Honda’s two Cub concepts
Electric or petrol? The choice is yours.
REMEMBER Honda’s EV Cub Concept from the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show? No? Well you can remind yourself here because the firm is wheeling out something virtually identical for this year’s Tokyo Show next month.
Also called the EV Cub, the new bike is visually almost inseparable from the six-year-old concept. So while it’s still officially just a concept bike, you have to imagine that it’s slowly edging its way towards production.
A couple of details are tweaked – the headlight is no longer a weird blue LED thing, the massive hub-mounted front wheel motor is gone and there’s a new single-sided swingarm – but otherwise the machine is pretty much the same.
Honda says of the EV Cub Concept: 'It is a personal commuter model for short-distance commuting that follows the concept of an “easy-to-handle and economical motorcycle” that Honda has been pursuing since the creation of the first-generation Super Cub. By placing the battery, a heavy component, at a low position in the middle of the body, the ease of getting on and off the bike was achieved. Moreover, ease-of-handling was pursued through concentration of the mass and lowering of the center of gravity. In consideration of ease-of-use in a broader range of use environments, the battery itself was made detachable in addition to the fact that it is rechargeable using a standard home wall socket.'
If it’s all a bit too green and bearded for your liking, the firm is also showing a Super Cub Concept, complete with a proper petrol engine. This thing is basically the good old-fashioned Super Cub with a handful of tweaks to bring it up to date. We very much approve of this, since the Super Cub – usually seen in C90 form and famous as the most popular bike ever made – has long since transcended traditional barriers of class and fashion to be simply the perfect representation of basic motorised transport.
