Honda CR-V Hybrid 2019 UK first drive

The Honda CR-V has reached something of a zenith with this first-ever hybrid version of the new fifth-generation model.

I’m not sure this super-sensible, practical, grown-up family SUV has ever felt more rational, more serious or less exciting than it has become by the edition of Honda’s latest petrol-electric powertrain. You might even say that ‘peak CR-V’ has finally been achieved. In the car’s own super-sedate, marvellously boring way, that’s quite something to behold.

You won’t find a modern passenger car with much less sporting pretense about it than this. Consider, for example, that it has a powertrain with two electric motors (the main ‘drive’ one producing some 181bhp) and a 2.0-litre petrol engine (which produces 143bhp at maximum power) and yet Honda apparently can’t tell you how much power or torque that powertrain makes as a combined whole. That says a lot about how much CR-V customers are expected to care about such things, doesn’t it? Not even a fraction of half of a jot, bless 'em.

The car’s new ‘multi-mode drive’ hybrid propulsion system is interesting because, unlike older Honda hybrid set-ups, it aligns the piston engine in series upstream of the electric motor, rather than in parallel when it might have driven into a shared transmission; because that transmission consists not of CVT-like planetary gearing but instead of a single-speed ratio onto which the combustion engine is coupled by an electronically governed clutch; and because, when the car’s running in hybrid mode, there’s no connection between the combustion engine and the wheels at all.

A third ‘engine drive’ operating mode (the others are EV and hybrid) allows the 2.0-litre lump to mechanically connect to the gearbox when the car is cruising at higher speeds and running under higher loads – but most of the time, it really is the car’s 181bhp electric motor and only that doing the driving.

Like its 1.5-litre turbo petrol range-mate, the CR-V Hybrid has a particularly spacious, comfortable and solid-feeling cabin which, while it doesn’t broadcast its perceived quality quite like an equivalent Audi or Mercedes, certainly ensures that its integrity percolates slowly into your awareness. The car carries its lithium ion drive batteries under the boot floor, and so - while you can’t have one of these with seven seats, nor even a spare wheel – onboard space for five isn’t adversely affected (there’s loads), and boot space is pegged to a slightly reduced 497 litres.