Honda HR-V 2026 review | A sensible small hybrid SUV

What is the Honda HR-V?

The Honda HR-V is the Japanese firm’s offering in the hugely congested and even-more-hugely competitive small SUV sector, slotting into the range beneath the bigger Honda ZR-V and Honda CR-V. Sizewise, it kind of straddles two classes, meaning it competes with smaller SUVs such as the Ford Puma, Hyundai Kona, Kia Stonic, Nissan Juke and Renault Captur, but also bigger ones including the Nissan Qashqai, Volkswagen T-Roc and Seat Ateca and Skoda Karoq.

As such, the HR-V has its work cut out to stand out from the crowd. That it’s one of relatively few cars in the class to be sold only in petrol-electric self-charging hybrid guise helps on that front, as does the Honda’s smart-yet-subdued styling and generous standard equipment.

The original HR-V was launched in 1999, and was a very old-school Honda – made primarily with its home market of Japan in mind. The second generation of HR-V, which arrived in 2015, was a genuinely appealing car to UK buyers, even if it didn’t prove as popular as other small SUVs such as the Nissan Juke and Renault Captur.

The third-generation HR-V went on sale in 2021 and was given the lightest of facelifts in 2024 (think a slightly re-profiled nose and a redesigned cubby for smartphone charging, rather than a deep and comprehensive overhaul). Honda did make some hidden and useful updates, however.

How practical is it?

It’s a mixture of positives and negatives here, so let’s start with the positives. It’s no great surprise that you have all the space you could want in the front seats – most cars do these days – and the rear offers absolutely bags of legroom. There’s ample space for folk with long limbs to stretch out. However, rear headroom isn’t correspondingly generous, partly due to the low roofline. If your passengers are six-feet tall or more, they will find their scalps scraping the ceiling.

Headroom is in even shorter supply for whoever ends up in the middle seat, because the cushion they sit on is raised – and the fact it’s also hard and narrow makes it not as comfortable as the seats either side. At least there is an almost flat floor in front of all three passengers, which means plentiful space for feet.

Where the rear seats really impress, though, is in their clever design. The HR-V has the same ‘Magic Seats’ as the Honda Jazz supermini, and they’re an absolute work of engineering art. First introduced with the original Jazz in 2001, they fold down in a 60:40 split to boost your cargo space, and because the bases cantilever down underneath the backrests as they drop, the extended load floor you get is low, flat and perfectly level. The really clever bit, though, is that you can also flip the seat bases upwards against the backrests and then lock them in place (see the video above for a demonstration). This allows you to carry tall and bulky items in the rear footwells. It’s genuinely one of the most appealing features of the HR-V.

The boot comes with a handy under-floor storage area (an extra 16 litres of space), and there’s not much of a load lip when you are loading heavy items. The boot itself is pretty small for the class, at 319 litres, and the poshest versions have less (304 litres) because a small section is taken up by a stereo subwoofer. With the rear seats down, you can load up to 1,305 litres, which is respectable. But the larger Honda CR-V and ZR-V models fare better if space is a primary concern.

In general, the HR-V’s cabin is built very solidly and has a grown-up, sophisticated design. It’s something Honda does very well: creating interiors that feel as though they have been thoroughly developed and tested. However, while some of the materials and finishes look really nice, there are places where you expect to find squishy, soft-touch surfaces, only for your fingertips to be met by harder, less appealing plastics.

If you have a car fitted with the powered tailgate (all models bar the entry-level Elegance), there’s a walk-away close function. The car detects the key and knows if you’re walking away from the open boot, in turn closing it. It’s a practical idea in theory, but if you’re walking away from the boot because you have multiple bags to pull out, the tailgate can shut before you return to fetch the next bag.

Honda offers a range of accessories with the HR-V. These include roof rails, roof- and tailgate-mounted bicycle racks, roof boxes (up to 400 litres), boot storage dividers, and even fold-out mats to protect the rear paintwork from scratches if you have a dog jumping in and out. Buy a lower spec car and you can also cherry-pick options from the trim levels above without fully upgrading. Like adding a wireless phone charging pad to the Elegance model, for instance.

What's it like to drive?

We have a mixture of positives and negatives in this area, too. Let’s begin with the positives again.

Firstly, the Honda’s suspension feels impressively honed and polished. There’s a slight patter to the ride at low speeds, but it’s really good at absorbing bigger bumps and potholes. It also feels settled and civilised on the motorway. True, that suppleness, added to the weight of the hybrid hardware, means this isn’t a car that likes to change direction in much of a hurry, so it’s better to take things slow and steady. But there’s plenty of grip to call upon and the steering has a pleasant weighting, even if it can feel a little slow to react.

The hybrid powertrain, however, is less impressive. Granted, you wouldn’t expect a small hybrid SUV to be the last word in performance, but even when measured against modest expectations, the HR-V feels like a very slow car. It has a 1.5-litre four-cylinder ‘Atkinson cycle’ petrol engine paired with two electric motors and a lithium-ion battery: good for a total of 129bhp and 253Nm of torque. Zero to 62mph takes 10.6 seconds, top speed is 105mph, and Honda claims 112g/km of CO2 and fuel economy of 52.3mpg. You’ll often find you need to bury the throttle pedal just to keep up with the ebb and flow of traffic, at which point the engine revs soar way up to the redline. Even then, your pace doesn’t pick up that much – certainly not enough to justify the severity of the soundtrack.

There were a number of noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) improvements for the current, updated HR-V. Honda has worked on reducing the amount of noise produced by pressure waves when the engine fires up, and when it is revving along at higher speeds. The single-piece lower dashboard panel is now thicker, too, and fitted into the car with more fixing points, all with the aim of reducing vibrations. There’s also more sound deadening than before, including at the top of the dashboard, inside the doors and down the centre console.

There are three drive modes that the car will move through automatically, depending on the road conditions and throttle position, among other things: Electric Drive, Hybrid Drive or Engine Drive. These are self-explanatory, but there are also driver-selectable Normal, Econ and Sport modes, which vary the response of the car whether you’re driving on battery power alone, for example, or being powered by the hybrid system as a whole.

Off-roading ability? There isn’t any. Like many SUVs, a high driving position and lofty ride height don’t mean the HR-V is an off-the-beaten-track adventurer.

Two points of note: the HR-V uses the same hybrid powertrain as the Jazz, but there are 60 cells in its battery, rather than 48, to account for the car’s additional weight. What’s more, from the original 2021 HR-V hybrid to this post-facelift model, Honda made an adjustment to the car’s ‘Power Control Unit’, reducing it in size by 20 percent. As a result, the regular 12V battery now fits in the engine bay rather than being stored at the rear of the car.

Technology, equipment and infotainment

This is an area where the HR-V goes quite a long way towards redeeming itself, because it is very well-equipped as standard. Even the entry-level Elegance version gets climate control air-con, heated front seats, alloy wheels, automatic lights and wipers, adaptive cruise control, front and rear parking sensors and a reversing camera. There’s also an infotainment system with a 9.0-inch touchscreen, navigation, Bluetooth, DAB radio, Android Auto and wireless Apple CarPlay connectivity.

Happily, it’s much better than the infotainment system found in the previous HR-V, which had a user interface that was nothing short of dreadful. The reversing camera was about as helpful as a potato, too. This time around, there are more logical menus, a clearly marked menu button, better graphics and quicker responses.

Upgrading to Advance trim gains you part-leather upholstery, a heated leather steering wheel, a powered tailgate, LED front foglights and two extra speakers. The Advance Style trim adds a premium audio system with a subwoofer, wireless phone charging, roof rails, a two-tone roof and styling enhancements inside and out. The very minor facelift in 2024 saw the introduction of a new Advance Plus trim grade, but this amounted to little more than a handful of styling changes, plus a panoramic sunroof.

Meanwhile, standard safety kit includes automatic emergency braking, lane-keep assistance, traffic sign recognition, electronic stability aids and a full complement of airbags, while Advance and Advance Style cars also get a blind-spot monitor and a cross-traffic monitor.

One useful bit of tech you’ll only find in a Honda is the air diffusion system. In short, the air vents can blow air at you or, with the twist of a dial, blow the air over your head and around your side, parallel to the windows. The result, Honda says, is an air curtain that reduces the impact of radiated heat from the windows in the summer and lower external temperatures in the winter – all without the need to be blasted directly by the air conditioning. It sounds gimmicky, but it does work.

Honda HR-V running costs

In terms of purchase prices, the HR-V looks competitive with many of its rivals, but don’t expect it to be a steal. Bear in mind, too, that because the HR-V is hybrid-only, many rivals that offer more conventional drivetrains will have cheaper starting prices. This could be significant if having a hybrid isn’t a deal-breaker for you.

That hybrid drivetrain allows the Honda to return an official fuel economy figure of 52.3mpg. This is similar to a Toyota C-HR – slightly less than you’d get from the 1.8-litre version, but slightly more than the 2.0 – and a good deal better than most petrol-powered alternatives. The few diesel rivals left on the market will go further on a gallon, though. If you were keen for a Honda with an HR-V badge and a diesel engine, you’d need to look at the previous generation HR-V i-DTEC, which had a 1.6-litre diesel that could manage somewhere between 600 and 700 miles on a tank of fuel.

The tax incentives for choosing a hybrid are nowhere near as compelling as they once were, either in terms of road tax (VED) or Benefit-In-Kind (BIK) tax for company car drivers. Nonetheless, you will still make a small saving compared with a purely petrol-powered car. What’s more, every HR-V is priced at less than £40,000, so provided you don’t go crazy with options or accessories, you’ll avoid the ‘expensive car supplement’ that increases VED until the sixth year of ownership.

Honda HR-V reliability

Once upon a time, Honda's record for reliability was the envy of the motor industry, with the brand perpetually placing on – or very near – the top of any survey you cared to look at. Perhaps you remember the legend that ‘no Honda VTEC engine has ever failed’, or something similar?

That glittering reputation for reliability has taken a bit of a battering in the last few years, with some uncharacteristically below-par performances in such studies. Thankfully, it seems like things are finally taking an upward turn again. Having placed fourth overall in the 2024 What Car? Reliability survey, Honda finished first in 2025. That’s a massive achievement, with 30 car manufacturers in the running overall.

In the Small SUV category of the survey, this latest version of the HR-V placed seventh out of 38 vehicles, an improvement from 12th out of 23 models considered the year before.