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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

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Category

🚗
Motor
Transcript
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.

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