
The Faraday Future FF91 actually exists, and I was the first media to drive it
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2 years agoon
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Faraday Future, the oft-delayed electric vehicle startup, has finally brought the FF91 to market, and we were the first media to drive a real production-spec version of the car, around Willow Springs raceway no less.
Faraday invited us to Willow Springs to attend its latest “delivery co-creation day,” where race car driver and Le Mans class winner Justin Bell took delivery of his FF91 2.0 Futurist Alliance limited-edition vehicle. This is the seventh car the company has delivered since the official start of production in March and the start of shipping in May. Faraday is showing a video on its website to recap the events of the day, which should be live as this article is published.
Willow Springs was a fitting location since the event was also the launch of Faraday’s “Racetrack Conqueror Plan,” where the point is to visit racetracks around the world to set track records with its electric car.
Bell and his father, Derek (a multiple Le Mans winner and ex-F1 driver who also has an FF91 on order), say they’re going to work on developing a racing package for the FF91, which will help it on its way to these records. Faraday also plans to engage with other racing drivers in the future – Romain Dumas was one example given.

Faraday also invited other VIPs, including various supercar owners, to come out and challenge the FF91 on the track. A Bugatti Chiron, a Ferrari SF 90 PHEV, a Mercedes GTS AMG Black, and others were in attendance. Faraday did manage to set a record on the day and beat the various other cars at the track.
The FF91 set a lap time of 1:28.13, which beat out the Lamborghini Urus for the fastest lap by an SUV (gas or electric) by more than two seconds. According to fastestlaps.com, that puts the FF91 just behind the Porsche 911 GT3, McLaren 570S and Tesla Model S Plaid by less than a second each and just ahead of the BMW M4 CSL and the 760hp supercharged V-8 Shelby Mustang GT500.
And then, five years after Faraday’s initial production intent and with several attempts at restructuring the company and finding contingent funding inbetween, we finally got a chance to hop behind the wheel.
While Faraday has offered some media drives before, those were in prototype vehicles, whereas this is the first time in a real production vehicle and the first time on a track. We drove production VIN #1, the car belonging to Faraday Future’s founder, Yueting “YT” Jia.
First drive: 1,050 mind-blowing, silent horsepower
This was definitely just a first drive – we didn’t get any street time with the car, just a few laps on the track and a little time sitting in it and messing around with the interface.
But the track time meant we could really get a sense of what the FF91’s 1,050 horsepower (yes, you read that right, one thousand and fifty horsepower) can really do.
On the front straight, it started pulling, and then it kept pulling, and then it kept pulling. It just never stopped pulling. I got up to about 145mph (of its electronically limited 155mph), and it didn’t feel like it was petering out.
And I felt like I was taking it easy. Even at that high speed, the car showed no sign of drama. It was quiet and smooth inside, and there weren’t any theatrics on the way to achieving a faster land speed than most people will ever see.
And even better, in my opinion, was the complete lack of drama on the exterior of the car. The car was not screaming loudly as it blasted by the grandstands. (In fact, it was perhaps easier to hear the motorcycles at the neighboring Streets of Willow track than the FF91 on the big track.)
Some prefer the belching theatrics of a loud exhaust, but beyond the obvious health and climate effects and the inefficiency of noise replacing actual kinetic energy, honestly, they’re just so gauche. It was more pleasant and exciting to see the FF91 whip through the air silently than it was to smell the noisy Spoon Racing Honda idling and giving everyone a headache while it waited to take the track.
All that said, the car was maybe even too quiet. Not on the engine side of things, but with Faraday’s focus on offering a luxurious ride, extensive sound dampening meant it was hard to hear the tires working outside the vehicle.
When tracking an electric car, being able to hear the tires working is a real performance benefit compared to louder motors, as it gives you another sense to help you understand your vehicle’s dynamics. Maybe the Bell performance package will remove some sound-dampening material, which will also help to save weight.
It’s heavy, but Faraday, please stop calling it an elephant
This brings up the FF91’s big disadvantage when it comes to the track: All that size and luxury means it weighs a whopping 6,442 pounds (2,922kg).
That’s an enormous vehicle, even compared to other supercars and hypercars, which lately have seen a trend forsaking weight savings for more raw power (while the late Colin Chapman rolls in his grave). For comparison, the 1,020hp Model S Plaid is 4,700 pounds, and the 1,500hp Bugatti Chiron (one of which was in attendance) is 4,400 pounds. But then again, those vehicles don’t have reclining rear seats. More on that in a moment.
Weight is one of the worst things for vehicle performance. The heavier your car, the harder it is to accelerate, brake, and turn. That is, it’s harder to do all of the things a car is meant to do. When legendary race car designer Colin Chapman was asked what to add to make a car faster, he responded, “Add lightness.”
This heavy weight was apparent in the car’s performance, but not as much as you’d think. The car’s heaviest portion, its 142kWh(!!!) battery, is placed at the floor between the wheels, which helps to keep a low center of gravity and low-ish moment of inertia (compared to its 206-inch length) and increases chassis rigidity. As a result, even in the flatter corners (most of Willow’s corners are banked), we felt very little body roll from the car, which is especially abnormal for an SUV.
In corners, the car was a little floaty when jumping on the throttle on corner exit, again owing to its high weight. It just takes a lot of effort to get such a big car turned. Its tri-motor system is arranged with three equally-sized motors, one in front and two in rear, with a slight rear/oversteer bias to the handling, which I actually enjoyed. I do prefer rear-wheel drive – it’s just more fun to be able to steer the car on the throttle – but everyone’s going AWD because it’s faster and easier to drive, so at least the car will still let me have a little fun.
And as for the brakes, they felt fine, but it certainly did take some real effort to get the car stopped. There’s just so much car behind them. On a track-performance basis, this is probably the car’s weakest point. Not that they felt too small or that the car didn’t behave well under them – just that the car is heavy, and when you have that much kinetic energy, it takes time to shed all of it.
Despite the weight, the car still held its own on the track on the day, setting the aforementioned SUV record and beating other supercars that were brought out to set laps. YT has repeatedly used a metaphor along the lines of “an elephant dancing with cheetahs,” and while I understand the meaning he’s getting at here, I encourage Faraday to stop calling its car an elephant. Nobody wants to hear that.

Another track weakness that I didn’t personally encounter is in the battery temperature management. While my three laps were unbothered, the next driver apparently was unable to coax full performance out of the car, as it had gone into a protection mode from the high temperatures I left it with on this warm-but-not-hot track day.
We saw a lot of this with early Teslas, which could only do a limited number of laps or sometimes couldn’t even complete a full lap of a longer track like the Nurburgring Nordschleife before derating due to temperature. By now, Tesla’s cooling systems and software have improved enough that this isn’t a problem, and there are plenty of racing-focused EVs that don’t have a problem with derating after multiple laps (Formula E, for example, where Faraday was involved in a team in season 3).
Faraday got another car out for the other driver and says that it has some ideas about how to tweak the software to avoid temperature derating, but we suspect it will take a good amount of focused effort (or perhaps a compromise of reducing peak power) to get there.
But if your car does need a break, or if you do, at least you’ve got a nice place to sit.
It’s also a luxury car
That’s the thing about the FF91: It’s not really a sports car. We’ve talked a lot about track performance because that’s where we drove it, but Faraday calls it an “all-ability” car, which merges the capabilities of a luxury car, family car, and sports car.
So its deficiencies as a sports car – namely, its weight and size – are a result of its strengths as a luxury car.
The main focus of the vehicle since its introduction has been the rear Zero-G seats, which have gobs of legroom and are capable of reclining at a 60° angle. These seats are enormous and comfortable, a class above even the Audi e-tron SUV, which is the previous most comfortable car I’ve enjoyed sitting in and even better than the original Lucid prototype rear seats, which had a similar style but were abandoned come production. (Faraday has already floated that there may eventually be a bench seat version of the FF91.)
These Zero-G seats are largely targeted at people with personal drivers and, therefore, target people who spend more time in the rear seat of their own vehicle – not so common in the US, where Faraday is based, but quite common in China, where the founder is from and which the company is clearly targeting much of its strategy at (though it would not tell me when Chinese deliveries would commence).
Upon sliding into position in the back, I immediately and subconsciously went into “comfort mode.” Think of the blue-collar dad, getting home from a hard day of work, popping a beer, kicking off his shoes, plopping into his favorite La-Z-Boy and pulling the recline handle to enter maximum relaxation mode.
Truly, this gives a new definition to the common phrase “living room on wheels.” An employee told us that his kid and wife now fight over who gets the back seat, not the front seat. I can see it.
It’s a startup, after all
And yet, despite being in the first production vehicle, a number of production features were not available to test out. The car was festooned with gear that blocked the rear 27-inch screen from folding down, and the seat massagers were not activated (I’d probably still be sitting there if they were, having melted across the divide into the plane of pure relaxation). And while the software worked well, it was still waiting for some future features (but I’m no stranger to cars like that).
One of its characteristic whiz-bang startup-like features is something we’ve seen on many concepts recently (and production cars, too): funky doors. The FF91’s doors have no handles whatsoever, and are instead opened by a touch gesture either on exterior car window sill or a touchscreen on the B-pillar.
I’m okay with some door handle experimentation, but this seems like a bridge too far. The sill gesture was not reliable in my initial experience, though the touchscreen gesture worked well. This could be solved with, perhaps, auto-opening doors on walk-up or something of the sort. Handles, a button, anything along those lines would be nice. But, at least you can close them manually.
Faraday says that it will engage with early owners, whom it is calling “co-creators,” in an active feedback loop to improve its software and fit it to the needs of its owners. The company wants to offer frequent software updates and says it has much more computing power onboard than it is currently using, so it has plenty of headroom to add more capabilities.
While we didn’t get deep into using the software, the basic interface already does work pretty well. Most importantly, the interface is snappy and responsive, unlike virtually every other OEM interface that isn’t made by Apple/Android or another EV startup.
In terms of interface layout, some of the controls take one too many submenus to reach, and there was some lag between pressing certain digital controls and translating them into hardware movement (e.g., adjusting seats and steering wheel), but you should only have to do that once anyway. Faraday says its software will remember your settings and wants to eventually detect not just who’s in the car but what seat they’re in and set each seat to whatever the occupant’s preferred settings are.
The main screen is vertically oriented between the front seats, and myriad car settings can be controlled from there. There are additional touchscreens on the rear doors, which allow independent controls (such as climate control) for each back seat.
The screens themselves were a little darker than I’d like, though admittedly, it was a bright day, and I was wearing sunglasses, which brings up another point – the FF91’s HUD struggles with polarized sunglasses, something that I have noticed in other HUDs, since the whole point of polarized glasses is to reduce reflections (though the Mercedes EQS, through some black magic, still makes it work).
But even worse, the main screen didn’t look great with polarized glasses either. This is common for screens, though usually it only works when you tilt your head 90° away from the normal viewing angle (and some screens, like phone screens, avoid the problem completely). But in this case, it seemed to darken when my head was just at a diagonal angle, which strikes me as a far bigger oversight than a difficult-to-see HUD.

The driver instrument display and the passenger infotainment display, though, both did not have this problem. But each had a gloss finish on them, which made it difficult to see if there was a bright reflection – which there often was, especially as the strong California desert sun got lower in the sky. They could stand to be both brighter and closer to the driver/passenger, as they are set quite far back into the dash.
But the software also got a big win when I tried pairing my device with the in-car Wi-Fi system. All I had to do was scan a QR code, and my device immediately joined without needing to enter my phone’s settings, and all of a sudden, a bunch of notifications came through on my phone, which I hadn’t been getting due to poor reception at the track. So, score one for FF91’s triple-antenna cell system and a great and easy-to-use software experience.
But we didn’t have a chance to test any driver aids or semi-autonomous software at all. Like most cars on the road today, Faraday’s driver aids are SAE level 2, which means you are still responsible for driving the car. The car has 30 sensors, with cameras and LiDAR, and is powered by NVIDIA’s Orin architecture.
Faraday talked a lot about being autonomous-ready, both in their 2017 reveal and in May of this year, though at this event, it was much quieter about all that – in fact, explicitly telling me that it doesn’t want to make promises it can’t keep, unlike some other companies. This statement would be a refreshing sign of maturity if Faraday hadn’t been making those exact promises about its “FF aiHypercar+” system just a few months ago, which will be able to generate custom maps of private grounds which will allow level 4 driverless operation, and which it said it plans to charge $15k per year for.
And that’s one thing about my conversations with Faraday employees on the day. In Faraday’s marketing presentations, it has made a lot of claims about what its car is and will be capable of. These claims have also been buried under mountains of buzzwords, and the short presentation given by YT was no different.

But in direct conversations, employees mostly spoke in normal human terms, forgoing the buzzwords and just talking about what the car can do, what it will hopefully be able to do in the near future, and what it seems like will come further down the timeline. And at times, the employees recognized the need to distance themselves from promises and designs generated long ago before many of them were with the company.
These conversations were refreshing to experience, but I would like to see them reflected in Faraday’s higher-level messaging. Maybe I’m completely missing the market here, but I just don’t think anyone is served by phrases like “FF aiHyper 6×4 Architecture 2.0.” It doesn’t mean anything to anyone. Focus.
Now it’s time to focus
Putting three cars in one was always going to be a challenge. I’ve written a lot of words about Faraday’s “kitchen sink” approach, reaching all the way back to its original reveal in 2017. In short, I think it’s dangerous to try to make a car that’s everything to everybody. You have to eventually sit down, focus, and trim the fat somehow.

Since that reveal, Faraday has moved from benchmarking itself against the Tesla Model S in its original announcement in 2017 (this wasn’t explicit, but it was still obvious) to now benchmarking itself against Maybach and Ferrari. This latter benchmark surely helps it to justify its $309,000 price tag on these first vehicles, but in the interim, we’ve seen Mercedes announce a starting price of $180,000 on its Maybach EQS SUV, which is quite the undercut compared to FF91’s announced pricing.
Faraday’s less-limited-edition FF91 2.0 Futurist model will start at a lower $249,000 base price, and the base-model FF91 2.0 will be lower still, though that last price point has not yet been announced. We’ll see how close it gets to the Maybach.
Faraday also says that it has one big advantage over the Germans, which is that, as a tech company, it can move faster and has a much better understanding of how people are engaging with technology and devices today.
On this point, I don’t disagree. One thing I love about my early Model 3 is that it is a better car today than it was when it was released due to software updates (and the rollout of the Supercharger network); the same can’t generally be said about cars from traditional OEMs. But I am not the target market for a $309,000 (or $249,000) car, so what I think about this doesn’t particularly matter.
The question is: Will people buying Maybachs want to spend a similar amount of money – or more – on a car that doesn’t have a name with as long of an established history? Will the status gained from having early access to a rare and expensive new brand outstrip the status from having a car with a logo everyone (with money) knows about already and has for a hundred years? Surely, for some people, but are there enough buyers out there of that description to fund Faraday’s operations?
Those operations are the primary focus of Faraday Future’s new CEO, Matthias Aydt, appointed last month after less than a year under the previous temporary CEO, Xuefeng Chen, who is now back to his prior position as FF China CEO.
Aydt said he is focusing on cost-down and ramp-up, with the company targeting .5 cars an hour worth of output in the short term and hoping to reach two cars per hour output around the beginning of 2025.

Those numbers annualize to 2,500 cars a year and 10,000 cars a year, respectively – which is quite a shout from the seven that have been delivered so far this year (though more have been produced and many were brought out to the track). It’s the difference between a real car company producing cars in volume and literally being able to name every owner off the top of your head, the latter of which is possible now.
Aydt gave a public update on Faraday’s progress on October 15, primarily focused toward concerned investors who have seen the stock price fall significantly lately. The company will give more updates on its progress on this front at its quarterly update on November 13 and investor day at its HQ in Gardena, California, on November 15.
So the story of Faraday is one that, despite a lot of ink already being spilled, is still being written – and the company and its investors hope that we are still writing the early pages of that story. Getting here, bringing a competent vehicle to the road, is an achievement that many, myself included, thought would never happen. Faraday deserves credit for that, not only for getting the car to road but for getting it to the road with specs similar to what was promised (minus some of the more hopeful software features… which may still come in updates).
This is why I titled this article “the Faraday Future FF91 actually exists.” This may sound like I am damning the company with faint praise, but it truly is an achievement to have brought this car to market and to have managed some superlatives along the way. Its power is incredible, its rear seat comfort is beyond compare, and its software shows promise. But its strategy at times seems rudderless, and despite the superlatives, its price is still tough to justify. (But hey, I’m not spending over $200,000 on a car; what do I know about what that group wants?)
So now comes the time to focus, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to turn this dream into reality.
And, for goodness sake, stop calling your car an elephant.
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Environment
Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Published
3 hours agoon
July 3, 2025By
admin

Xpeng has officially launched its new G7 electric SUV in China, entering the fiercely competitive electric crossover market with a starting price of just 195,800 yuan ($27,325 USD). The G7 is positioned squarely to compete with the Tesla Model Y and the newly unveiled Xiaomi YU7.
It is priced significantly more aggressively than the YU7, which shook up the industry just last week.
The G7, Xpeng’s seventh model, offers an attractive balance of performance, technology, and value, with an emphasis on the latter.
Like Lei Jun with the launch of the YU7 last week, He Xiaopeng was not shy about positioning the G7 against the best-selling Tesla Model Y.
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He compared the specs and pricing with the leading premium crossover. Like Jun, he brought up Tesla’s comparison challenge against the new Model Y:

The G7 is powered by a single rear-wheel-drive electric motor producing 292 horsepower (218 kW), it achieves a 0-100 km/h acceleration in 6.5 seconds. Impressively, the G7 can cover between 602 km and 702 km (374-436 miles) based on China’s generous CLTC standard, depending on the battery option and wheel size.
Two battery options are available, both using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) technology: a 68.5 kWh and a larger 80.8 kWh pack. With Xpeng’s advanced 5C charging technology, drivers can recharge up to 436 km (271 miles) of range in just 10 minutes.
Additionally, the G7 supports Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) functionality, providing up to 6 kW of external power, like the YU7 announced last week.
On the design front, the Xpeng G7 adopts the company’s second-generation “X Face” styling, featuring sleek running lights connected by a continuous LED strip, a closed front end for aerodynamic efficiency, and a distinctive “Star Ring” rear taillight design. Xpeng emphasizes the vehicle’s aerodynamics with a drag coefficient of just 0.238 Cd, slightly higher than the Model Y’s 0.230 Cd.





Inside, the G7 embraces minimalism, replacing conventional buttons with a large 15.6-inch central touchscreen powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8295 chipset. A standout interior feature is the expansive 87-inch augmented reality head-up display (AR-HUD), developed in collaboration with Huawei, that significantly enhances navigation and driving assistance.
Practicality is emphasized with ample cargo space: an 819-liter trunk that expands to 2,277 liters with the seats folded, plus an additional 120-liter compartment beneath the trunk floor and a modest 42-liter front trunk (frunk).
Xpeng is touting an adaptive AI-driven suspension system that actively adjusts to road conditions within milliseconds, allegedly surpassing comfort benchmarks set by the Mercedes-Benz GLE and Tesla Model Y. Cabin quietness also ranks high on Xpeng’s list of priorities.
Luxury and convenience features include dual 50W wireless phone chargers, a 20-speaker premium audio system, and a panoramic sunroof. Passengers in the second row enjoy premium touches like an 8-inch control screen, individual climate settings, a foldable table, and wireless charging.
The top-tier “Ultra” variant employs two proprietary Turing AI chips capable of delivering a massive 2,250 TOPS of computing power, enabling advanced Level 3 autonomous driving capabilities set to become active via an OTA update by December 2025, pending regulatory approval. Standard versions use dual Nvidia Orin-X chips with 508 TOPS.
The Xpeng G7 starts at 195,800 yuan ($27,325 USD) for the base “Max” variant with 602 km of range, stepping up to 205,800 yuan ($28,720 USD) for the longer-range “Max” (702 km) and topping out at 225,800 yuan ($31,510 USD) for the high-end “Ultra” trim.
Customers ordering the G7 Ultra before July 31 will receive complimentary upgrades including Nappa leather and power door handles.
G7 quickly demonstrated its popularity by securing 10,000 pre-orders in just 46 minutes.
Electrek’s Take
It’s not 200,000 orders within 3 minutes like the YU7, but Xpeng doesn’t have the brand power that Xiaomi has.
Nonetheless, it is pretty impressive.
The price is insane. The specs are competitive with the Model Y, which starts at 263,500 yuan and ranges up to 313,500 yuan ($36,770 – 43,750 USD), but the price starts at about $10,000 USD less.
Between this, the YU7 last week, and a few more models launching this month, the premium crossover segment is about to get crowded in China.
I think the Model Y is in serious trouble in China. We are about to see how it fares with real competition.
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Environment
Tesla Optimus is in shambles as head of program exits, production delayed
Published
5 hours agoon
July 3, 2025By
admin

Tesla’s humanoid robot program, Optimus, is reportedly in disarray amid the departure of the senior vice president in charge, Milan Kovac.
Production has been delayed due to a new redesign, as the robot has yet to prove useful in Tesla’s factories.
Elon Musk has previously set a goal for Tesla to produce 5,000 to 10,000 Optimus humanoid robots this year.
The goal has reportedly been delayed as sources within the Chinese supply chain report Tesla informed suppliers of a 2-month halt on orders.
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AI Invest first reported the news, and The Information later corroborated the report:
Two supplier sources said Tesla has not explicitly stated it will reduce robot parts orders but will wait until the Optimus design adjustments are completed before finalizing a new mass production plan and resuming procurement. The adjustments may take two months. Musk recently stated on social media that the new version of Optimus has seen significant improvements over the second-generation Optimus unveiled in 2023 and now includes voice interaction powered by Grok.
The news came after we learned that Milan Kovac, the head of the Optimus program left Tesla last month, just months after being promoted to senior vice-president by Musk.
The new reports confirm that Ashok Elluswamy, who was elevated to senior vice-president in charge of self-driving at the same time as Kovac, is taking over responsabilities.
AI Invest reported some concerns from Tesla about Optimus that reportedly trickled down to Chinese suppliers:
According to Tesla’s feedback to suppliers, Optimus still faces hardware challenges, including overheating in some joint motors, low load capacity in dexterous hands, short lifespan of transmission components, and limited battery life. Tesla is currently evaluating samples from multiple dexterous hand suppliers, testing at least three different technical approaches. On the software side, Tesla may use more synthetic data to train the robot model, improving Optimus’ autonomous operation capabilities and success rate in performing complex tasks.
According to the report, Tesla had secured parts to build over 1,000 Optimus robots earlier this year and built quite a few, but they are currently only used “for moving batteries in Tesla’s battery workshops, with efficiency less than half that of human workers.”
The redesign is expected to delay plans by at least two months and could push many of Tesla’s goals.
However, Tesla is expected to still move ahead with the prgroam and it is likely to unveil the new generation of Optimus robots at its shareholders meeting this year.
Electrek’s Take
As I previously stated, I’m actually quite hyped for humanoid robots, but I don’t think they will be nearly as big as Musk claims and I simply don’t see Tesla having a significant advantage over the competition, which is significant.
Companies like Unitree are already selling robots, Figure has made impressive progress and poached from Tesla, then there’s Boston Dynamics and dozens more.
Kovac leaving just as Tesla is supposed to ramp-up production to 50,000 units next and make this a “multi-trillion-dollar” product is a red flag.The engineer would have certainly received sweet stock option packages when he was elevated to SVP and would have likely made a fortune if he would have been able to deliver on Musk’s goals.
But I think the real product at Tesla now is the stock – hence why they reportedly plan to unveil the next generation of the robot at the shareholders meeting and have it do another shady demostration, like it did at the ‘We, Robot’ event where the robots were remotely controlled by humans.
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Environment
Honda’s new electric two-wheeler doubles the power and range
Published
5 hours agoon
July 3, 2025By
admin

Honda is stepping up its electric scooter game with the launch of its second electric model for Europe, the CUV e:. Following Honda’s previous debut of the EM1 e:, a compact, city-focused moped, the CUV e: brings more power, more range, and more real-world usability to riders who want a practical electric alternative to a 125cc scooter.
Now finally ready for the spotlight, the CUV e: is built on an underbone-style frame and powered by a 6 kW side-mounted electric motor producing 22 Nm of torque. That puts it squarely in the 125cc-equivalent category, allowing it to reach a top speed of 83 km/h (52 mph).
It’s not built for the highway, but rather for urban and suburban riders who want to achieve speeds seen on the fastest of urban roads and keep up with just about any traffic in the city. For that role, it looks like a solid performer – more than capable of keeping up with city traffic or carrying a second passenger.

One of the most useful features, especially for urban residents and apartment dwellers, is its use of Honda’s Mobile Power Pack e: swappable battery system. The scooter carries two of these Gogoro-style removable battery units, each rated at 50 V and 1.3 kWh. Combined, they offer over 70 km (43 miles) of WMTC-rated range. Compared to the Honda EM1 e:’s single Mobile Power Pack battery, the dual batteries of the CUV e: give Honda the chance to pull twice as much power or offer twice the range.
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Honda’s swappable battery standard is designed for portability and long life, with each pack weighing around 10 kg (22 lb) and rated for 2,500 full charge cycles. Honda has been slowly building a swappable battery ecosystem, and the CUV e: is clearly meant to be part of that larger infrastructure play.
Charging of the batteries is designed to be done easily off-board, either at home or at a battery station (where available). A full charge from 0 to 100% takes about six hours per pack, but Honda says 75% can be reached in just three hours. While fast charging would be nice, the swappable format means riders can keep an extra pair charged and ready if necessary, eliminating downtime altogether.



Honda didn’t skimp on features, either. The CUV e: offers three ride modes (Sport, Standard, and Econ), plus Reverse Assist for easier maneuvering. It includes a fairly spacious flat floorboard, under-seat storage, LED lighting, a USB-C port, and keyless ignition. Buyers can choose between a five-inch color TFT display or an upgraded seven-inch “RoadSync Duo” screen, which supports turn-by-turn navigation, music control, Bluetooth phone integration, and EV-specific ride data.
Positioned as a mid-range electric scooter, the CUV e: fills the space between low-speed mopeds and larger, premium e-motorcycles. It’s a key piece in Honda’s broader electrification strategy, which aims to introduce 10 or more electric motorcycle models globally by 2025 and reach full carbon neutrality in its motorcycle division by the 2040s.
With anticipated pricing starting at around €4,000 (approximately US $4,300), the CUV e: is expected to roll out in Europe first, with other global markets potentially following. Its combination of practical range, moderate speed, high build quality, and swappable batteries could make it an appealing option in cities where electric two-wheelers are on the rise.
If the EM1 e: was Honda dipping a toe into the electric waters, the CUV e: feels like a confident step forward. It’s not flashy, but it’s functional, well-designed, and undeniably useful, which is exactly the kind of machine that could help electric scooters go mainstream.

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