I am using a new Honda Activa for the past 3 months.
I made a survey before buying Honda Activa. I was also considering Kinetic Nova and Scooty Pep. Then I realised that power and capacity wise Scooty Pep is not in the same class as Activa.
As I had TVS Scooty, 1997 model, which had plastic body, I can’t forget the drawbacks of the plastic body. The plastic body starts vibrating, generating lot of noise. This drawback made me to decide against Nova and go for Activa.
From the survey, I found that Activa is very smooth to ride, gives a decent mileage of 40-45 kmpl. Of course, it is heavy, but it doesn’t feel when riding. In fact, the ride is very smooth, probably due to its weight and also due to its metal body. The handle bar controls are easy to use and adds to the comfortable riding.
It has ample space under the seat to hold a full-face helmet, which is a positive point. The vehicle gives a decent milage of 45 kmpl, and I had no reason to visit the service centre other than for the first free service.
This vehicle is being predominantly used by my wife, to go for her job. She travels 20km each day and she is very happy about the vehicle. Earlier she was using TVS scooty. She is little worried about the weight of the vehicle, otherwise there is no negative remark about it. Most of the time, she uses the side stand to park the vehicle.
The first free service was done by Haiku Honda, Airport Road, Bangalore, from where I took delivery of my vehicle.
Some of the negative points:
I found the fuel indicator is not precise. The tank capacity is 6 litres and the tank is supposed to have 1.3 litres of petrol after the needle reaches red mark. It appears that the tank may have more than 1.3 litres (may be 1.8 litres or more), when the needle reaches RED because 4 litres make the tank full at this stage.
As the vehicle is heavy, the side stand is very useful. But the side stand comes as extra fitting. This could have been part of the vehicle.
The warm-up time required for cold start is little long. During this warm-up time, the engine has to run with choke on.
Except for the few negative remarks, the vehicle, in total, is very good.