Honda Super-One Lands in Australia: A $36,900 City EV With Retro Charm and a Boost Button

Honda’s first electric offering for Australian buyers is a deliberately small machine, and it arrives with a personality that few budget EVs bother to cultivate. The Super-One is a four-seat, boxy hatch measuring just 3,582mm long and 1,573mm wide, priced from $36,900 driveaway in Mono trim and$37,400 for the Two-Tone finish. Its looks draw on the 1980s City Turbo II — circular headlights, a tall nose, flared arches — while its underpinnings trace back to Honda’s Japanese N-One e kei car, stretched 185mm and widened 100mm for this application. The charging port sits in the front grille, and recycled material from retired Honda vehicles appears in the grille and rear light housings.

Under the skin is a 29.6kWh battery with a claimed WLTP range of up to 202km, feeding a motor that produces 47kW in normal operation and 70kW once the Boost button is pressed. Honda has also fitted a simulated seven-speed transmission, artificial engine noise and a purple instrument cluster with a rev counter, along with paddle shifters that manage fake gear changes in Sport and Boost modes or adjust regenerative braking in Normal and Econ. City mode enables one-pedal driving with four deceleration levels. At 1,093kg with 162Nm of torque, the Super-One leans on low weight rather than a large motor, and Honda says the suspension, steering and tyres were tuned specifically for the model.

Inside, the retro theme coexists with modern equipment: a seven-inch driver display, a nine-inch touchscreen with Google built-in, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, an eight-speaker Bose system with a boot-mounted subwoofer, and physical climate controls styled after a cassette deck. Boot space is 162 litres with all four seats in use, expanding to 618 litres to window height or 967 litres to the roof with the rear seats folded. Charging peaks at 50kW DC, which Honda says delivers a 15-80 per cent top-up in around 30 minutes, while AC charging runs at 6.6kW single-phase or 10kW three-phase.

The ownership package includes a five-year unlimited-kilometre vehicle warranty, an eight-year or 160,000km high-voltage battery warranty, five years of roadside assistance and five scheduled services at $199 each every 12 months or 15,000km. Honda reportedly logged close to 7,000 expressions of interest, and the initial 2026 allocation of just 130 cars was claimed within hours. The central tension is whether such a deliberately limited car justifies its nearly$37,000 asking price — and Honda is plainly betting that buyers who want a compact, light and entertaining city EV will answer yes.