MOTORS: Runabout Honda ZR-V’s tech can sometimes be a hazard
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The storm and floods which hit Angus and Aberdeenshire caused devastation around the area and householders and insurance companies are still counting the cost.
Council roads departments have a massive job repairing the damage caused to bridges and road surfaces, many of which were undermined by the powerful surges.
The flooding conditions which created deep standing and fast-flowing rivers on the roads were not only tricky to negotiate and in some cases downright dangerous but there were other consequences.
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Mud and vegetation washed onto the roads can make the surface as slippery as ice or snow but it can also confuse some of the technology in our cars.
I discovered this while at the wheel of the latest ZR-V compact SUV from Honda. It’s a very smart machine and in keeping with the Japanese manufacturer’s reputation, well put-together with a quality finish which looks and feels as if it will last forever.
With a final price tag of more than £43,000 the featured test car in top-level Advance trim came crammed with comfort and safety details including LED cornering headlights, heated front and rear leather seats, panoramic glass sunroof and head-up display. It also had what’s called an Immersive Audio system with 12 Bose speakers to deliver full surround sound and it certainly did that in concert hall decibels.
Safety figures highly in the car too with almost a dozen airbags, automatic emergency braking, e-Call emergency response and road-sign recognition but it’s the lane-departure warning and lane-keeping assistance which grabbed my attention – for all the wrong reasons.
Personally I find these systems far too intrusive, often pulling on the steering wheel too fiercely if you stray from the centre of your lane and potentially creating dangers if you happen to be on a tricky surface at the time.
I always cancel the system as a matter of routine every time I switch on and sometimes that’s easier when there’s a simple cancel button, rather than having to negotiate a complex menu on a touchscreen.
In the ZR-V – which apparently stands for Runabout Vehicle, aimed at the Generation Z of people born between 1996 and 2010 – it’s a tricky procedure involving scrolling through a range of options. That’s bad enough, but like all these systems, it resets when you switch off and you have to repeat the process each time.
In the case of the ZR-V the system was confused by the detritus and mud thrown up by the floods onto the sensors at the front of the car. That led to a series of warning lights and pings which I found very distracting, effectively creating a hazard rather than warning of one.
Apart from that considerable irritation, I really liked the car.
Its e:Hev powertrain, combining a 2-litre petrol engine and two electric motors driving the front wheels, is complex but very clever, superbly smooth and leads to excellent efficiency and economy with 50 miles out of every gallon, very easy to achieve, even when driven hard.
The petrol engine rarely drives the wheels directly. Instead it spends most of its time powering one of the two electric motors through the battery, with the second electric motor filling the gaps in performance. It’s all done automatically and effectively but you can call up a display on the nine-inch touchscreen if you want to see where the power is coming from and going too.
There’s stacks of room inside with a big, rubber-floored boot and leg and headroom is great or full-size adults.
There’s no option of four-wheel-drive but there is a Snow drive mode to improve traction in low grip conditions and the towing capacity is meagre at 750 kgs – about half that of some of its competitors.
But what you get is a stylish, clever, well-built and economical car which is easy to live with – if only you could do away with the lane departure system.
Honda ZR-V e:HEV Advance
PRICE: £42,895 (£43,545 as tested)
ENGINE: 1993 cc i-MMD Hybrid e-CVT FWD
POWER: 143 PS
TORQUE: 186 Nm
TOP SPEED: 108mph
0-62mph: 8 secs
TOWING CAPACITY: 750 kgs
ECONOMY: 48 mpg combined
