The Honda e:N2 Concept Channels All The Weirdness Recently Suppressed In Honda’s Design Studios

While the Honda e electric city car has been on sale for a few years, we’re only just now seeing the start of Honda’s mass-market EV push. China has the fairly sensible e:NS1 and e:NP1 electric subcompact crossover twins, while America’s getting the Prologue, a midsize crossover on GM’s BEV3 platform. They’re slightly frantic efforts, but are fairly conventional by EV standards. However, Honda now has something called the e:N2 Concept, and it’s about as far from the Prologue as you can get while retaining reasonable practicality.

First, a bit of disclosure. Honda’s only released one official press picture of the e:N2 and a few computer-generated videos, so to view good photos of the real car, you’ll want to hop on over to an outlet like Vietnam’s Việt Giải Trí. With that out of the way, let’s talk a bit about styling of this machine, which rides on a platform called the e:N Architecture F (which Honda claims prioritizes vehicle stability and crisp handling, and should underpin future e:N models).

The e:N2 Concept looks less like a conventional crossover or sedan and more like a cyberpunk ADO16. Its three-box silhouette is very heavily weighted on the second box, with barely a trunk lid at all, while very strong shoulder line and finned tail lights amp up the retro. At the same time, the wheels, plastic arch cladding, and modern, slim lighting clusters say modern crossover. Add it all up, and you get a car that’s simultaneously edgy and quaint, like an Infant Annihilator-themed commemorative plate, or a thatched cottage with a dungeon.

Undoubtedly adding to the edginess is Honda’s peculiar decision to showcase the e:N2 Concept in black. Apart from the Hyundai Prophecy, the Maybach Exelero, and the Buick Y-Job, not many concept cars are painted gloss black because it hides every line on the car. Why would a manufacturer want to hide what a concept car looks like? It looks cool, for one, but maybe this this strange silhouette will make production with some tweaks, so it makes some sense for Honda to paint it black to obfuscate a few features.

On the inside, things get even stranger. The steering wheel is like an ultra-minimalist version of the eighth-generation Civic’s wheel, except someone sat on it to make it rectangular. There’s also no traditional gauge cluster or infotainment screen to speak of, although that doesn’t mean this cabin has fewer features than a cinderblock. The dashboard’s center panel lights up to be a touch-sensitive control panel under a semi-translucent cover, a weird compromise between no screens and too many screens that seems likely to make everyone unhappy. Don’t count on it being in any possible production version.

While such a dose of weirdness is fairly unexpected for Honda, it’s not like we weren’t given any warning. After all, this is the company that made the tiny S660 sports car and crammed the previous-generation Civic so full of faux vents that it looked like it crashed into an Autozone. With mainstream models like the new Civic and Pilot adopting more conservative sheetmetal, it was only a matter of time before the weird started leaking out of the design studio.

Given how the e:N brand is destined only for the Chinese market, don’t expect to see the e:N2 Concept make its way stateside anytime soon. However, If you happen to find yourself in Shanghai this week, you can catch the e:N2 Concept at the China International Import Expo that runs through Nov. 10.

Lead photo credit: Honda