- The Honda Prologue is shaping as much as be one of many best-selling electrical vehicles of 2024. It is rapidly successful over Honda loyalists with its mixture of vary, pricing and specs.
- Whereas it is a Common Motors automotive beneath, it has a number of benefits these EVs haven’t got, together with Apple CarPlay.
- Toyota, take notice: folks need nice EVs from the Japanese automakers.
One of many extra attention-grabbing—even perhaps baffling—research that we have highlighted this yr is the one which indicated most customers are satisfied that the Japanese automakers are those main the best way on electrical automobiles. This, after all, isn’t true; whereas corporations like Toyota, Honda and Nissan pioneered hybrid automobiles and do very properly there (the primary two, anyway) they’re now enjoying catch-up in relation to absolutely electrical vehicles.
However folks nonetheless consider these manufacturers as “inexperienced” and belief their typically wonderful reputations for reliability and high quality. Put merely, folks need good EVs from the Japanese automakers. And Honda is proving that to be true an increasing number of each month.
As we’ve got reported earlier than, the all-electric Honda Prologue is proving to be the sudden EV hit of 2024. The latest information working by way of the tip of October had the Prologue at 18,309 gross sales this yr; it outsold the Ford Mustang Mach-E that month and has already bested the Nissan Ariya and Toyota bZ4X with year-to-date gross sales. Not dangerous in any respect for a complete newcomer to the fashionable all-electric area.
Whereas Honda has had a number of U.S. EV choices right here and there just like the outdated Match Electrical and Readability Electrical, the Prologue is Honda’s first actually critical entry into the area. The bottom model has virtually 300 miles of EPA vary, whereas the highest one has 273 miles as a result of its all-wheel-drive and larger wheels.
2024 Honda Prologue Elite
Below the pores and skin, the Honda Prologue is not even a Honda in any respect; it is a Common Motors Ultium EV, made at GM’s Ramos Arizpe, Mexico plant alongside its cousins the Chevy Blazer EV and Equinox EV. Then once more, who cares? The specs are good and the entire bundle has plenty of Honda touches, together with its personal tackle the Android Automotive-based software program system and—in contrast to most GM EVs—Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. If you cannot stay with out these issues, the Honda could be the one to get of the three.
The truth is, the Prologue is the topic of a current Bloomberg story about how Honda is popping its model loyalists into EV followers for the primary time:
MeLissa Jones, a 45-year-old software program developer in Utah, isn’t overly involved about air high quality or local weather change, however she does love a Honda. The Pacific Blue Prologue that she obtained in June is her nineteenth. “It’s not that I actually like electrical, it’s simply that I needed the brand new Honda to strive it out,” Jones mentioned. “We drove it as quickly as (the supplier) obtained one in.”
[…] A lot of the Prologue’s draw lies in simply how unremarkable it’s. Its beginning value — earlier than incentives or fancier choices like all-wheel drive — is $47,400, simply $400 lower than the common market worth of all US vehicles in September, in response to Bloomberg Intelligence. In contrast to many EVs, the Prologue’s efficiency will set nobody’s hair on hearth, but it surely does function considerate and elevated particulars of the sort Honda evangelists have come to like. There’s an enormous storage bin beneath the middle console, for instance, an enormous sunroof, a supersized smartphone charging pad and a rash of buttons and knobs to preclude a flatscreen hunt-and-peck typical of the Tesla driving expertise.
When requested why they selected a Prologue, Honda patrons cite belief within the model adopted by worth, in response to firm spokeswoman Natalie Kumaratne. What’s extra, virtually two-thirds of Prologue patrons have owned a Honda earlier than and almost 80% have by no means had an EV.
Different automotive corporations, take notice: that is in all probability how EVs crack extra mainstream adoption. Folks don’t desire spaceships, they need good specs and inexpensive costs from manufacturers they belief. Whereas Hyundai and Kia used the EV revolution as an opportunity to hit reset on their model perceptions, there are tons of Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4 patrons on the market who simply need the identical vehicles they’ve at all times beloved, minus the necessity for stops at a fuel station. It is the option to win over these mainstream, next-wave EV drivers.
2024 Honda Prologue Elite inside
I might argue that the above is why Toyota’s bZ4X has carried out so properly in sure months, particularly when extra-generous offers and incentives become involved. However all the pieces the bZ4X can do, the Prologue does higher: it has extra vary, higher fast-charging, higher software program and is, as Edmunds put it, “a greater car in each significant means.” Even when it is not the perfect EV on the market, it is clearly delivering what Honda house owners need.
And I might argue it is proving Toyota flawed proper now. The bZ4X—which is a automotive I truly get pleasure from driving—has large potential. Each time the InsideEVs workers exams the electrical Toyota, we get tons of excited questions from curious onlookers; normally, it is some variation of “Toyota makes an electrical car?” Folks need EVs from manufacturers they know and belief. If Toyota upped the specs on the bZ4X or possibly had a number of different related choices on this area, it might be crushing it proper now. But mere days after an election that would decelerate the expansion of the U.S. electrical car area, Toyota’s executives are on the market throwing water on California’s EV targets. Possibly in the event that they tried a little bit tougher, this would not be a problem for them. (And possibly a little bit intensified competitors from Honda will get Toyota transferring.)
Photograph by: Jeff Perez / Motor1
2024 Honda Prologue Assessment
The purpose is that automakers have to satisfy folks the place they’re, and the Prologue’s steadily growing gross sales in its very first yr show that the buyer could be extra “prepared” than some corporations suppose they’re. This race is simply going to warmth up quickly; all of them have to be excited about whether or not they have the know-how to satisfy the second or not.
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