Peter Lyon
April 6, 2025
Ahead of this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing and Honda put on a riveting display on the streets of Tokyo as their collaboration concludes at the end of this year’s Formula 1 season.
Red Bull’s driver lineup of Formula 1 World Champion and Japanese Grand Prix winner Max Verstappen, and homegrown star Yuki Tsunoda drove some legendary Red Bull and Honda F1 cars at full speed around a closed course in Tokyo’s downtown district. To provide some respite from the howling F1 engines, Honda sent its all-new electric 0-Series SUV prototype onto the street track, driven by Verstappen, to show fans what the brand has in store for EV pundits.
New Honda 0 prototype slated to get Level-3 self-driving tech
After being unveiled at CES 2025 in January, this is the first time we’ve seen the Honda’s 0 SUV in action. The quirky-looking 0 SUV will be the first model built with Honda’s latest EV architecture as part of the company’s future 0 Series portfolio of electric vehicles. Although Honda hasn’t disclosed any details regarding the 0 SUV’s battery technology or range, we do know that it will probably have Level 3 autonomous driving and ASIMO OS, a next-generation operating system. Of course, the name Asimo was borrowed from Honda’s cute quirky robot who entertained audiences with its human-like movements from 2002 to 2022 before it was retired to make way for more advanced avatar-style robotics.
At a later date, Honda’s new electric lineup will also include a wedge-shaped 0 Saloon in addition to the windswept mid-size SUV. A production version of the 0 SUV is expected to debut in mid-2026, while the 0 Saloon will follow at the end of the year. Both models will be manufactured at Honda’s EV Hub in Marysville, Ohio.
Online footage of the event showed Verstappen and Tsunoda, his new colleague backed by Honda, laughing and enjoying 12-ounce cans of Red Bull as they drove slowly in the purple-camo-wrapped electric prototype.
CARLIST THOUGHTS
It was great to see the combination of F1 machines and camouflaged next-gen EVs on Tokyo streets last week, but it was unfortunate that the new Red Bull driver Tsunoda, could not quite rise to the high expectations of Honda and his country’s race fans. While Tsunoda did superbly in the Q1 session, in which he finished just 0.1 second behind Verstappen, he could not maintain his pace in Q2 and was forced to retire after placing outside the top ten. Honda hopes his 12th place finish in the race on Sunday—out of the points—is just part of his teething issues driving a new car and that he will bounce back at next week’s race in Bahrain.
