As hard as it might be to believe, the Honda Motocompo is back! Errrr, sort of. The just-announced Honda Motocompacto is built along the same lines as the original machine, but there is one big difference—it’s an EV.
The original Motocompo was a weird and wild commuter intended to work as a sort of commuter accessory. It worked as a “congestion avoidance device.” A driver would keep the Motocompo folded up in their car trunk (indeed, in Japan, it was called a “trunk bike”). Upon arrival at an outside-the-city parking lot, the commuter could whip the Motocompo out, unfold the bars, and slice-and-dice through urban traffic en route to the office.
The 2.5-hp engine might not have set any speed records, but it did get you to work quickly and efficiently… smelling of two-stroke smoke. Still, Honda sold more than 50,000 of these bikes over the 1981-1983 production run, so people saw the advantage of two-wheeled transport.
Now, Honda has revived the idea with the new Motocompacto electric bike. Like the original, the Motocompacto folds down into a tidy package for your trunk, looking like a suitcase with wheels. It is 742 mm by 536 mm by 94 mm and weighs just under 20 kg. The battery has a 19-km range and only takes 3.5 hours to recharge from a standard 110V plug. Honda says the 490-watt hub motor in the front gives you 11.8 lb-ft of torque, moving you along at a max speed of 24 km/h.
In other words, this machine is just made for getting you from the carpool parking lot into work, as the original. It doesn’t even have turn signals; the only controls appear to be a throttle and a rear brake pedal. It’s almost as stripped-down as a bicycle.
And, Honda says it’s priced around $1600 CAD and coming to markets in November of 2023—does that mean Canada? We don’t know… yet.
Looks like it would be more fun in the office than getting to the office.