- The Honda Prologue is shaping as much as be one of many best-selling electrical vehicles of 2024. It is shortly profitable over Honda loyalists with its mixture of vary, pricing and specs.
- Whereas it is a Common Motors automobile beneath, it has a number of benefits these EVs haven’t got, together with Apple CarPlay.
- Toyota, take notice: individuals need nice EVs from the Japanese automakers.
One of many extra fascinating—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, will not be true; whereas corporations like Toyota, Honda and Nissan pioneered hybrid automobiles and do very effectively there (the primary two, anyway) they’re now enjoying catch-up relating to absolutely electrical vehicles.
However individuals nonetheless consider these manufacturers as “inexperienced” and belief their typically glorious 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 more each month.
As we now have reported earlier than, the all-electric Honda Prologue is proving to be the sudden EV hit of 2024. The newest knowledge operating by 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 just a few U.S. EV choices right here and there just like the previous Match Electrical and Readability Electrical, the Prologue is Honda’s first actually severe 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 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 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 reside with out these issues, the Honda would be 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 bought in June is her nineteenth. “It’s not that I actually like electrical, it’s simply that I needed the brand new Honda to attempt it out,” Jones stated. “We drove it as quickly as (the vendor) bought 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 accordance with Bloomberg Intelligence. In contrast to many EVs, the Prologue’s efficiency will set nobody’s hair on hearth, nevertheless it does characteristic considerate and elevated particulars of the type Honda evangelists have come to like. There’s an enormous storage bin underneath 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 consumers cite belief within the model adopted by worth, in accordance with firm spokeswoman Natalie Kumaratne. What’s extra, nearly two-thirds of Prologue consumers have owned a Honda earlier than and practically 80% have by no means had an EV.
Different automobile 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 consumers on the market who simply need the identical vehicles they’ve at all times liked, minus the necessity for stops at a gasoline station. It is the approach 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 carried out so effectively in sure months, particularly when extra-generous offers and incentives get entangled. However every little thing 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 method.” Even when it isn’t the most effective EV on the market, it is clearly delivering what Honda homeowners need.
And I would argue it is proving Toyota improper proper now. The bZ4X—which is a automobile I really get pleasure from driving—has great potential. Each time the InsideEVs employees checks 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 just a few different comparable choices on this house, it might 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. Perhaps in the event that they tried a bit of more durable, this would not be a problem for them. (And possibly a bit of intensified competitors from Honda will get Toyota shifting.)
Picture by: Jeff Perez / Motor1
2024 Honda Prologue Evaluate
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 yr show that the patron may be extra “prepared” than some corporations suppose they’re. This race is barely going to warmth up quickly; all of them have to be eager about whether or not they have the expertise to satisfy the second or not.
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