on it so that you know you and your family are safe obviously it’s a five door um another lovely squidgy tire back here and then moving around the back you’ll
Find these rear lights that Honda claim are instantly recognizable from the previous generation though I think they’re instantly recognizable from a Volvo XC60 it’s an FV or eev or epev however you pronounce this collection of letters on that side is the CRV badge let’s get into this now the heav system
That Honda uses um contains the engine and some electric motors and a battery and sometimes it drives on electric and sometimes it drives on the motor and it sort of operates in the real world like a CVT but it’s not a CVT and now this is
Also that but with a bigger battery that you can charge yourself there you go now everything you needed to know about the Honda propulsion system so we’ll pop open the boot which is class leading in spaciousness nearly 600 L of space in here and the batteries are under the
Boot floor so you might be thinking oh no there’ll be nowhere for the charging cables but you’ve got to remember this is a Honda they’re great at practical space there’s actually Acres of room under here so there’s space for your fast charging cable a new granny cable and this box of wheel
Nuts and your tow plate and your toe bar and gloves and your tire repair kit now you might be thinking Harry why is this got a toe bar with it well that’s because this has been developed especially for if you need a hybrid for towing so it’s
Actually got 1 and 1/2 tons of towing capacity even though it’s a fev which is quite impressive and also the neat freaks Among Us will be pleased to hear that the rear parcel shelf also fits on the boot floor if you want it to now you can
Lower the rear seats for even more space however it’s not a continuous load floor you’ve actually got this pump back here to get you up to the seat level of the middle seats as they folded down other features in the boot in general you’ve
Got some tow hooks up here at the side a little light a great big subwoofer on this side you’ve got a 12vt socket and uh and you have this area for tying down something that has somewhere gone missing um so I don’t know what should
Be here but it isn’t so if if you had this car last Honda needs that back please anyway speaking of the back should we try the back seat okay it’s massive back here now Honda says this is C segment which makes it the rivals of things like the VW tigan the Hyandai
Tucson or the Ford Cougar but I think actually size-wise this is more similar to the next segment up so that would be the Santa Fe or the tweg um obviously this is only five seats but there’s just so much room here and the car is so wide
Flat floor big wide middle seat there is unfortunately um the seat belt is up here and also very hard to get out for the middle passenger so that’s not ideal it’s obviously better to have something around here but there’s lots of other things you got the seats that
Slide backwards and forwards you’ve got full recline if you want to go back further or you sit at bolt up right I don’t know why anyone want to sit like this but it is an option all the all the things USBC down here heated seats lovely lovely you got
A cut out in the roof for your head cuz this does have um oh uh the sky the sky is in the car this car does have a sunroof so the ceiling is a bit low in front of you but there actually is enough room for me I’m 180
Cm or 5’1 whichever takes you fancy so that’s good big rear seat Pockets oh look at that Honda’s left me some doublea batteries it’s nice of them pop them back in there you also got very large door Pockets with a cut out for a bottle holder and you’ve got this Center
Armrest again with uh cup holders in it there is no through loading though and the these are 6040 folding seats so if you’re a skier you might want to look elsewhere the isopix is on these which have a a tendency possibility to get lost but that’s really the only downside
Of the back that and the middle seat belt situation otherwise good show let’s see how it is in the front Okay so here we are in the front instantly recognizable the design language from the Civic but bigger so you’ve got this continuous air vent style thing here
Here in the center with all the hexagons on it which I like infotainment screen that we’ve seen in a bunch of Hondas gauge cluster that we’ve seen in the Honda Civic so I’ll just pop the ignition on so I can show you the infotainment so it is just standard
Honda nice and responsive I do think though that this screen is a little small for this size of cabin and slightly too far away from the driver and maybe should be angled slightly towards the driver if it’s going to be this size sometimes it’s just a little
Hard to read the map rest of the cabin there’s a lot to like in here so I’ve got rotary controls for the airon and for the volume thank the Lord so you can actually do things while the car is moving that’s excellent you’ve got wireless charging down here nice big
Tray to put your phone in as well so it’s space for both the driver and the passenger’s phones with wireless charging I’ve got the cable here because I’m an Android User so I have to use a cable but if you’re uh on the Apple train you can use wireless for your
Apple carplay here is the transmission selector it’s a series of buttons arranged over interesting inclines so park and neutral are pretty much flat Drive is angled back towards you and then reverse you actually pull back towards you which some people struggle with but I’ve actually not done it wrong once
While I’ve had the car it it seems fairly intuitive to me drive modes on the left parking brake on the right two cup holders here in the center and a little coin tray and then a a large center console storage area with a little shelf in it you got got a damped
Glove box very damped glove box although it is a little bit light and plasticky and lower down in the cabin there are some more hard plastics I wouldn’t usually get very fusted about that in this segment but you know how I was speaking before about how this car is so
Much bigger than the comparable cars well well it’s also um more expensive this actually is priced almost exactly the same as a hyai Santa Fe which in Theory this is the segment below of even though it has more boot space it gets very it’s yeah whatever on the steering wheel
Loads of controls smart Cruise all the smart Cruise stuff this will steer for you it does the radar Cruise thing excellent radio controls there heated steering wheel down here in the middle and then obviously auto headlights with auto high beam Auto wipers the the fuel filler release is down here on the door
Which which is slightly quirky I really like the design of this cabin and I really really like these seats I think these are incredibly comfortable they’re nice uh wide squidy you sink right into them they hug you it’s great and then everything I’m looking at is really really well designed but there’s one
Piece of design I want to highlight above all else just before we go driving you look up here let looks like a sunglasses holder and it is don’t worry there’s space for sunglasses here but it’s also a mirror so you can check that your children are getting up to no
Mischief while you’re driving on your family holiday which that’s just sensible that’s useful for what this car is designed to be used for well done Honda let’s see if it’s good to drive so driving the Honda CRV EAB let’s start with some basic figures at 335 new
M of torque 80 horsepower and a claimed not to 62 time of 9 seconds however other Publications have had it down as low as 7 and a half so I’m not sure that the power figure maybe is entirely truthful the thing to know outside of those power figures is this feels like
It has plenty of power there’s go in it and the response is good now with this obviously you charge it up and then you can have up to 50 m of EV range and you can lock it in EV and it’s got a false stop on the accelerator
Which means um unless you push through that it will always stay in EV mode which is very good or you can have it in smart mode where it will just use the EV when it thinks around town wherever else and on a Motorway you’ll have everything working in conjunction or you can have
It in save say you’re doing a long Motorway Journey with City driving at the end you could save your EV range for the end for the C driving section of your journey and still enjoy decent economy on the motorway let’s get on to economy next over my uh duration of this car I’ve
Driven it 200 mil so far and I’ve managed 33 MPG which is fine for a petrol big petrol SUV but I feel like I get slightly better economy from a hyai Tucson but my favorite thing I’ll be honest is this just has no pretentions of being sporty
In anyway it’s got the Massive Tires it’s got these great big armchair seats and just such a beautiful ride quality I mean there’s roll Galore this thing wallows about like an old land yard and it’s wonderful it’s just comfortable it’s a family vehicle it doesn’t need to
Set a lap time there’s a sports mode all that seems to do is make more noise in the cabin but I would keep it in normal there is a tow mode as well if you want to get the maximum tow range out of this otherwise you’ve got normal Eco and snow
And then the smart Cruise stuff is great I’ve got a heads up display and everything if you turn the smart cruise on the dials kind of roll up and flatten out and then it tells you both on the heads up and down here what’s going on
So I can lock it in it’s now steering for me and this system’s so good I’m on a British a-road with a mud left hand curb it’s tracking true and look it’s just steering for me and that’s amazing it’s a really really good system I can set the distance here it’s all
Very simple straightforwards really really excellently done and I’m not certain but I think the steering wheel must have a haptic sensor in it rather than a a physical weight one because as long as I keep my hands in contact with the wheel it doesn’t seem to get cross with me cuz
You often have to do sort of this in a in a self-driving car for it to keep self-driving for you which is a bit irritating but this one just seems to to do it which is quite good anyway I’ll break now I’ll turn all of that
Off also the tiny little car in the center of the screen lights up with uh with your lights as they are in real life so it’s indicating and braking on the screen which is just it’s a nice bit of attention to detail and the steering actually it’s really
Direct it’s just really Pleasant to use I don’t think there’s any getting around the fact this is a big car though it does it feels like a d segment crossover cuz it’s the size of a d segment crossover now there’s there’s upsides and downsides to that I do feel like I’m
Quite tight in this Lane at the moment I I still fit in the lane fine but depending if you feel confident driving like that that’s up to you but it feels super planted stable on the motorway very very comfortable it’s it’s a brilliant car for doing a long commuting with the
Selft driving function and if you do City commuting it’ll do it all an EV you won’t spend any money on petrol if you’re doing a longer Motorway commute though that’s really when the economy starts to suffer so maybe I would look elsewhere but this system in general and
It doesn’t it’s it’s quieter than any other Honda heav e e heav system I’ve been in it seems like the the engine is not being put under as much pressure or there’s better soundproofing but I’m just not noticing it now flat out you will eventually notice a sort of CVT
Nature to the engine note it’ll get up to maximum revs and it’ll stay there but that’s so rare in normal driving 99% of the time I don’t I’m not bothered by how this has being propelled and it’s so responsive and feels so talky they just it’s not a concern it’s not an
Issue now this is clever so to explain the the eev thing basically there’s an engine and most of the time um the way the proportion is occurring is either from the battery or from the engine spinning you’re generating electricity and that’s driving an electric motor which is turning the wheels there is
Also a sort of final drive ratio that involves a physical connection between the engine and the wheels uh with a lockup clutch and that provides you better economy at Motorway speeds because um Motors aren’t as efficient at Motorway speeds as uh a combustion engine can be so the idea is you’re
Always eing the most efficiency out of the engine depending on what the road speed is now with this you also get a second direct drive gear from the engine which is lower and that helps with Towing it helps with low down Grunt and responsiveness and as well as having two
Actual real gears the heav system will pretend to have gears when under hard acceleration in order for you to feel like it’s a normal gearbox the other thing you get in this is you get as part of your drive you get d/b uh which is uh breaking fre gen although I like to
Think of it as Drummond bass so if I go into B mode instead of uh D mode I then have these flaps where I can adjust my regen braking which is good I like this this this needs to be in more cars with regen fitted so that’s all really
Good it’s just such a clever system and you get the bigger battery with this one so it can run on EV for more of the time so to wrap up the drive Dynamics super soft super comfortable nice and quiet refined on the motorway not trying to be SP 40 just completely Comfort oriented
And I love it for that so let’s park up and do a bit of a [Laughter] conclusion so the Honda CRV what do I think well it’s a really really good car very confet so comfortable there’s no pretentions here about sporting or anything else this is just a comfortable
Car and I really really like it for that yes it’s expensive but you get so much space you get so much Tech and actually you can get quite a good discount if you go down to your dealer and ask so I’m going to recommend the Honda CRV eev um I think you should
Go and take a test drive with one and see if you like it yourself thank you so much for watching please remember to like comment and most importantly subscribe um if you go down to the description you’ll find uh all the places we do social media you’ll also
Find two ways you can support the channel we have Channel merchandise like this hoodie I’m wearing now isn’t it lovely as Stevie W said when he saw it and we also have um Channel memberships right here on YouTube you can go down and join and become a channel member
Here uh so please go and do or all of those things and I will see you next time Bye-bye
This week on Buckle Up Harry drives in Honda’s largest SUV offering (in the UK). In a packed segment offering an array of different price points, power train systems and trim levels how does the car that helped defined the crossover segment compare?
Up against rivals such as the Toyota Rav4, Nissan Quashqi, Volkswagen Tiguan, Ford Kuga, Kia Sportage, Hyundai Tuscon, Peugeot 3008, Citroën C5 Aircross, Vauxhall Grandland, Skoda Kodiaq, Seat Ateca, Alfa Romeo Tonale, Audi Q5, BMW X3, Jaguar E-Pace, Land Rover Discovery Sport, Lexus NX, Mazda CX-5, Mercedes Benz GLC, Mini Countryman, Mitsubishi Outlander, Renault Kadjar, MG HS, SsangYong Korando, Subaru Forester, Suzuki Across, Tesla Model Y and Volvo XC40 does the Comfortable Runabout Vehicle make a good enough case for itself?
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