It’s honest to say Honda’s been behind the ball in relation to electrical automobiles. 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 yr when the Prologue burst onto the scene.
And because it seems, there have been a number of Individuals ready for simply that. Honda moved over 33,000 Prologues final yr, 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} intently. In any case, the Prologue is absolutely 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 among its executives advised 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 car gross sales Lance Woelfer stated.
It additionally helps that Honda consumers already affiliate the model with greener automobiles, Woelfer stated. Though the Toyota Prius has successfully turn into the iPhone of hybrids, it was truly Honda that launched America’s first hybrid automobile in 1999, the Perception.
“We have had a hybrid technique for fairly a while to develop that shopper base that will have the probability to maneuver in that course,” he stated, that means in the direction of all-electric automobiles. “We needed to be sure that we had an possibility 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 automobiles from the Japanese manufacturers they know, belief and consider to be dependable—the precise manufacturers that individuals look to for excellent gasoline financial system and but have been slowest to impress.
Woelfer stated he isn’t stunned at how shortly the Prologue took off final yr, particularly since Honda sellers had been asking for an EV to promote. (Though America’s automobile sellers have been a number of the loudest voices pushing in opposition to fast uptake of EVs, apparently a good chunk assist 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 stated. “It actually sort of met the wants of these shoppers and the requests we had been getting from sellers to have an EV product.”
The Prologue can also be coaching Honda’s sellers to promote and repair its future EVs, Woelfer stated in an electronic mail. They’re getting follow promoting to first-time EV consumers and explaining issues they’ve by no means needed to earlier than, like residence charging choices, he stated. Optimistically, by the point Honda’s futuristic 0-Sequence EVs hit the market—automobiles which might be rather more superior than the Prologue, thoughts you—it will not be sellers’ first rodeo.
This goes to indicate the facility 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 capable of in any other case. Many automakers say their EVs are profitable extra “conquests,” industry-speak for purchasers who are available in from different manufacturers. And that is smart. As a result of electrical choices are nonetheless restricted, individuals intent on ditching gasoline could also be extra open to contemplating new makes.
But many automobile consumers nonetheless have a deep loyalty to, and robust 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 a giant way of life change, and it stands to cause that many consumers will need to go along with what they know.
Photograph by: Honda
Research bear this out. A Yahoo Finance-Ipsos ballot from 2023 requested Individuals which automobile manufacturers they’d be almost certainly 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, despite the fact that it solely had one EV with fairly 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 a giant a part of that could be that EV-curious consumers simply don’t see sufficient choices available on the market that talk to them. The subsequent wave of EV adoption rests on common automobile consumers with sensible considerations—not early adopters. In different phrases, Individuals who in all probability lean extra towards Toyota or Honda than Tesla.
Fortuitously 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 individuals had in regards to the bZ4X. A three-row Toyota EV is coming in 2026.
Photograph by: InsideEVs
The Honda 0-Sequence SUV and Saloon.
Honda’s subsequent EV, the Acura RSX, goes into manufacturing late this yr in Ohio, debuting the automaker’s next-generation {hardware} and software program. It’ll be adopted by Honda’s 0-Sequence sedan and SUV, and the Sony Honda Afeela 1.
Within the coming yr, Woelfer expects the Prologue to maintain chugging alongside and be a pacesetter within the section, though he says there are “a number of issues happening now which might be slightly exterior of our management that will have some influence.” Honda, like different automakers, says it’s holding 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 would depress EV demand.
“Affordability is one thing that’s key, and that influence is one thing that we’ll have to deal with because it comes ahead,” he stated.
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