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-   -   Honda’s first electric scooter for India confirmed for March 2025 (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motorbikes/285227-honda-s-first-electric-scooter-india-confirmed-march-2025-a-3.html)

Honda's First Electric bike unveiled:

Activa e: features a 6kW electric motor that will give it a top speed of 80 kmph.

QC1 gets a 1.5kWh fixed battery pack
- 1.8kW motor
- Two riding modes
- 0-80 percent charge in 4.5 hours
- 26-litre boot

The Activa e: gets a 6kW motor
- 22Nm
- 13 degree gradability
- Top speed of 80 kph
- 3kwh battery in total. 1.5 per pack.

While Honda is not revealing the price, they assure that it will be affordable. The company also stresses that it is working on offering a holistic sales and service experience. Subscription fee will be announced with prices in Jan-25.

The fixed battery model with a 1.5kWh battery and 1.8KW peak power motor will fail badly unless they price it for Rs 50K. Honda should have made the fixed battery model with the same specs as the removable model (3kWh battery and 6KW motor) but with the necessary boot space.

Entry-level iQube has a 2.2 kWh battery and 4.4 KW motor. Most of the sales are from 3.4 kWh battery variants. Entry-level Chetak, Ather Rizta, Vida, etc... all have a battery of 2.9kWh and approx 100 km range with powerful motors.

Looks like the QC1 is going to be priced at a much affordable end of the market, looking at the specs. India does lack an affordable urban EV scooter from a reputed manufacturer. If Honda doesn't go overboard with the pricing, QC1 will bring in the volumes. A large majority of scooters don't see more than 1-10kms per day of running. Not everything have to be at the premium end of the market. Honda is a mass market player as well.

I have couple of doubts with ACTIVA E

1. The price of Activa E will be inclusive of battery or otherwise
2. Can I charge the battery at home, if im paying for the scooter inclusive of the price can i charge it at home

Apart from this the hub motor version is Dead on Arrival if its price is anything over 60k

The Activa E, is a very nice product solving the charging time and infra issue, but as with any product in India, the price is crucial

Best of Luck Honda, ik you are seeing this post, we want you to succeed but dont take the Indian market for ride just coz you are Honda

We expect a premium product from Honda which can compete likes of Ather not Ola.

A week back, was pleasantly surprised to see a Honda battery swapping corner in a Petrol Pump right at its entrance.

If this battery swapping technology takes off seamlessly and successfully across all existing fuel stations in India, it will be a game changer and re-fueling(with batteries) of EVs will become a non issue. Range Anxiety issue will be solved.

Hope the batteries become so energy efficient and energy dense that the same small form factor batteries (albeit multipe units of the same standardized form factor battery) can be used in future EV cars as well and this will enable us to execute long outstation drives in EVs.

Hope Honda leads the way in the same (Battery swapping infrastructure at fuel pumps and its successful deployment for both 2 wheeler EVS and 4 wheeler cars).

Honda should stick to its core values (High quality, reliability and class and efficiency and good service not get carried away by short term profits and learn from the recent blunder they did in the Indian market (lowering quality, going mass market, offering sub standard platforms).
Treat the Indian market and Indian customers well with consistent reliability, quality and after sales service consistently and it will reward you long term :)

AND - For a 10 Km average run per day {or even 13 Km}, fossil fueled scooters are cheaper to run in 10 years' time frame.

The scooter looks so drab and feels like it was designed in 2010. The specs are meh, the design on first glance looked like it was another OLA S1 X-Y-Z. May be they prioritized function over form, not sure.

It does not look even half as good as the iQube (3+ years old design) or Ather Rizta (which tries to look like, sorry inspired by the iQube but fails badly, still very good looking scooter in isolation).

Just calling this ACTIVA will not make it fly out of showrooms. Remember the Unicorn 160 which tried to capitalize on the Unicorn name but failed badly even though it was a good product. I have the same feeling about this e-scoot.

Yes. I've been using ICE scooters for the past 11 years and can't beat the overall costs considering I do all the maintenance. That said, EV scooters are going to have a big market in the future and it's the best two wheeler platform for electrification.

More insights into Honda Motorcycle & Scooter's Activa E, QC1

- Activa E and the QC1, one for personal commute primarily, and the other focused on budget customers.

-These models have been designed with focus on range, safety and performance

-Activa E, built on 6kw direct drive motor, comes with a range of around 102 km and maximum speed of 80 km per hour.

-QC1 is built on compact in-wheel 1.8 kw motor and has 1.5 kWh lithium-ion BP cell chemistry. It has range of around 80 km and top speed of 50 km per hour.

-Both electric scooters will be manufactured at Honda's plant in Karnataka.

-The automaker has four plants in India - Manesar (Haryana), Alwar (Rajasthan), Narsapura (Karnataka) and Vithalapur (Gujarat), and over 6,000 sales and service touchpoints.

-n a bid to support battery swapping, the automaker has collaborated with OMC Power Pvt Ltd in major metro cities like Bangalore, Delhi, and Mumbai.

-Honda is adopting a phased expansion strategy to roll out its vehicles across the country, starting with Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai.

-The booking for Activa E will start in January 2025, while deliveries will start from February 2025.

Link:

I saw that there's no way to directly charge the scooter. Is it so? Either swap out the battery or remove and charge outside with the dedicated dock(Honda UK models). If it's a swap only system, they really need to get it installed at all petrol pumps.

Kindly check post no 29. It does show charging port.

Honda Activa e: with SWAPPABLE batteries for India, first look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBUv...nel=carandbike

Honda QC1: Fixed batteries

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcfN...nel=carandbike

Strange mix of product features and I am not sure who is Honda trying to target with these scooters, thereby, making the customer profile confusing.

Here are my two cents:
1. A top speed of 80 km/h means that Honda is targeting the conservative, family scooter buyer who may have considered the vanilla ICE Activa. This brings it into direct competition with Ather Rizta, which is a pretty good family scooter for the conservative EV family scooter buyer.
2. If we consider point 1 and compare it with Rizta, then Activa E does not have underseat storage and rather offers swappable batteries in place of it. I am not sure whether the target customer would be delighted to find a non-usable underseat slot and if they would even consider swapping batteries or even removing them, ever. Remember, Activa is a name synonymous with utility, simplicity, and practicality.

I am not sure what the customer profile will be for QC 1, considering the pretty low driving range and top speed of the scooter that may not even appeal to even the most prudent of EV scooter buyers. QC 1 could have been labelled as a sub-branded Activa E, such as its lowest variant, but not sure why they did not do that. That scooter, with a 50 km/h top speed and a range of 80 km, seems to be designed to become a favourite of the quick-commerce segment. Cannot help but wonder if that is what Honda means by “QC” in the name.

Overall, I believe Honda seems to have made a half-hearted effort aimed at a mere presence in the EV space rather than aiming at becoming the leader. The business motivation for this could be the prevention of cannibalisation of the ICE Activa products, which have consistently had healthy sales. Now, the pricing of these Honda EV scooters is the only parameter left that can help introduce some conviction for purchase. Any pricing that even slightly inclines toward the overconfident side will throw the sales into jeopardy.

Just watched these. How did Honda get almost everything wrong?! They didn't mention the function of charging the removable battery at home, right?

Like someone said in the comments of one of the YT videos, "Honda came late to the party, and got everything wrong".