- The Honda Prologue is shaping as much as be one of many best-selling electrical automobiles 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 word: folks need nice EVs from the Japanese automakers.
One of many extra attention-grabbing—maybe even baffling—research that we have highlighted this yr is the one which indicated most shoppers are satisfied that the Japanese automakers are those main the way in which on electrical automobiles. This, in fact, is just not true; whereas firms like Toyota, Honda and Nissan pioneered hybrid automobiles and do very nicely there (the primary two, anyway) they’re now taking part in catch-up in the case of absolutely electrical automobiles.
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 now have reported earlier than, the all-electric Honda Prologue is proving to be the surprising EV hit of 2024. The latest information operating 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 unhealthy in any respect for a complete newcomer to the trendy all-electric house.
Whereas Honda has had a couple of U.S. EV choices right here and there just like the previous 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
Underneath 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 package deal has a lot 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 dwell with out these issues, the Honda often is the one to get of the three.
Actually, 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 needed the brand new Honda to strive it out,” Jones mentioned. “We drove it as quickly as (the supplier) 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 common market worth of all US automobiles in September, in accordance with Bloomberg Intelligence. Not like many EVs, the Prologue’s efficiency will set nobody’s hair on fireplace, but it surely does function considerate and elevated particulars of the type Honda evangelists have come to like. There’s an enormous storage bin below the middle console, for instance, a large 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 accordance with firm spokeswoman Natalie Kumaratne. What’s extra, nearly two-thirds of Prologue patrons have owned a Honda earlier than and practically 80% have by no means had an EV.
Different automobile firms, take word: that is most likely 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 automobiles they’ve all the time liked, minus the necessity for stops at a gasoline station. It is the solution 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 completed so nicely in sure months, particularly when extra-generous offers and incentives become involved. However all the things 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 automobile in each significant approach.” Even when it isn’t the most effective EV on the market, it is clearly delivering what Honda house owners need.
And I would argue it is proving Toyota flawed proper now. The bZ4X—which is a automobile I truly take pleasure in driving—has large potential. Each time the InsideEVs workers checks the electrical Toyota, we get tons of excited questions from curious onlookers; normally, it is some variation of “Toyota makes an electrical automobile?” Folks need EVs from manufacturers they know and belief. If Toyota upped the specs on the bZ4X or possibly had a couple of different comparable choices on this house, it will be crushing it proper now. But mere days after an election that would decelerate the expansion of the U.S. electrical automobile house, Toyota’s executives are on the market throwing water on California’s EV targets. Possibly in the event that they tried a bit of tougher, this would not be a problem for them. (And possibly a bit of intensified competitors from Honda will get Toyota shifting.)
Photograph by: Jeff Perez / Motor1
2024 Honda Prologue Evaluate
The purpose is that automakers have to satisfy folks the place they’re, and the Prologue’s steadily rising gross sales in its very first yr show that the patron may be extra “prepared” than some firms assume they’re. This race is barely going to warmth up quickly; all of them have to be enthusiastic about whether or not they have the expertise to satisfy the second or not.
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