Honda has finally brought its first-ever electric motorcycle to market with the E-VO in China — a momentous occasion for the Japanese brand that has dragged its feet into two-wheeled EVs. The two wheeler, which comes from Honda’s joint venture with Guangzhou Motors as part of the Wuyang-Honda JV, is a combination of retro café racer styling with state-of-the-art electric drive.
Design That Turns Heads
Appearance The E-VO jumps out with an eye catching modern package, but classic cafe racer styling. Think retro meets sci-fi — it’s got a circular headlamp, a curved windshield, and bar-end mirrors that look vintage, but the fully enclosed side paneling and slender aerodynamic profile bring it right up to 2025. The one-piece seat and 765mm seat height are likely to be fun for all the family, matched with a forged all-aluminium chassis that should keep things both stable and potent.
What’s especially astute are the lengths that Honda has gone to conceal all the electric bits so the bike doesn’t wind up looking bulky. The battery packs simply nestle down inside that boxy mid-section allowing for a clean visual line from nose to tail.
Two Electric Performances, Botanical and Beyond
Honda isn’t fooling around with just a single flavor. TWO MODELS TO MEET THE OPDUELEVO comes in two different configurations that attend to different requirements and available budgets. It gets a 4.1 kWh dual-battery arrangement and has a kerb weight of 143kg while its range stands at a claimed 120km on the WMTC cycle. Climb the ladder to the premium offering and you’re looking at a 6.2kWh three-battery set-up, 156kg kerb weight and a more credible 170km of range.
The two models are both powered by the same 15.8 kW (21.5 PS) mid-mounted motor, which is connected to a Continental belt drive – 97% efficiency transmission according to Honda – and is (supposedly) whisper quiet. Performance figures aren’t too bad: 0-50kmph in a claimed 2.8 seconds and a top whack of 120 kmph. That would leave it roughly in 150cc petrol bike range, which seems reasonable for urban riding.
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This Is a Charge That Makes Sense
Here’s where Honda has done its homework. The base model takes just 1.5 hours to charge from 20-80% if connected to a home charger or an hour if you can get your hands on a public AC car charger. The same home charging will take 2.5 hours for the bigger battery or 1.5 hours for public infrastructure.
What’s clever is that Honda has designed the E-VO to share compatibility with China’s network of more than 2.15 million public AC car charging stations. No proprietary charging bullshit — just plug in and go.
Tech That Does Stuff: The Features That Really Matter
The E-VO is not just another electric bike with a pretty screen stuck on top. You get a full-fat 7-inch TFT main display with an additional TFT unit for navigation, music, tire pressure monitoring and battery level. Three riding modes (Eco, Normal and Sport) allow you to manage performance with range, as well as traction control and dual-channel ABS as standard.
Awsnap- but here’s the twist – Honda has installed dashcams. There’s a 1080P camera at the front on the base model, and also an additional rear camera on the top model. I believe globally it’s one of the first electric motorcycles where reversing is included, which to be honest makes perfect sense for commuting in a city.
Pricing and Reality Check
It is priced starting at CNY 29,999 (approximately ₹3.56 lakh) for the base trim and CNY 36,999 (approximately ₹4.39 lakh) for E-VO top-spec model in China. That’s not quite budget territory, though, but with the tech package and Honda’s build quality, it feels about right for what you’re taking home with you.
What About India?
But before you start dreaming about how to get your hands on the E-VO, here’s the buzzkill – not anytime soon, not in India. Honda is currently preparing a new plant in India to build electric vehicles near its existing Narasapura factory in Karnataka, starting stage production by 2028. Perhaps then we could see electric motorcycles from Honda for the Indian market suited to Indian conditions and pricing.
Honda has for now brought in its Indian line up of electric vehicles, which includes the Activa e: and the QC1 scooters priced at ₹1.05 lakh and ₹1.17 lakh, respectively.
The Bigger Picture
The E-VO is Honda’s hardcore commitment to playing catch-up in electric motorcycling, a space it has been missing from while others (Kawasaki, most notably) have released bikes such as the Ninja e-1 and Z e-1. The very fact that Honda is coming with a premium, fully, loaded solution from the very beginning and not a basic commuter offering means that they’re aiming for enthusiasts who value electric performance and don’t want to compromise riding experience.
Whether that works in China — and, eventually, in other markets — will depend on how adeptly Honda can walk that fine line between premium positioning and the practical challenges of not scaring off potential electric motorcycle owners. But from what we see here with the E-VO, Honda appears to have taken a lesson or two from watching others trip over themselves in this space.
The electric motorcycle revolution is finally being Kawasaki’d by Honda: slow, careful, quality engineering and probably a few years later than it should have been. Well, better late than never, as the saying goes.