It’s truthful to say Honda’s been behind the ball relating to electrical autos. Chevrolet launched the Bolt EV in 2016, Ford launched the Mustang Mach-E in 2020 and Tesla’s been doing its factor for much longer than that. Other than compliance-car experiments just like the Honda Match EV, any Individuals who needed a battery-powered Honda needed to wait till final 12 months when the Prologue burst onto the scene.
And because it seems, there have been quite a lot of Individuals ready for simply that. Honda moved over 33,000 Prologues final 12 months, touchdown it the No.7 spot among the many best-selling electrical fashions and No.4 amongst non-Teslas. This got here as a shock to most of us who watch this {industry} carefully. In spite of everything, the Prologue is de facto a Normal Motors EV beneath—hardly a severe electrical effort from Honda. And it did not even actually go on sale till the center of 2024.
Honda is now taking some classes from this example, one in every of its executives instructed InsideEVs in a media briefing this week. Prologue consumers report “belief within the Honda model” as the highest cause for his or her purchases, American Honda vp of vehicle gross sales Lance Woelfer mentioned.
It additionally helps that Honda consumers already affiliate the model with greener vehicles, Woelfer mentioned. Though the Toyota Prius has successfully grow to be the iPhone of hybrids, it was really Honda that launched America’s first hybrid automotive in 1999, the Perception.
“We have had a hybrid technique for fairly a while to develop that client base that will have the chance to maneuver in that course,” he mentioned, that means in direction of all-electric vehicles. “We needed to be sure that we had an choice for them. We do not need them going exterior the model.”
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So, the Prologue’s gangbusters success should not have been a shock in any respect. It additional proves one thing we already knew: Individuals are hungry for electrical vehicles from the Japanese manufacturers they know, belief and consider to be dependable—the precise manufacturers that individuals look to for nice gas financial system and but have been slowest to affect.
Woelfer mentioned he isn’t stunned at how rapidly the Prologue took off final 12 months, particularly since Honda sellers had been asking for an EV to promote. (Though America’s automotive sellers have been a number of the loudest voices pushing in opposition to fast uptake of EVs, apparently a good chunk help this transition.)
Photograph by: Jeff Perez / Motor1
“One thing else that gave us confidence is the sellers had been letting us know they had been listening to from shoppers, ‘We want an EV car,’” he mentioned. “It actually type of met the wants of these shoppers and the requests we had been getting from sellers to have an EV product.”
This goes to indicate the ability of branding within the EV transition. The shift to EVs has given aggressive early movers like Tesla and Hyundai-Kia a gap to steal prospects from rival manufacturers to a level they wouldn’t have been in a position to in any other case. Many automakers say their EVs are profitable extra “conquests,” industry-speak for patrons who are available from different manufacturers. And that is sensible. As a result of electrical choices are nonetheless restricted, folks intent on ditching gasoline could also be extra open to contemplating new makes.
But many automotive consumers nonetheless have a deep loyalty to, and powerful associations with, sure manufacturers. They don’t need an EV from simply anyone. They need a Honda. Or a Toyota. Taking the plunge into an EV is an enormous life-style change, and it stands to cause that many consumers will wish to go together with what they know.
Photograph by: Honda
Research bear this out. A Yahoo Finance-Ipsos ballot from 2023 requested Individuals which automotive manufacturers they’d be most definitely to purchase an EV or a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) from. Honda got here in third place, regardless of not having any PHEVs or EVs on the U.S. market at the moment. Toyota claimed first, although it solely had one EV with reasonably lackluster specs, the bZ4X. Tesla, by far the highest vendor of EVs on this nation, wound up in second.
EV gross sales development slowed within the U.S. in 2024. And an enormous a part of which may be that EV-curious consumers simply don’t see sufficient choices in the marketplace that talk to them. The subsequent wave of EV adoption rests on common automotive consumers with sensible considerations—not early adopters. In different phrases, Individuals who in all probability lean extra towards Toyota or Honda than Tesla.
Thankfully for them, each automakers are getting their acts collectively. Toyota, which has stubbornly caught to hybrids and never put a lot firepower behind EVs, says it’s discovered from the complaints folks had in regards to the bZ4X. A three-row Toyota EV is coming in 2026.
Photograph by: InsideEVs
The Honda 0-Collection SUV and Saloon.
Honda’s subsequent EV, the Acura RSX, goes into manufacturing late this 12 months in Ohio, debuting the automaker’s next-generation {hardware} and software program. It’ll be adopted by Honda’s 0-Collection sedan and SUV, and the Sony Honda Afeela 1.
Within the coming 12 months, Woelfer expects the Prologue to maintain chugging alongside and be a frontrunner within the phase, though he says there are “a number of issues occurring now which can be somewhat exterior of our management which will have some impression.” Honda, like different automakers, says it’s preserving an in depth eye on whether or not the incoming Trump administration will get rid of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit score, a transfer that might depress EV demand.
“Affordability is one thing that’s key, and that impression is one thing that we’ll have to handle because it comes ahead,” he mentioned.
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