Honda CUV e: (2025) – Technical Review

Persuading motorcyclists to swap their combustion engines for electric power is proving even tougher than manufacturers imagined and with few solutions on the horizon for the problems of limited range, slow charging and excess weight it’s going to be a while yet before we’re buzzing about on electric Fireblades. But in the scooter arena the idea of electric power makes a lot more sense and on paper Honda’s new CUV e: is one of the most convincing efforts we’ve yet seen.

Pros & Cons

2025 Honda CUV e: - Price & PCP Deals

Although Honda expects to have the CUV e: in dealers in August this year the company is still to declare a UK price tag – leaving us looking to other markets to judge where the model will sit in the range.

Over in France it’s pegged at €4,599, putting it on a par with the GB350S in that market. If the same strategy is applied in the UK, that means we can expect an RRP of around £3999.

For an electric scooter from a big-name brand like Honda, that’s pretty cheap. For comparison, BMW’s CE 02 – competing in the same 125-ish segment of the scooter market – lists at £8,450 (although dealers discount them heavily). If you want to step onto a ‘real’ bike rather than a scooter, Kawasaki’s Z e-1 offers a similar range/performance equation as the CUV e: for £3999, around the same as the expected price for the Honda.

Honda has slashed the price of its smaller, moped-class EM1 e: from £4999 to £3299, and that above-mentioned Kawasaki Z e-1 was launched at £7199 before being reduced to its present, more realistic tag. Those spectacular cuts mean that there are some tempting bargains on the EV market at the moment if the range/performance equation suits your needs and you’re prepared to be an early adopter in the field.

For 2025, Honda’s offering three colour schemes on the CUV e: - a simple choice of white, black or silver.

2025 Honda CUV e: - Engine & Performance

Engine? No, you won’t find one of those here, so all thoughts of bore-and-stroke, compression ratios and camshaft layouts get thrown out of the window. What you get instead is a swingarm-mounted electric motor capable of outputting 6kW (that’s 8hp) and 16lbs.-ft. of torque, driving the wheel via a single-ratio geartrain.

The electricity is stored in a pair of 50.3-volt, 1.3kWh battery packs, Honda’s ‘Mobile Power Pack e:’ units, which are essentially the template for a planned standardised swappable battery system being developed by a consortium of manufacturers.

Honda says that the bike can hit a top speed of 83km/h – that’s 51.6mph – and the fully-charged batteries can give a range of over 70km (43.5 miles) under WMTC conditions. Of course you’re unlikely to be able to exploit both speed and range maximums at the same time, so don’t expect to be able to do A-road speeds for the full range. But for the sort of city-oriented commute that scooters excel at – too long or fast for a bicycle, too congested for a car – the range and performance combination could be ideal.

There are, of course, different modes to shift the emphasis between the two elements. Standard mode offers a balance between range and performance, Sport tips the sales towards faster acceleration but uses the battery faster, and Econ shifts the equation in the other direction, softening performance but eking out more miles from each charge.

2025 Honda CUV e: - Handling & Suspension (inc. Weight)

Electric bikes are normally associated with weight – batteries are heavy, after all – so it’s surprising to discover that the CUV e: comes in at a relatively lithe 119kg (120kg for the higher-spec ‘Connected’ version). That puts pretty much on a par with the stripped-back SH Mode 125 (118kg), undercutting models like the hugely popular PCX125 (134kg) and SH125i (137kg).

The chassis itself is the usual steel ‘underbone’ design used on this type of scooter, with 26mm forks and a monoshock rear, offering fairly limited travel of 90mm at the front and 75mm at the rear and no adjustability at either end.

The choice of 12-inch wheels at each end means the CUV e:’s rims are a bit smaller than average in this segment: the SH Mode 125 uses a 16in front, 14in rear, for example, while the PCX has a 14in front and 13in rear.

The use of a rear drum brake, allied to a 190mm disc and single-pot caliper at the front, is slightly at odds with the CUV e:’s high-tech, electric-powered status, and means there’s no ABS. Instead there’s a legally-mandated combined braking system that operates front and rear together when the rear is activated.

Handling isn’t likely to be at the top of many buyers’ lists of demands, but the bike’s sub-2-metre turning circle should be useful in city traffic.

2025 Honda CUV e: - Comfort & Economy

Economy doesn’t have quite the same meaning on an electric bike as a combustion engine one – the CUV e: is going to be incredibly cheap to run.

When it comes to bare figures, Honda claims efficiency of 63 Watt-hours per km, or 101.4Wh/mile, which probably means next to nothing to most of us. Using standard conversions, that amounts to 332mpg-e, but even that’s pretty meaningless.

What you need to know is that each of the two Mobile Power Pack e: batteries stores 1.3kWh of electricity, a total of 2.6kWh. If you have a typical off-peak electricity rate at night of, say, 15p per kWh, and charge during that time, that means a full charge – around 40 miles or so – will cost around 39p. So call it a penny a mile and you won’t be far off. Some deals will offer off-peak rates far lower than that, nearer 8p per kWh, but even if you’re paying peak rates of around 25p per kWh a full charge will only be around 65p.

When it comes to charging, the only option at the moment is to do it at home using the charger that comes with the bike. You remove the batteries from under the seat – each weighs around 10kg – and slot them (only one at a time) into the charger, which is air-cooled by its own built-in fan and plugs into a standard 240v socket.

A full charge takes six hours per battery, but a more representative 25% to 75% top-up is under three hours. While the ability to remove the batteries and charge at home gives convenience, as there’s no need to have a garage or an EV charger, two batteries and one charger could prove a pain, particularly if you’re intent on using off-peak electricity – you’d have to get up in the middle of the night to change the pack that’s being charged.

In terms of ergonomics, the CUV e:’s dimensions are in the same ballpark as the SH Mode 125, so should fit most riders easily. The under-seat batteries mean riders that are used to packing their helmets there are out of luck: you’ll want to splash out on one of the optional top boxes to make up for it.

Honda has already started trialling its battery swap stations in Sweden, and they’re in use in other parts of the world like India. Built around the Mobile Power Pack e: used in the CUV e:, the swap stations open the door to batteries-as-a-subscription, so rather than recharging yours, you simply replace them with fully-charged ones from the swap-station, sticking your old ones in their place to be recharged for another rider. If adopted here, the same scheme could heavily tip EV scooter ownership in Honda’s favour or encourage brands to adopt the same, standardised battery, while eliminating range-anxiety and making a ‘recharge’ quicker, cleaner and simpler than refilling a fuel tank.

2025 Honda CUV e: - Equipment

There are two versions of the CUV e:, the base model and the ‘Connected’ variant. Even the base bike gets a five-inch TFT dash, while the Connected gets seven inches and, as the name suggests, phone connectivity for turn-by-turn navigation, music and calls.

Honda’s RoadSync Duo navigation interface offers weather forecasts, real time tracking and theft alerts, and there’s a keyless ‘Smart Key’ system so as long as the key is in your pocket, you’ll be able to start the bike.

On the practicality front, the batteries might take up most of the under-seat space but there’s a 0.7-litre cubby in the fairing, shaped to hold drinks bottles, and still a small storage area at the back, behind the batteries, that Honda suggests is large enough to fit a set of waterproofs.

One unusual feature, made easy by the fact this is an electric bike, is the reverse assist, which lets you select a reverse gear to help shuffle the bike into or out of tight parking spots.

As ever, there’s a list of options to add more practicality. A trio of top boxes is available – a 35-litre one, a 35-litre ‘Smart’ top box operated by the remote key, or a 45-litre Smart top box – as well as a tall screen, hand guards, and an alarm.

2025 Honda CUV e: - Rivals

While the market for 125cc scooters is intensely competitive, there are still relatively few electric options, at least from mainstream, familiar brands with broad dealer networks. BMW’s EC 02 looks tempting, provided you can score a big discount, but even then it’s likely to end up costing much more than the CUV e:. Yamaha’s Neos is a moped rather than a 125cc-equivalent, so isn’t really a direct rival, and Kawasaki’s electric offerings, while close in price, performance and range, are motorcycles rather than scooters.

That leaves us in the realm of less well-known brands, with machines like Super Soco’s CPx or Segway’s E300SE that offer a similar level of performance to the CUV e: but without the familiar name and massive dealer network to back them.

BMW CE 02 | Price: £8450

Read more

Power/Torque

15bhp / 40.6lb-ft

Weight

132kg

Super Soco CPx | Price: £3749 (single battery version)

Read more

Power/Torque

5.4bhp / 126lb-ft

Weight

125kg

Segway E300SE | Price: £3999

Read more

Power/Torque

13bhp / 147.5lb-ft

Weight

127kg

2025 Honda CUV e: - Verdict

Electric bikes are proving to be a tough sell at the moment but Honda’s CUV e: has an unusual combination of features that could let it break that mould. The standardised batteries, familiar name and ease of use could be just what’s needed to pick up customers that are new to bikes altogether or converting from a petrol-powered scooter – on the one proviso that Honda picks a UK price tag that’s as tempting as the one it’s applied in foreign markets.

The advent of a battery-swap scheme – long expected, but slow to arrive – could be a game-changer and make the CUV e: an even more enticing proposition.

If you’d like to chat about this article or anything else biking related, join us and thousands of other riders at the Bennetts BikeSocial Facebook page.

Do you own something similar? Tell us what it’s like, or ask us questions about it at bikeclub.bennetts.co.uk.

2025 Honda CUV e: - Technical Specification

What is MCIA Secured?

MCIA Secured gives bike buyers the chance to see just how much work a manufacturer has put into making their new investment as resistant to theft as possible.

As we all know, the more security you use, the less chance there is of your bike being stolen. In fact, based on research by Bennetts, using a disc lock makes your machine three times less likely to be stolen, while heavy duty kit can make it less likely to be stolen than a car. For reviews of the best security products, click here.

MCIA Secured gives motorcycles a rating out of five stars (three stars for bikes of 125cc or less), based on the following being fitted to a new bike as standard:

• A steering lock that meets the UNECE 62 standard

• An ignition immobiliser system

• A vehicle marking system

• An alarm system

• A vehicle tracking system with subscription

The higher the star rating, the better the security, so always ask your dealer what rating your bike has and compare it to other machines on your shortlist.

Getting a moped and scooter quote with Bennetts is easy.

We compare prices from our panel of top-tier insurers, to find riders our best price for the cover they need. With common modifications covered as standard, our policies are rated Excellent on Trustpilot and 5 stars by Defaqto. We are an award-winning UK broker, with a UK-based contact centre and 24/7 claims support. 

Buy direct or renew at bennetts.co.uk, or via our contact centre, to gain access to a free BikeSocial Membership - unlocking discounts on kit, tyres, training, and exclusive customer-only VIP experiences.