Widest range in the world - Only Malaysia's 2022 Honda HR-V come with 3 engine options, here's why

• Three 1.5-litre engines available – naturally aspirated i-VTEC, VTEC Turbo, e:HEV full hybrid
• Malaysia is only country in the world (so far) to offer HR-V with 3 engine options

If production engineers at car plants have their way, only one model will be produced, with only one variant, all painted in the same colour. This is because variations in product lines slow down an assembly line’s speed, which in turn leads to increase in manufacturing cost.

To engineers, variations add unnecessary complexity. More variations also mean greater variety of parts, which also means more complex logistics and parts management, as well as greater chances of errors.

Production line work is closely related to muscle memory of an assembly line worker. With good muscle memory, an experienced worker will instinctively know that something isn’t right just by holding the part – if the weight feels a bit off, or if the nut doesn’t roll off one’s hands as smoothly as others.

Even if it’s an automated process, the preference for uniformity is still unchanged. Robots will still need to empty and flush out the paint spray guns to paint different colours, or swap the tool heads to build a different body.

But of course, the folks at car plants don’t run car companies. Sales and marketing folks on the other hand, love variations. With more variants, the same product can be priced across a wider range, thus appealing to more customers.

But even sales and marketing folks understand that with more variations, especially when it comes to engines and transmissions, come longer and costlier vehicle homologation – a tedious paperwork-intensive process that all cars need to undergo before it is road legal, or else the car cannot be registered or insured.

Like many things in life, a compromise between uniformity and offering many variants is needed. This is why most cars on the market come with at most just only 2 engine options.

So when Honda Malaysia launched the latest RV generation 2022 Honda HR-V with 3 engine options – it raised eyebrows of many experienced industry captains, not least its chief rival Toyota.

Indeed, offering 3 engine options is something that even Honda themselves rarely do. The last time Honda Malaysia offered that many engine options was probably in 2008, when the 8th generation Honda Accord was offered with a 2.0-litre 4-cylinder, 2.4-litre 4-cylinder, and 3.5-litre V6 engine.

Today, Honda Malaysia is still the only Honda distributor in the world to offer the HR-V with 3 engine options.

Even Honda in Japan sells the HR-V (sold there as the Vezel) with only 2 engine options – a 1.5-litre naturally aspirated i-VTEC and a 1.5-litre e:HEV full-hybrid. Our neighbour Singapore follows the same line-up.

Up north, Thailand’s decision swings to the other extreme – it’s hybrid or nothing. Indonesia however offers both naturally aspirated and turbocharged engines.

When asked about Honda Malaysia’s unusual but customer-friendly offering, Executive Coordinator Yujiro Sugino explained that the reasoning is quite simple – the SUV segment is a very important high-growth segment, so it is important to offer customers the widest possible range.

Honda Malaysia expects the mid-range 1.5-litre 181 PS VTEC Turbo-powered E and V variants to be the main sellers, contributing 75 percent of total sales. The highest specification hybrid RS and the cheapest naturally aspirated S variants will contribute 15 and 10 percent respectively.

At launch time however, 22 percent of all HR-V bookings received in Malaysia were for the highest specification e:HEV RS hybrid variant, while the turbocharged V and E variants receive 60 percent and 13 percent respectively. The remaining is contributed by the naturally aspirated S variant.

The contribution of the S variant is to be expected at the current early stage, as buying trends at the early point of a new model is typically skewed more towards higher range variants. Sales of the lower range variants will typically only pick up much later, as the model ages.

There is however one more reason for Honda Malaysia to offer 3 engine options. Although Honda Malaysia didn’t say this, we know that the company has little choice but to grudgingly accept the 1.5-litre naturally aspirated HR-V S variant because it needs to fill gap left behind by the previous generation Civic 1.8S.

Ever since the entry-variant naturally aspirated Civic 1.8S was discontinued (all-new Civic is VTEC Turbo-only), Honda Malaysia no longer has a product to fill the RM 110k – RM 130k price range.

The all-new Civic FE now starts from RM 130k and since the R18 i-VTEC engine is no longer in production, selling a base specs 1.8-litre HR-V is out of the question.

Abandoning this RM 110k – RM 130k price range is not an option either, so Honda Malaysia needs to make do with the S variant. Given the circumstances, we think the product planners at Honda Malaysia has succeeded in introducing a reasonably well-equipped entry variant.

Also read: Low maintenance, reliable, but no more - Reasons why 1.8 i-VTEC is dropped for 2022 Honda Civic FE

The base S variant comes with LED headlights, Android Auto- / Apple CarPlay-compatible touchscreen infotainment, 17-inch alloy wheels, so it doesn’t look like some poverty specs taxi-grade variant. Inside, the fabric seats don’t feel cheap at all. As a daily car, the HR-V 1.5 S is cheap to buy, cheap to run, rides and drives well enough for urban users.

Achieving this is not as simple as netizens and their typically harsh comments think, because one doesn’t just tick a checklist of features and magically expect prices to be at what you want. The folks managing the manufacturing and parts sourcing side of things will also demand that their colleagues at marketing and sales planning to commit to a minimum level of production volume.

Also read: 2022 Honda HR-V 1.5 S: Corolla Cross fighter undercuts it in price, not value

At the same time, Honda is a pioneer of hybrid vehicles here. It was the first to launch a hybrid car in Malaysia (Civic Hybrid, 2007), first to locally assemble a hybrid car (Jazz, 2012), and first to locally assemble hybrid battery packs (Honda City e:HEV RS, 2020).

The whole point of Honda discontinuing the R18 engine is so it could focus on hybrids and EVs. Given its pioneering history in Malaysia, Honda has to continue leading the way with a hybrid HR-V, especially when Thailand is going for a 100 percent hybrid-only HR-V line-up.

On its part, Honda Motor in Japan has been quite supportive of Honda Malaysia’s direction, even though it’s a rather unusual one. Of course, whether Honda Malaysia makes or losses money on the HR-V, that’s all on the team in Malaysia.

There is a good reason why no other Honda distributor in the world is keen on offering 3 engine options. It’s great for customers, but not so great for the company.

So kudos to Honda Malaysia for pushing this through. Once just needs to look at its closest rival the Toyota Corolla Cross' offering and price range to know why this matters.

Large Project Leader Yoshitomo Ihashi, who took over from Kojiro Okabe, explained that on their part as the development team, all three 1.5-litre engines have been developed with markets in the Asia-Oceania region in mind, meaning reliability in hot and humid climate, as well as heavy stop-go traffic.

The decision to take up which engine is pretty much up to the local distributors. So far, Malaysia is the only country to take up all 3 engines, though this arrangement is not exclusive to Malaysia and there is nothing stopping other countries from following Malaysia’s lead.

Prices of the locally-assembled (CKD) 2022 Honda HR-V are:

• 1.5S: RM 114,800
• 1.5E: RM 129,800
• 1.5V: RM 134,800
• e:HEV RS: RM 140,800

Prices above are for private registrations in Peninsular Malaysia.