Honda delays its fun retro-looking all-electric vehicle to 2020, report says

Honda’s first next-gen all-electric vehicle was supposed to go on sale this year, but the production has been pushed to “early 2020” and we might have to temper our expectations when it comes to availability, according to a new report.

Back in 2017, Honda Motor Co. President and CEO, Takahiro Hachigo, unveiled the “Urban EV Concept”, a small retro-looking all-electric vehicle, and said during his speech:

“This is not some vision of the distant future; a production version of this car will be here in Europe in 2019,”

Now Auto News Europe reports that it will actually go on sale next year.

Interestingly, the report claims that Honda is planning to show two iterations of the vehicle before starting production.

They say that the Japanese automaker plans to unveil a new version of the concept at the Geneva auto show in March and then the production version at the Frankfurt show.

Here’s the original concept vehicle that Honda unveiled in Frankfurt back in 2017:

The report also states that Honda is only planning to sell about 5,000 units per year in Europe, which could mean that they are aiming for the vehicle to only be a compliance car – like the electric version of the Clarity.

Honda has been taking a more tentative approach to electrification by focusing more on hybrid vehicles than fully electric ones.

The Japenese automaker also unveiled an all-electric sports car concept based on the new electric platform and with a similar design language as the retro-looking urban, but it didn’t announce any official plan to bring the vehicle to production.

Nonetheless, Honda is reportedly still interested in all-electric vehicles.

Last year, GM and Honda announced that they are partnering to build next-gen batteries for electric vehicles and the automaker is reportedly working on an affordable all-electric Fit-based car with China’s biggest battery maker.