Honda’s adorable work truck deserves a better name but we did it justice

The future tends to appear dystopian for those that despise electric vehicles but the salt in the wound is that these vehicles might even be driving themselves. While self-driving vehicles are still years away from mainstream implementation, it’s difficult to not stop and smile at some of them… especially if they look like the adorable Autonomous Work Vehicle (AWV) prototype from Honda.

Primarily, the hindrance in development of self-driving vehicles is the controlled area they require for testing. That makes environments such as a construction site ideal for real-world testing. Furthermore, the main purpose of self-driving vehicles is to ideally take over dangerous tasks.

Still, we think Honda really dropped the ball here with the Autonomous Work Vehicle (AWV) name. Sure, it’s electric but wouldn’t the Honda Autonomous VTEC sounded better? VTEC here meaning:

Vehicle for
Transferring
Equipment in
Construction

Who wouldn’t want an Autonomous VTEC vehicle at work?

But for clarity’s sake, we’ll continue calling it the AWV. It isn’t new, having been introduced in 2018 but now it’s seeing real-world action at a construction site in New Mexico with Black & Veatch, a large engineering firm.

Also Read: Want to stand out? Honda e now in Malaysia, priced from RM 210k

Honda hasn’t divulged details on the powertrain except for it being electric with a range of 45 km on a single charge. That might seem limited but in the confines of a site, that’s more than sufficient. The plucky vehicle is based on the Honda Pioneer UTV frame. That robustness translates into a 400 kg carrying load and a towing weight of up to 750 kg. Those lights appear to be Honda e EV items.

Two drive modes are available; autonomous or remote controlled by a human operator. In autonomous mode, the operator uses a tablet to tell it where to go and it figures out the way via the array of cameras and sensors. These include a forward-mounted camera, 3D cameras, a GPS tracker, lidar and more.

Also Read: Honda Legend's Sensing Elite - world's first road legal L3 autonomous driving car

Although Honda concludes the AWV’s test is a success, it’s not the production line for the cute work truck yet. More testing is on the horizon with plans for additional attachments and tools to carry out more specific tasks in its work environment.