Honda mulls all-electric sports car to sit below NSX

The 2017 Honda NSX may appear to be the one hogging the spotlight for now but if all goes to plan, the Japanese carmaker could introduce a slew of new sports cars to (hopefully) revive the brand’s sporting intentions amongst today’s buyers. According to Autocar UK, Honda could be looking to roll out a successor to the S2000 as well as an all-electric sports car to sit below the NSX halo car.

As one might have already read, the 2017 Honda NSX utilises a variation of the marque’s Super Handling All-Wheel Drive (SH-AWD) system which sees a pair of electric motors up front and another sole unit augment the entire layout. With that said, the supposed all-electric sports car could very well feature an even more advanced version of the SH-AWD system.

Honda has already begun work on the next-gen system – said revised SH-AWD system employs “an inboard electric motor at each corner and mixes torque vectoring with four-wheel steering.” The experimental SH-AWD system has already proven itself in competition – Honda employed said setup in a modified CR-Z at the 2015 Pikes Peak International Hillclimb. It won the Exhibition Class and was classified 11th overall.

“We started this car back in 2012, not as a race car but as an all-electric sports car for public sales,” disclosed a senior project source. “We are making every possible effort to make it to the market. More specifically, with the success at Pikes Peak we have verified that the testing period is completed. Now we have to think about the commercialisation of it.”

For reference, the Pikes Peak racer had a total of 444 hp and weighed 1,800 kg – the latter caused by a 50 kWh battery and a heavy-duty roll cage. The road-legal test mule, already sampled by several publications, has roughly 250 hp and weighs 1,600 kg. However, engineers have stated that the powertrain could easily spew out the equivalent of 350 hp.

Juice comes courtesy of a 16 kWh battery but an operational range of over 482 km is required “to make customers satisfied.” With that said, expect the overall weight to increase which, in turn, will increase the current mule’s 0-100 km/h time of 3.5 seconds. Additionally, the four electric motors are said to be “relatively inexpensive” with stock components “already available.”

GALLERY: 2017 Honda NSX

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