Honda EV-STER’s surprise appearance at the L.A. Auto Show hints at US release

The bold Honda EV-STER concept could be heading stateside, but you'd better let Honda know you want one if you expect the traditionally conservative Japanese automaker to bring it over.

Quite a lot of the time, automakers will keep their riskier models in their home markets. Unless they are reasonably sure that the car will be a hit overseas, they are reluctant to commit to a large and costly international release. When the Honda EV-STER concept debuted in Tokyo last year, it was assumed that this would probably be the case with this car as well; should it even make it into production. Toward the end of last year, we got word that Honda had given the car the green light, but there was still no news about whether it would make it stateside.

This is still not exactly an official yes, but the little electric sports car has now made a debut at the L.A. Auto Show. Foreign automakers might not always bring cars to the US, but they also don’t show them at American shows if they have no intention of bringing them at all. Since there was no accompanying announcement that the car was US-bound, it seems that this is one of those cases where an automaker will bring a concept to an auto show in order to gauge the public’s response to it. So if you’re a fan of the EV-STER and would like one of your very own, now is the time to let the folks at Honda know.

The design of the concept is quite bold, and if this were a regular roadster, we’d expect that it would change quite a bit. But the EV-STER was built to be an electric car (although rumor has it that a production version could offer a choice of electric and gasoline engines) and a bold design is kind of what you’d expect from an electric roadster. So the exterior could actually end up looking quite a bit like this. The twin joysticks instead of a steering wheel on the other hand, no, I don’t see that happening. Should the drivetrain remain unchanged, it will be a 78-horsepower electric motor connected to a lithium-ion battery pack. That’s not all that much, so let’s just hope this isn’t another repeat of the CR-Z:  a green sports car where Honda sadly forgot to add the sports part.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com