Honda may have dragged its feet on electric motorcycles and scooters, but it is now making up for lost time with a myriad of interesting new offerings. The latest is known as the Honda Gyro Canopy:e.
The Gyro Canopy:e takes the Gyro:e electric three-wheeler base and raises the roof – or adds one entirely.
The scooter canopy is designed to offer a degree of rain protection for riders. In the case of the Gryo Canopy:e, the delivery-oriented electric scooter also gets the benefit of rain protection for its cargo as well – though there’s nothing like a sealed cargo box on back to truly keep the water out.
Obviously canopy scooters can’t offer a completely dry riding experience, but when ridden at speed they tend to help shed most of the water that would otherwise soak a rider.
The Honda Gyro Canopy:e is powered by an electric motor that Honda lists with a peak power output of 3,200W but a continuous power output of just 580W. Sounds like there are some regulatory games being played there.
The scooter boasts a maximum range of 77 km (48 miles), though Honda admits that such a range is measured at a sluggish 30 km/h (18 mph). To be fair, that’s pretty much the speed of traffic in a lot of densely populated urban areas where these will be used.
The beauty of Honda’s system though is that it uses Gogoro-style removable and swappable batteries. Two of the batteries add up to a total of 2.6 kWh, and they can be swapped for freshly charged batteries once they are drained. The whole process takes less time than filling up a tank with gasoline.
The Honda Gyro Canopy:e is being rolled out first in Japan, where it won’t come cheap. At a price of 715,000 yen, that’s around US $6,295.
Compare that to some of Honda’s low-cost electric scooters it has debuted recently. The Honda U-go (yes, pronounced like the infamous Yugo) electric scooter was unveiled earlier this summer for the Chinese market, where it was priced at around US $1,150.
Just a few weeks later, Honda lowered the bar even further with the introduction of the U-be electric scooter for just US $475.
Those scooters were much lower-powered models designed for consumers, while the Gyro Canopy:e offers more power for commercial users, plus ties into Honda’s swappable battery system.
Source: electrek