Japanese carmaker Honda takes another shot at U.S. EV market
The Japanese carmaker has unveiled the brand’s first electric SUV, Prologue model in the state of Michigan on Thursday marking a renewed push into fully electric vehicles to complement its hot-selling gas-electric hybrids.
Honda Motor company says it will start selling its first EV for that market early next year.
But the 2024 Prologue is only a half-step in Honda’s broader EV efforts. Co-developed with General Motors Co., it’s being built in a GM plant and shares key parts with GM models, including its Ultium batteries.
“We were able to leverage leading, state-of-the-art EV hardware to accelerate development,” John Hwang, the Prologue’s development leader, told reporters at a briefing in suburban Detroit.
The exterior and interior were developed by Honda. GM has supplied a battery that allows the vehicle to travel about 480 kilometers on a single charge.
Matsuura Hirokazu of Honda Motor said, “The name Prologue refers to the beginning of a new chapter in the US EV market. We want to expand our sales here with this model.”
The administration of US President Joe Biden has been trying to popularize EVs as a measure to reduce greenhouse gases.
Just over 7 percent of new vehicles sold in the US in the April-to-June period this year were electric.
Honda has been lagging behind some of its Japanese competitors in getting to the starting gate. Toyota Motor and Subaru put their new models on the US market last year.
The rollout of the Prologue marks an about-face by Honda, which just last year doubted the extent to which American car buyers are interested in EVs. Chief Executive Toshihiro Mibe now plans to sell 30 new battery-electric models globally — and deliver almost 500,000 EVs in North America alone — by 2030.
The company has had difficulty with previous fully electric forays into the U.S., having introduced and withdrawn three different EVs from the late 1990s through 2020. All of those models were made in Japan, unlike the Prologue and ZDX. Honda has declined to disclose which GM plant is manufacturing these vehicles, saying only that they’re being made in North America.
With an estimated 300 miles per battery charge and a price tag in the high-$40,000 range, the Prologue is comparable to Tesla Inc.’s Model Y. Honda sees its main competition as other Asian-brand EVs, including the Nissan Ariya, Toyota bZ4X, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia Niro.
But its primary role may be to keep existing Honda buyers from fleeing the brand in search of a fully electric model.
“This car is more targeted at Honda loyalists who’ve been waiting — or maybe who’ve already defected,” said Rob Keogh, a product planning manager at Honda in charge of EVs.
It’s not viewed as a niche product. Honda officials say they expect U.S. sales, which start in early 2024, of as many as 40,000 units in the Prologue’s debut year. The company aims to increase deliveries of the vehicle to some 70,000 a year.
“We’re confident it’s going to do very well in the marketplace,” Mamadou Diallo, Honda’s U.S. sales chief, said in an interview, noting the brand’s success with hybrid models, which now account for almost one-fifth of its sales in the U.S.
The Prologue’s styling — something like a cross between a Chevrolet Blazer and a Subaru Outback — is a departure for Honda partly because of its reliance on GM’s architecture. The SUV sports the word “Honda” in large letters on its backside — unlike any of the brand’s other vehicles — to help people identify it.
