Saturday, August 1, 2020

Honda e-Cub Battery Patent


As reported in Electrec, Honda recently published a patent that was issued to them in 2018, titled, "Battery Case Structure for Electric Powered Vehicles, and Electric Powered Vehicle."  


As you can see from the above photo of an earlier prototype, it seems the e-Cub battery is located basically where the engine would be on a gas-powered Super Cub, and is removable through a tilting access door.



So, the question is - when will the electric Super Cub go into production?  Seems to me they might be working on improvements in available battery chemistry, because that's a pretty small battery, volume wise.  If they intend on marketing it as a 50cc equivalent (limited to around 35 mph), they're probably close to their speed and range targets already, as the single battery used in the Gogoro Viva is about the same size and gets about 50 miles between battery swaps (Gogoro maintains a network of battery swap stations throughout Taiwan).