Honda is planning a rapid expansion of its electric motorcycle range, with at least 10 new battery bikes promised by 2025, three of which will be full-size motorcycles, not scooters or mopeds. We won’t see them all straightaway, as Honda is envisaging a phased launch, starting with what it calls ‘Honda e: Business bikes series’ which are likely to be electric mopeds aimed at fleet users for short urban deliveries. Honda already makes the electric Benley-e, which is used by the Japanese and Vietnamese postal services.

Commuter motorcycles or scooters aimed at private customers will follow in 2023-24, but the real interest for motorcyclists lies with what it calls ‘Fun EV’ machines, which will be sold in Europe as well as Japan and the USA. Details are scant, but from the silhouettes shown at Honda’s press launch, we can expect to see a naked roadster, a cruiser and a maxi-scooter.

Honda added that it plans to sell one million electric two-wheelers a year within five years, and ramp that up to 3.5 million/year by 2030. It’s also a co-founder of the Swappable Batteries Motorcycle Consortium, working with Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki to develop a common standard for battery swapping.

However, like its big name competitors, Honda isn’t abandoning ICE motorcycles just yet, and is still developing petrol engines along with the use of alternative fuels.

Jim Freeman, Chair of the BMF, said: “When Honda does something, its serious. The Swappable Batteries Motorcycle Consortium has the promise of being a VHS/Betamax solution, hopefully it will be a combination of superior technology allied to price and convenience, with the Big Four adopting a common solution there’s a very good chance that it will happen. The bikes themselves, we’ll have to wait and see, I expect they will be as polished and complete as we expect from the big H. However, without thinking too hard, I can also see a place, in the UK, for the Benley-e, which sounds like an ‘every-person’ bike, like the ones I started with, the C50 and C90, which mobilised half the world.”

Written by Peter Henshaw

Top image courtesy of Honda