{"id":82714,"date":"2025-06-02T07:02:42","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T11:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=82714"},"modified":"2025-06-02T07:02:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T11:02:42","slug":"no-honda-didnt-just-launch-its-first-electric-motorcycle-and-you-cant-buy-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=82714","title":{"rendered":"No, Honda didn’t just launch its first electric motorcycle (and you can’t buy it)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The electric motorcycle market is a small and highly interconnected one, with a limited amount of suppliers and an even smaller number of actual honest-to-goodness motorcycle manufacturers. While Covid-era progress led to a series of highly-funded rapid advancements<\/a> and flashy announcements<\/a>, the last few years have been hard on the industry as funding and excitement have both dwindled, resulting in a smaller number of big releases. So it makes sense that people would jump at news that Honda is now producing its first electric motorcycle and that you can already buy it. The only problem is that none of that is true \u2013 finally some real<\/em> fake news. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the last few days, a number of news outlets ran with a story claiming Honda was now producing and selling its first ever electric motorcycle, a bike known as the E-VO. While some articles presented a fairly grounded and accurate analysis of the situation, others jumped on the more clickbaity bandwagon. <\/p>\n

Like many rumors, the story does have some truth to it. There is an interesting-looking cafe racer-styled E-VO bike that was just announced, and its logo does partially include a red Honda badge, but that\u2019s where things start to go awry as some articles played a bit fast and loose with the facts.<\/p>\n

The main issues with the story heard \u2019round the internet are that 1) Honda has already produced multiple electric motorcycles, 2) the E-VO isn\u2019t really a Honda, and 3) you can\u2019t actually buy the bike, at least not the way many headlines would have you believe.<\/p>\n

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The Chinese launch of the Honda-Wuyang E-VO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To be fair, even Electrek<\/a><\/em> wasn\u2019t spared, with its own story repeating several dubious claims seen elsewhere around the internet, among other smaller mistakes such as a strange swipe at LiveWire for not producing DC fast-charging electric motorcycles, which it famously does<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s break down each of the errors or flashy clickbait headlines that duped many journalists and electric motorcycle fans alike.<\/p>\n

The first major issue is that the premise is wrong. Honda has built multiple electric motorcycles in the past, though generally smaller designs with step-through frames. The E-VO would be a new design direction, taking on an eye-catching cafe racer design, but let\u2019s not forget that models like the all-electric Honda PCX Electric were launched back in 2018. In fact, Visordown<\/a><\/em> strangely mislabeled a photo of a PCX Electric, referring to it as an E-VO in its own article a few days ago. (And to be fair, not everyone whiffed on this one, with outlets like RideApart<\/em><\/a> and CycleWorld<\/em><\/a> giving even-handed and accurate coverage to Honda\u2019s e-moto efforts).<\/p>\n

Second, this motorcycle isn\u2019t even a Honda. If you look closer at the badging, you\u2019ll see it\u2019s labeled as \u201cWuyang Honda\u201d with the first word obviously printed much smaller in the logo to obscure it in favor of Honda\u2019s much stronger brand reputation. To put it simply, the E-VO is produced by the Chinese company Wuyang, in which Honda invested in as part of a joint venture. Wuyang-Honda is a Chinese company owned by the major Chinese automaker GAC. It does produce some Honda-developed motorcycles for the Chinese market (like the CB series, CBR, etc.), but it also produces its own domestic market-only models. The latter is what the E-VO is. It\u2019s not a Honda and it\u2019s not produced by Honda. It\u2019s produced by Wuyang-Honda, which is a Chinese company partially funded by the Japanese company Honda to make money from the Chinese market. It\u2019s similar to how Ducati doesn\u2019t really make those Ducati electric bicycles<\/a>, but rather engages in a licensing agreement that lets another company produce them and print a famous name on the side.<\/p>\n

And that brings us to the third major issue glossed over in the E-VO launch \u2013 that you can\u2019t really buy it. Well, some people can, but not you<\/em>. At least, not unless you happen to be Chinese or living in China. As mentioned above, this isn\u2019t a Honda motorcycle that you can buy at a Honda dealer. It\u2019s a Wuyang motorcycle that was recently launched in China and only sold in China. It wasn\u2019t designed for export and doesn\u2019t meet any other international regulations or safety standards because it wasn\u2019t designed for any other markets outside of China. <\/p>\n

Electrek\u2019s Take<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve been a fan of electric motorcycles for a long time, riding and covering them with excitement as I\u2019ve watched the industry progress. I talk the talk and I walk the walk. I don\u2019t even own a car, as my family gets around entirely on electric motorcycles, e-scooters, and e-bikes. I don\u2019t intend to unfairly call out other news outlets or even my own colleagues, but I do think that accuracy in reporting on such a nascent industry is important.<\/p>\n

Accuracy in reporting isn\u2019t just about keeping the industry well-informed but also ensuring realistic expectations among the public. Just like all of those stories popping up a few years ago to the effect of \u201cGM is producing a $14,000 electric pickup truck\u201d turned out to be clickbait<\/a> (they were electric mini-trucks produced in China, for the Chinese market, by Chinese companies in which GM invested), the E-VO has also turned into something of a white whale. For years, riders have begged major manufacturers like Honda to get on board with electric motorcycles. And so when there\u2019s even an inkling of progress on that front, the story can get ahead of itself. <\/p>\n

That isn\u2019t to say that Honda won\u2019t ever produce a full-sized e-moto or street bike. Perhaps the E-VO will sell well in China and Honda will look favorably upon Wuyang\u2019s work there. But the moment when an honest-to-goodness Honda electric motorcycle lands is still years away, and no amount of wishful thinking or creative writing is going to change that.<\/p>\n

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FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.<\/em> More.<\/a><\/p>\n

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The electric motorcycle market is a small and highly interconnected one, with a limited amount of suppliers and an even smaller number of actual honest-to-goodness motorcycle manufacturers. While Covid-era progress led to a series of highly-funded rapid advancements and flashy announcements, the last few years have been hard on the industry as funding and excitement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}