Honda EV Outlier electric motorcycle wins Red Dot Design Award

Honda’s futuristic EV Outlier Concept has picked up a Red Dot Design Award, with the electric motorcycle concept recognised in the Design Concept category.

The award comes less than a year after Honda first showed the Outlier at the Japan Mobility Show in October 2025. It was designed to explore what a motorcycle could look like beyond 2030, rather than simply adapting the conventional motorcycle formula to electric power. 

And it certainly looks different.

The Outlier uses in-wheel motors at both the front and rear, allowing Honda’s designers considerably more freedom with the layout than would be possible with a conventional petrol engine. The result is an extremely low-slung machine with a notably low riding position and unusual proportions.

Honda says the design is based around its ‘Precision of Intrinsic Design’ theme for its electric motorcycles, with the Outlier intended to be “unconstrained by boundaries”. The company also says the low seating position is intended to give the rider a more dramatic field of view and a stronger sense of acceleration.

There is plenty of concept-bike styling, too, including smooth bodywork and a smoked-clear outer structure intended to expose and highlight the mechanical elements beneath it.

The Outlier was not the only Honda electric motorcycle project to receive recognition from Red Dot this year. A brand film called 'What Is a Motorcycle? / Electric Motorcycles' also won an award, this time in the Brand & Communication Design category.

The film sets out Honda’s thinking around its electric motorcycle business, built around the rather grandly named brand promise of “Expected life. Unexpected discoveries.” Honda says the film explores how electric motorcycles could create new experiences and how they might fit into a wider future mobility ecosystem.

Whether any of the Outlier’s more extreme ideas make it into a production Honda remains unclear. The concept is, after all, intended to look beyond 2030. But the use of in-wheel motors and its radically low proportions show that Honda is at least willing to rethink some of the basic assumptions behind what an electric motorcycle needs to be.

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