Honda HR-V review

The HR-V is fairly bland but purposeful to drive, which is about right for a smallish hybrid crossover. It’ll drive for a mile or two in EV mode around town and will keep the engine turned off for as long as it can.

You get regen paddles for juicing up the batteries instead of frittering everything away in wasted brake energy. It’s a bit annoying that in every mode except Sport (there’s Eco, Normal and Sport available) the regen resets back to the middle after a short while, unless you put the gear shifter into B mode.

Does that make it more efficient?

Honda says the HR-V will drive for 91 per cent of the time in EV mode around town, while at motorway speeds the engine drives the wheels directly. This is one of the main differences between Honda and Toyota when it comes to hybrid stuff – where Toyota uses a complicated planetary gearbox to send power off in all directions, the Honda does without one altogether: the fixed gear system cuts down friction, it reckons.

Officially the HR-V pulls 52.3mpg on the WLTP lab cycle. We got 41.5mpg on a mixed run in cold, wintry conditions, which is respectable. But not as good as we've seen from a Toyota C-HR. D'oh. Like most hybrids the rewards are bigger around town than on the motorway, so factor that in if you'll be mostly pootling close to home.

How’s the drive?

In hybrid modes the engine powers the generator, but at motorway speeds it powers the wheels directly, because it’s apparently more efficient that way. Try to overtake on the motorway and the HR-V is both sluggish to respond and quite noisy as the engine gets going, but that noise happily dials back quickly as you come off the accelerator. Otherwise it’s a generally quiet setup, the engine unobtrusive around town. Though if you live somewhere hilly you might end up regretting your life choices.

If there’s one particular complaint, it’s that some of the safety systems are intrusively nannying. There’s no intuitive way to turn off the lane keep assist – the settings menu disappears as soon as you start driving, so remember to write yourself a post-it note or something and try to find the right sub-menu. Likewise there doesn’t seem to be any way to turn off the speed limit bongs.