It’s the third week of January. The weather’s gone distinctly murky. News headlines are full of nasty mud-slinging. You’d be forgiven for having a fairly murky outlook on life right now.

Enter Honda’s little ray of sunshine, the smiley-faced Urban EV. Easily the coolest small electric car, a proper production car has been confirmed off the back of the concept that won everyone over in 2017.

This, naturally, isn’t it. This is a design sketch of a further prototype we’ll see at the Geneva motor show in March, but one clearly influenced by the cute little Urban EV.

“The debut is a further demonstration of Honda’s ‘Electric Vision’, a commitment that two thirds of European sales will feature electrified technology by 2025,” says Honda. “A mass production version of the car will be on sale later in the year.”

One day after the Renault Twingo left us, news of a new, friendly faced city car is just what we needed. Proper, in-depth technical details of what form this one will take are scant – we know it’ll be all-electric, and Honda promises it will “focus on functionality and purpose,” suggesting a simple, slick approach to design. Perhaps the interior will be closer to the concept’s (pictured above) than we dared hope.

It will also be based on a new, scalable platform that will underpin other electric Hondas. Maybe sporty ones.

“I’d like to make a supercar,” Honda’s design boss Makoto Iwaki told TG last year. “It’s not impossible for us to create a super sports car variant in this design. All you have to do is look back to the past to 60s racecars, they had a similar, approachable, beautiful shape – so it’s not impossible.”

For now, we’re excited enough that the Urban EV is being made real. Do you share our mirth?

[So later this year then? Looks like the previous rumour of a delay untrue, then?]