Honda Philippines’ electric motorcycles are nice and all that, but they don’t exactly fit in our market. See, both the EM1 e: and the CUV e: have Honda’s swappable batteries, but the system’s biggest value proposition is lost in the fact that we don’t have the swappable-battery stations here. Heck, we might never even see them at all.
Well, there’s something HPI could use in our market instead of those two: the Icon e:. I chanced upon this electric two-wheeler at the recent Asiabike Jakarta 2025, where it was front and center at Honda‘s booth. It was unveiled globally late last year, and it’s just been launched in Indonesia.
At first glance, it looks just like an EM1 e:, only with slightly more rugged styling. That’s because it is, in fact, based on that electric Honda. The difference is that the Icon e: doesn’t have a swappable battery system. Instead, it gets a more traditional lithium-ion battery that enables charging by plugging in the bike itself or by taking out the battery and plugging it in using a cable.
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It’s the more usual setup that we see with e-bikes. You also actually have proper storage space whenever you take out the battery under the seat, which is nice. In terms of performance, it”s just about the same—the Icon e: can run for about 50km on a single charge while the EM1 e: can only do about 48km.
The Icon e: also has some pretty standard equipment such as the small compartment up front with a USB-A socket. It also has a rotary ignition and an LCD instrument cluster.
What do you think of this one, folks? It’s already in Indonesia, so is it high time that Honda brought this to our market next?
More photos of the Honda Icon e: from Asiabike Jakarta 2025:
