- 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 Basic Motors automobile beneath, it has a number of benefits these EVs haven’t got, together with Apple CarPlay.
- Toyota, take observe: individuals need nice EVs from the Japanese automakers.
One of many extra attention-grabbing—maybe even baffling—research that we have highlighted this 12 months is the one which indicated most shoppers are satisfied that the Japanese automakers are those main the best way on electrical automobiles. This, in fact, 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 totally electrical vehicles.
However individuals nonetheless consider these manufacturers as “inexperienced” and belief their usually wonderful reputations for reliability and high quality. Put merely, individuals need good EVs from the Japanese automakers. And Honda is proving that to be true increasingly each month.
As we’ve reported earlier than, the all-electric Honda Prologue is proving to be the surprising EV hit of 2024. The newest information working by the top of October had the Prologue at 18,309 gross sales this 12 months; 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 house.
Whereas Honda has had a couple of U.S. EV choices right here and there just like the outdated Match Electrical and Readability Electrical, the Prologue is Honda’s first actually critical entry into the house. The bottom model has nearly 300 miles of EPA vary, whereas the highest one has 273 miles as a result of its all-wheel-drive and greater wheels.
2024 Honda Prologue Elite
Beneath the pores and skin, the Honda Prologue is not even a Honda in any respect; it is a Basic 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 a lot of Honda touches, together with its personal tackle the Android Automotive-based software program system and—not like most GM EVs—Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. If you cannot reside with out these issues, the Honda will be the one to get of the three.
In actual fact, the Prologue is the topic of a latest 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 acquired in June is her nineteenth. “It’s not that I actually like electrical, it’s simply that I wished the brand new Honda to attempt it out,” Jones mentioned. “We drove it as quickly as (the seller) acquired one in.”
[…] A lot of the Prologue’s draw lies in simply how unremarkable it’s. Its beginning worth — earlier than incentives or fancier choices like all-wheel drive — is $47,400, simply $400 lower than the typical 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 underneath 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, nearly two-thirds of Prologue patrons have owned a Honda earlier than and almost 80% have by no means had an EV.
Different automobile corporations, take observe: that is in all probability how EVs crack extra mainstream adoption. Folks don’t need 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 liked, minus the necessity for stops at a fuel station. It is the technique to win over these mainstream, next-wave EV drivers.
2024 Honda Prologue Elite inside
I would argue that the above is why Toyota’s bZ4X has finished so properly in sure months, particularly when extra-generous offers and incentives get entangled. However every part 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 one of the best EV on the market, it is clearly delivering what Honda homeowners need.
And I would argue it is proving Toyota incorrect proper now. The bZ4X—which is a automobile I really take pleasure in driving—has great potential. Each time the InsideEVs employees exams the electrical Toyota, we get tons of excited questions from curious onlookers; often, 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 couple of different related choices on this house, it could be crushing it proper now. But mere days after an election that might decelerate the expansion of the U.S. electrical car house, Toyota’s executives are on the market throwing water on California’s EV targets. Possibly in the event that they tried slightly tougher, this would not be a problem for them. (And possibly slightly intensified competitors from Honda will get Toyota shifting.)
Photograph by: Jeff Perez / Motor1
2024 Honda Prologue Overview
The purpose is that automakers have to satisfy individuals the place they’re, and the Prologue’s steadily growing gross sales in its very first 12 months show that the buyer could be extra “prepared” than some corporations assume they’re. This race is barely going to warmth up quickly; all of them must be fascinated with whether or not they have the know-how to satisfy the second or not.
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