Did anyone in Japan actually buy a Honda e?

All Honda E related discussions
ZoeDave
Posts: 146
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2020 9:26 pm

Post by ZoeDave »

Actually, driving around the Iceland ring road in a Honda e on a nice day, eating my shitty cheeseburger sounds like a great plan!

User avatar
Verone
Posts: 168
Joined: Thu Mar 24, 2022 6:52 pm

Post by Verone »

ZoeDave wrote: Wed Apr 05, 2023 6:59 pm Actually, driving around the Iceland ring road in a Honda e on a nice day, eating my shitty cheeseburger sounds like a great plan!

I'm due to take delivery of my e in a couple of weeks, and I'm planning on driving the ring road in the summer in it. It's 1300km, so there's going to be quite a few charging stops :lol:
Icelandic Advance Limited Edition in Premium Crystal Red on 17" rims
Registered May 2023
Home Type 2 Charging & Free Work Type 2 Charging! Woo!
ODO - 8750km
ZoeDave
Posts: 146
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2020 9:26 pm

Post by ZoeDave »

Sounds wonderful, do you need to jump through lots of hoops to have the car imported, or is there an official dealer? I can't imagine that Iceland is exactly a huge or diverse car market.

According to my (incredibly flawed) observations, Iceland is about to become more densely populated with es than Shibuya!
User avatar
Verone
Posts: 168
Joined: Thu Mar 24, 2022 6:52 pm

Post by Verone »

ZoeDave wrote: Thu Apr 06, 2023 6:42 pm Sounds wonderful, do you need to jump through lots of hoops to have the car imported, or is there an official dealer? I can't imagine that Iceland is exactly a huge or diverse car market.

According to my (incredibly flawed) observations, Iceland is about to become more densely populated with es than Shibuya!
Iceland is surprisingly heavily populated with cars - the natives love them and there's something like an average of 2.7 cars per household over here.

A massive number of people are swapping to EVs and PHEVs now as well, so charging infrastructure is springing up all over the place and the government is looking at new ways to tax EV owners. Right now they pay next to nothing in road tax (the calculation is made every six months and is based on a combination of the weight of your vehicle and the CO2 output).

In terms of dealers, we have a few in the country, but they tend to be clustered together. For instance, Askja, the dealer handling my car order is a Honda, Mercedes and Kia franchise.

We then have another massive franchise dealer called BL, that handles BMW, Mini, Jaguar, Land Rover, Nissan, Renault, Dacia, Subaru Izusu and MG.

There's a third called Brimborg that handles Citroen, Ford, Mazda, Opel (and most other GM cars), Peugeot, Polestar and Volvo.

VAG are on their own, handled by a dealer called Hekla.

That said, a huge proportion of the cars that come into Iceland are US Spec, and there's a lot of older USDM cars on the road over here, mainly trucks and SUVs, and many of these were imported privately.

I'm not sure how many of these adorable little bastards have been brought into the country by Askja, but I've only seen about 10 on the road in Iceland.

A colleague of mine was about to order one in February, and she was told that Honda's franchise here in Iceland have stopped bringing the cars into the country because there's been huge demand for them. Apparently, despite the high demand, they want to start selling the e:NS1 instead (Icelanders love their SUVs), and they're afraid that the e will cut into the EV market for them.

When I queried the dealer on this, I was told mine will be the last one to come into the country, and as far as I'm aware the only LE, which will also make it the only red one in the country as they haven't offered the colour as a stock colour here.

I actually ordered it last September, but it's taken a lot longer to get an LE than a regular version into the country. I was also a pain in the ass with my order and specced it with as many options as I could, all the illumination packs, a front lip, an extra set of wheels for the winter, armrest, and a few other things, so it seems like it's taken a while for them to get the order together.

It's due to arrive in a couple of weeks though, so for now I need to keep staring at the platinum white advance mate has, and the white base model that our company uses as a runaround.
Icelandic Advance Limited Edition in Premium Crystal Red on 17" rims
Registered May 2023
Home Type 2 Charging & Free Work Type 2 Charging! Woo!
ODO - 8750km
Post Reply

  • You may also be interested in...
    Replies
    Views
    Last post