Need something bigger than a HR-V, but smaller than a CR-V? Honda has the answer now! It’s the 2024 Honda ZR-V and Paul Maric takes the top specification hybrid model for a drive to see if it’s any good.
Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior: 00:53
Interior: 02:29
Infotainment: 03:58
Safety tech: 05:25
Practicality: 06:12
On the road: 09:25
Driver aids: 15:57
Performance: 17:22
Verdict: 19:25
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
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Paul Maric:
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Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior: 00:53
Interior: 02:29
Infotainment: 03:58
Safety tech: 05:25
Practicality: 06:12
On the road: 09:25
Driver aids: 15:57
Performance: 17:22
Verdict: 19:25
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
CarExpert:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au
Paul Maric:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day I'm Paul. Honda, there's a new kid on the block in the Honda family. It's called the ZRV,
00:06 ZRV if you're watching this in the States. This slots in between the HRV or the HRV
00:12 and the CRV which has become bigger. So this is kind of RAV4 sized if you want to try and
00:19 picture it in your head. This right here is the top spec. This is the hybrid version. It's called
00:24 the E-HEV LX. It's priced at just under $55,000 drive away. But if that's too expensive, the whole
00:32 range kicks off at around $40,000 drive away. Today we're going to do a detailed review of this
00:37 car. So if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time codes
00:41 on the screen. If you're on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below. And if
00:45 you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon so you can find
00:49 out every single time we review a burgundy car. Now let's talk design. All the colours are free,
00:56 so you can pick whatever you want, which is exciting news. I actually quite like the design
01:01 of this. I know some people don't. They think it looks a little bit different. But to me,
01:05 and design is entirely subjective, I actually think it looks pretty cool. So a Honda logo down
01:10 the front here, blue in there as well for hybrid. You've got piano black finish here on the grille
01:15 with a camera there for the 360 camera. Enormous plate holder here. Look at that for our tiny
01:20 little registration plates. And then a bit more cooling down the bottom there as well.
01:23 Full LED headlights, which is great news. And then a little sort of duct in there.
01:28 Is that functional? Yeah, I think that is actually functional, which is good to see.
01:32 Whip around to the side here. Got yourself a set of 18-inch alloy wheels. There's a piano black
01:38 finish in the centre there and a machined finish on the outside. Pretty chubby tyres there too,
01:43 so decent profile on those. 55 profile, so should mean that it actually sort of rides okay.
01:49 This has a ground clearance of just under 190mm. It's only front-wheel drive, regardless of which
01:53 variant you pick, so it's not going to be off-roading or doing anything like that.
01:57 No wheel arch cladding there. Well, it's body coloured, but nothing sort of too crazy.
02:02 Up the top here, you've got body coloured wing mirror with a camera built into there
02:05 for the 360 camera. You've got privacy glass. And then come to the back with me.
02:10 Round the back here, you've got LED taillights, E-HEV badge here for the hybrid, and then Honda
02:15 ZRV. Another Honda badge there, and then shark fin aerial up the top with a brake light built
02:21 into here. Let me know what you reckon about the design. Do you think it looks good? Do you think
02:24 they could have done a little bit better? And let me know what you think about the price as well down
02:27 there in the comment section below. We're inside the ZRV. Let's start off with the key. That's
02:33 what it looks like. You have lock, unlock, boot, and then Honda on the back. It's a proximity
02:41 sensing key, so you can leave that in your pocket. Once you're inside, you've got a little
02:44 push button start over here on the right-hand side. Just in terms of the design of this,
02:49 I am a fan of what Honda's doing recently. I think with the new Civic and this, they've really just
02:56 presented it beautifully, and it just looks high-end and premium. You know, they've thought
03:00 about some of these materials. I like this sort of mesh material along the air vents. The switch
03:05 gear feels really nice. Even the paddle shifters, they're proper sort of like a metal material,
03:10 which is great. So they really have thought about that stuff. I just wish there was a bit more
03:15 colour differentiation in here. It's all just so dark and gloomy looking. This has like a bit of a
03:20 gold tinge to it, but yeah, it would just be nice to see a couple of different interior colour
03:24 options, just if you do want to go down that path. Outside of that, touch points, not too bad in the
03:30 centre there, and pretty good on the door. How soft are those touch points? Well, we've got our
03:36 durometer. We've tested the main surfaces in this cabin. If you want to see how this car compares
03:40 to others that we've tested before, have a look at the link in the description. Now, build quality,
03:46 what's that like? It's wonky there in the centre, which isn't great, but outside of that, it feels
03:51 okay. Door slam test. Sounds solid. Now, let's talk about infotainment. So you've got a 9-inch
04:01 infotainment screen here, and then you have a bigger 10.2-inch cluster ahead of the driver.
04:07 Let's start off over here. So it's a colour touchscreen with shortcut buttons, and importantly,
04:12 you have a knob here for the volume, which makes it a little bit easier to use while you're driving.
04:16 You can, of course, use the steering wheel controls as well. Inbuilt satellite navigation,
04:20 AM/FM, DAB digital radio, and it's plumbed through a 12-speaker Bose-branded sound system,
04:26 pretty decent sound system as well. Infotainment system is very straightforward to use. They
04:31 haven't gone too crazy on complexity, and then you can bring up stuff like your power flow here as
04:36 well, which is helpful if you don't want to have it displayed there ahead of the driver, plus the
04:40 ability to do system updates as well. In addition to that, you have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
04:46 Apple CarPlay is not only wireless, it can be wired as well, and that's what it looks like.
04:52 Nice and quick and sharp. Visibility of that is great too, so very impressed with that. And this
04:59 is what Android Auto looks like. So full screen again, really nice resolution there, nice and
05:06 sharp. So very nice setup. Now, ahead of the driver, you have this 10.2-inch display. Nothing
05:12 sort of too crazy, can't do a great deal of configuration, but you can flick between things
05:17 that you want displayed on the left or right-hand side. So I think they've got the functionality
05:21 right. It's a nice high-resolution screen as well, and it just does what it says on the box.
05:25 Now, what about your safety tech? So you've got autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and
05:30 cyclist detection, auto-dimming rear vision mirror. You've got a blind spot monitor built
05:35 into the wing mirror over there. You have radar cruise control with a lane-keeping assistant that
05:40 we will test a little bit later on. You have rear cross-traffic alert. You have a traffic jammer
05:46 system as well. Front and rear parking sensors and a 360 camera. I'll show you what that looks like.
05:52 There it is there. The quality of that is really good. So that's looking out the front.
05:55 You can then do a side view, and then you can also go full screen with that as well.
06:00 And I'll show you what it looks like when we look out the back. There it is there. So really nice
06:05 and high quality. So very impressed there with those cameras. And this is what the horn sounds
06:10 like. Moving on to the practicality, and we'll start off with your connectivity. So you've got
06:15 a 12-volt outlet here. You've got a USB-C port here, USB-A port on my side. You've got a wireless
06:21 phone charging pad down here as well. In terms of storing your phone, you can stick it down on the
06:26 pad or around here. You've got plenty of storage options in the cabin actually, which is great.
06:30 So coffee cup, how does that go? So fits into there without any dramas, which is good.
06:35 And then water bottle, no dramas in there. You've got teeth to hold that into place,
06:41 and it's inside the door as well without any problems. You've got more storage here in the
06:46 centre console, nice deep centre console there. A little bit of storage there. You've got a glove
06:51 box over here that's really reasonably sized as well, and then a sunglasses holder up the top.
06:57 What about your comfort? So you have dual-zone automatic climate control. You have heated
07:02 seats for the front row and the second row. You've got a heated steering wheel.
07:06 Seat adjustment is electric for the driver and front passenger, so you can go forwards and
07:11 backwards. Your backrest can go forwards and backwards. You can lift the front of the seat,
07:15 the back of the seat, not too bad. And then over here, in terms of the comfort of the seats,
07:21 they've actually done a really good job with these. It is a great spot to be seated,
07:24 and for a longer distance drive, you're not going to feel fatigued or sort of annoyed that you're
07:28 actually trapped inside the car. Steering offers both tilts and reach adjustment, and on our reach
07:34 test, all of this stuff is easy to reach while you're driving. Okay, so second row. This is
07:39 really impressive in terms of room. Look at that, got stacks of knee room, toe room is good,
07:44 headroom is not too bad. I think if you're a bit taller, you might be brushing up against that, but
07:48 it is actually quite surprising how much space you've got back here. Two USB-C ports, air vents,
07:53 map pockets. You have centre armrest here with two cup holders. You've got a bottle holder inside
08:00 the door as well. You've got two ISOFIX points and then three top tether points, but for the centre
08:06 seat here, you've got to kind of construct your own seat belt, which is kind of a little bit
08:11 annoying, but I guess it is what it is. And our window test. So it's auto up and down. By the way,
08:19 that's where your switch is for the heated seats. It's auto up and down. Let's see if it does go all
08:23 the way down. Close. Now, cargo space. You've got a powered tailgate. You've got 370 litres of cargo
08:35 space to work with here. It is interesting, under the cargo floor, you've actually got some pretty
08:39 sort of deep storage here. They've gone to a bit of effort here to make sure that you can actually
08:43 utilise the space if you need to as well. And the entire repair kit under here. You've got a 12-volt
08:49 outlet, LED light in there, and then a couple of hooks off to the side as well. Show you what it
08:53 looks like with our bags in there. And then there's the suitcase as well. So it does look,
09:00 and certainly on paper, it is a smaller boot than the RAV4, and it does look smaller here when you
09:05 do actually see it in person. But I guess that is the slight size compromise you make there.
09:11 That's how the suitcase flies away in the wind. You can expand the space though if you want to.
09:16 So you can drop the second row out of the way,
09:19 and that pushes it out to about 1,300 litres and a fairly flat load floor as well.
09:23 So we've just hit the road in the ZRV. Now, this is a very similar setup to the Civic,
09:35 and when I say similar, I mean the same, the Civic Hybrid, which is excellent news,
09:40 because I was a big fan of that when we drove it, and I love the fact that they have translated that
09:44 here into an SUV package. And that means that it uses a 2-litre naturally aspirated
09:50 petrol engine, and it uses an Atkinson cycle for those of you playing at home. That on its own
09:55 makes 105 kilowatts of power and just under 200 newton metres of torque, so it's not a huge amount.
10:00 In addition to the internal combustion engine, it actually teams with a pair of electric motors,
10:04 and when you combine their outputs, it actually bumps it up to 135 kilowatts of power and just
10:09 over 300 newton metres of torque. Now, while you do have two electric motors, they're not
10:13 both necessarily driving the wheels, and this is a little bit confusing, but the way that it works
10:19 is one of those electric motors drives the wheels on the front axle, the other one acts as a
10:23 generator, and then what they're able to do is effectively continuously drive the front wheels,
10:29 because this is front wheel drive only, but in some instances there is actually a clutch pack
10:34 that can directly drive the front wheels with the internal combustion engine, because there are some
10:39 points in the rev band and the speed band as well where it is more efficient to drive the wheels
10:45 directly as opposed to using the internal combustion engine to generate electricity
10:50 to charge a battery and then send electricity through to an electric motor. So, it is a pretty
10:56 unique and interesting setup. When it is powered by that internal combustion engine, and that is
11:01 directly driving the wheels, it uses an eCVT, and even during normal driving this actually
11:06 simulates gear shifts, so that for the regular driver this doesn't feel different to any other
11:12 car to drive. It is significantly quieter, but it doesn't feel inherently different to drive than
11:17 any other car on the road. Now, how does all that compare to something like a Toyota RAV4 hybrid?
11:24 Well, this is actually significantly better in terms of the way that it drives. It's so quiet
11:29 and so smooth, it is very imperceptible when the internal combustion engine kicks on. Even now,
11:35 we are just driving on EV mode at around 60 km/h, it is using energy from the battery to drive the
11:40 wheels through that electric motor, but then when I kick on a little bit more throttle,
11:44 the internal combustion engine comes on, but I can't even hear it. It is almost dead silent.
11:48 They have replaced the rev gauge over on the left-hand side here with a power gauge,
11:52 so that is relative to my throttle inputs. See there, the more throttle I have,
11:55 the higher it goes in that power band. So, really nice setup, feels nice and punchy behind the wheel
12:01 and it definitely doesn't feel underpowered, which is good news. Now, what's it like on our
12:08 sine waves? Let's dial up 130 km/h. It's the maximum speed limit here in Australia,
12:13 and these sine waves simulate choppy stretch of road out on the highway when you're overtaking,
12:18 and they're a really good indication of what body control is like. So, there's 130.
12:23 That feels really good. So, considering that I don't do ride and handling tuning for these cars
12:30 for the Australian market, it's actually quite impressive that they've been able to make it feel
12:34 as good as it is. In fact, when you are driving in city conditions, it actually feels really nice
12:40 and comfortable. They've done a good job just engineering a lot of ride comfort into there,
12:43 but still giving you that feeling of reassurance behind the wheel. It feels nice and comfortable
12:48 and sure of itself. It's not too soft and rolly. It really is just a nice package.
12:53 Okay, choppy road time. So, worst road in Australia. We do this at 90 km/h,
12:59 which gives us a really good indication of what this is like if you hit country Australia and you
13:04 find yourself on a corrugated stretch of road. We've got our condensed sine wave coming up here
13:10 as well. So far, this is actually really impressive. Here's our condensed sine wave. It's
13:16 doing a remarkable job over here as well. Yeah, look, I've got to praise Honda. The ride here is
13:21 fantastic. They've really just nailed it and made it exactly what a vehicle like this needs to be.
13:26 So, Honda claims a fuel economy of 5 litres per 100 km. We are currently sitting on,
13:36 have a look here, 6.5 litres per 100 km. So, yeah, look, it's not too bad. We actually had to do a
13:46 bit of sporty driving earlier on today and that caused that to go up. It was actually sitting
13:50 around 6 litres per 100 km, which to me is a pretty good fuel economy figure. Still not as
13:54 good as a RAV4 hybrid, so they haven't quite dialled in that efficiency that Toyota has,
13:59 but pretty respectable figure anyway. Worth pointing out as well, this actually has a
14:05 regen mode. So, as you play foot to the brake, you can see it goes into that charge mode and
14:09 that ends up filling the battery for later use. You can also use the paddle shifters here to go
14:14 into a deeper regen. You can see that change down the bottom there. Strangely though, when you go
14:18 for the throttle again, it does reset that regen status. It is a little bit confusing how that
14:24 works, but it'll be nice if that just stayed on the whole time. Now, drive modes. We've got Sport,
14:30 Normal and Econ. Popped it into Sport. Let's go for a little drive around our track here.
14:34 We test all the cars in the same way here to see what the handling is like when you're
14:38 pushing it to its limits. It's actually quite surprising. So, for a front-wheel drive car,
14:51 it's actually sitting fairly flat. It's got nice road holding and it accelerates nicely
15:01 out of corners too. And then of course, you're getting the benefits of it being
15:05 fairly economical as well. Steering feels good, the brakes feel excellent,
15:08 and there's no real differentiation there as it moves between regen and then mechanical braking
15:14 as well. We've actually done a really good job here with making this feel nice and sporty without
15:23 being over the top. So, yeah, good job Honda. Now, let's talk about road noise. There is a
15:28 bit of road noise coming into the cabin through those tyres. A tiny bit of wind noise as well,
15:32 but it is super windy today. The results you see on the screen are from our calibrated sound meter.
15:37 If you do want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before, have a look at
15:40 the link in the description below. So, what is your visibility like? Being an SUV, you sit a
15:45 little higher up, but I can clearly see down the front of the car there. Big old wing mirrors,
15:49 visibility out the back is really good as well. So, they've done a great job in terms of letting
15:54 a lot of light into the cabin and being able to see clearly out of it as well. Now, time to test
15:58 some of the semi-autonomous functions in the ZRV. Do this at 70 k's an hour and we use the
16:05 three outer lanes of our banked oval here. So, I'll set cruise control to 70 k's an hour.
16:13 Then what we do is push this button here, which engages the self-steering function,
16:19 and then we'll see how it goes in those three lanes. Yeah, so here we go. So, it is very close
16:25 to that line there. I don't know why it's doing that. It even says it's close to the line, but
16:32 it's not making any effort to get us away from that line. We'll jump over to the next lane. We'll
16:37 see if it's maybe confused itself a bit there. Okay, so we're in that next lane, slightly let
16:44 go of the steering wheel. Yet again, it's just straddling that line. It's totally bizarre.
16:52 All right, we'll try that third lane as well. I'll wait for that to go green.
17:00 Okay, slightly let go of that steering wheel. It's just gone over that line entirely. So,
17:09 it's strange. I don't know. It doesn't seem to be very good at doing what it's meant to be doing,
17:16 which is centering itself in the lane. It just sort of rides the line there. So,
17:19 I think that system probably just needs a little bit of calibration.
17:22 Hey, Help Me Car Expert, inspired by our friends at CarWow. We're a big website. We actually have
17:28 like 50 full-time employees around Australia. We also have a network of vetted dealers, which means
17:34 we can get you the best deal on a new car that's in stock today, like the ZRV. If you do want to
17:40 find out more and you do want to get connected with a dealer that won't screw you around,
17:44 just go to Google, type in Help Me Car Expert. It'll take you to a page that explains everything
17:49 and we'll get you connected and started. So, let's do some performance testing. We'll go through to
17:54 120 k's an hour. We'll log zero to 100 and also 80 to 120 to give you an idea of how this overtakes.
18:00 Now, I've got it in sport mode. Dial up some revs. We'll see how it goes.
18:04 Okay, actually feels really nice and strong off the line there. So, right there's 100
18:15 and 120. All righty. Zero to 100, 7.56 seconds and then 80 to 120, 5.49 seconds. So,
18:28 while it took off fairly decently, once it got to that 80 k an hour range, it started slowing down
18:33 a little bit there in terms of its pickup, but still not a bad figure there. Let's head back
18:38 and do a break from 100 k's an hour. Okay, let's dial up 100 k's an hour.
18:43 I'll hit the anchors and see how well this performs. All right, here we go.
18:48 2.91 seconds and 39.28 meters. So, it's okay. It's not amazing. It would be nicer if it
19:03 stopped a little bit quicker, but it's not too bad for what it is.
19:07 And most importantly, how quickly does it reverse? Here we go.
19:13 All right, it pins you back in the seat nicely. All right, 53 kilometres an hour.
19:20 So, the Honda ZR-V, what do we reckon? Look, I reckon it is such a great addition to the
19:32 segment. It's got plenty of room inside. I think it's pretty stylish. And as a hybrid,
19:37 I think it's an excellent hybrid. If you want an alternative to a RAV4, you just can't be
19:41 bothered waiting for a RAV4, I think this needs to be on your shopping list. If you don't want
19:45 to spend that kind of money on the hybrid, though, the next step down is actually pretty good. So,
19:49 turbocharged engine, still has a CVT, but it drives just like this does, and it's just nice
19:54 and sporty behind the wheels. So, I think this is awesome. Can't wait to see what the new CR-V is
19:58 like. That's going to be bigger again. And I'm tipping that's going to be just a better option
20:02 if you do have more of a family. But if you want the SUV thing, need something a bit bigger, but
20:06 don't necessarily want a family-sized SUV, this could be the right answer for you. So, let me know
20:11 what you think in the comments section below. I was pretty impressed with it. What do you think
20:15 about it? Have you bought one? How's it all going? I'm keen to know what you think. If you did enjoy
20:20 this video, please make sure you like it and you share it with your mates. And if you haven't done
20:24 already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon as well. But until next time, take it easy.