Honda: “We have tried nothing and we’re already out of ideas!”
Oh no they tried one thing. Rebadging the EV Blazer as the Honda Prologue. I have one… It’s a Chevy through and through. Absolutely no Honda DNA whatsoever.
It’s a pitiful EV compared to the Tesla Model 3 I had before. But the Kia and Hyundai models I tried weren’t much better than the Honda. None of the legacy automakers seem to be able to make a truly good EV. They all keep legacy auto shit around that doesn’t need to be there, and it impacts the opportunities they have to differentiate and evolve.
My guy out here collecting cars like infinity stones.
Nah just bought the Model 3 back in 2018 and got rid of it after Ol’ Musky went full Nazi.
I replaced it with a Polestar 3… Which was awesome until it had A/C issues after only 54 days. And it’s been in Service for a year now with them trying to fix it unsuccessfully somehow, and my lawyer going through the hoops for it being a Lemon. Still haven’t gotten my money back yet and it will be a year at the end of this month. Through that time I had several different EVs as loaners and rentals. So I had the opportunity to effectively test drive a bunch of models for weeks at a time.
Decided to go with the Prologue on a 3 year lease in September right before the EV credits disappeared. Figured 3 years would give everyone else a chance to figure their shit out, because at this point Tesla is still one of the very few companies that seems to actually know they’re making an EV and leveraging that.
Speaking of … why the fuck do I have to press a Start and Stop button on all these damned cars like there’s a gas engine? The things are on all the time anyway, and they know whether the key is in the car or not. It’s a pointless hold over all the legacy companies do, and it seemingly means none of these cars can do things like leave the climate control running while you shop, etc. even though there’s no reason for it. Polestar had it figured out, but none of the legacy makers seem to. They’re all just swapping the engines and gas tank with electric motors and batteries and leaving everything else the same, I can only imagine out of laziness.
In the end The Polestar was by far the closest to a Tesla, and they knew it was an EV and took advantage of what that meant for connectivity and convenience. But their corporate customer service when you have issues… Abysmal. The local Service center was awesome, even if it was 100+ miles away (I knew that when I bought it, so was Tesla when I bought my Model 3 which needed very little service over the years). But the Polestar corporate technical support team the local center had to work with clearly had no idea what was going on and at no time did they try to proactively offer a replacement or any options while it was in service for months. And Customer Support did nothing to get anything rolling for it being a lemon, requiring me to go through a specialist attorney, where Polestar took every last day to respond to each step along the way.
The Prologue may not be as advanced as you would like relative to other EVs, but for those who leased one last year before the credit went away… they got an insane deal. Less than $400/mo with nothing down, for the Elite (top trim level) AWD. Some got them in the $200/mo range.
I’m hoping the lease buys some time in the US market, and in 3 years there are new options that are neither Tesla (the Apple of the EV world) nor Chinese companies. Polestars are expensive and I have heard about the same service issues you mentioned. And I don’t like the idea of trading one set of spyware for another.
The Rivian R2 Standard could be a compelling (cheaper) option when it arrives. Or if nothing else there should be a lot more low-mileage used EVs coming off lease around that time. They could be cheaper and still have a lot of life left.
What’s wrong with the Kia and Hyundais? There’s an Ioniq 5 in the family, and it seems great.
There’s a lot to like, but also a lot of frustrating stuff. We have a EV9 gt line. The paddles to change regen breaking is nice, but it doesn’t save the setting in between sessions for some fucking reason. It also doesn’t seem to save a lot of personal preference to the driver profiles, it saves mirror and seat positions, but not audio or temp/fan settings. The drive settings (snow mode, etc) doesn’t persist for some reason either. It fishtails constantly if its remotely slippery out in the winter. It feels like it’s trying to throw me off the road. And there seemingly no options to use regular cruise control and only has adaptive cruise, which I fucking hate.
All very annoying sounding issues.
…But to be fair, these have little to do with the actual EV drivetrain. They’re ergonomic or handling issues an ICE card would have too. Or, in the case of fishtailing, just the choice of stock tires the car comes with.
Sure that’s fair, and I can’t even say that’s because they’re a legacy car maker, but my polestar has that shit locked in. I think some of that is because they’re legacy, and some are just stupid decisions or lack of respect for the driver. I just wanted to highlight some things I personally fine “wrong” with Kias in my experience. I won’t get one again
Again, playing devil’s advocate:
it saves mirror and seat positions, but not audio or temp/fan settings
This is kind of standard for cars, isn’t it?
The drive settings (snow mode, etc) doesn’t persist for some reason either.
And this makes sense because Kia wouldn’t want the car to be unintentionally stuck in snow mode by default. Folks who don’t pay attention to settings wouldn’t know what was wrong, and it follows a golden rule of software: 99% of users will use the defaults.
It sucks that it isn’t configurable, but most everything you listed is just infotainment software issues, and part of the “car software shouldn’t be so complex and proprietary, and rely more on physical knobs” general issue. We should be able to configure stuff it like we want, but for some reason car software dev is particularly awful, and here we are.
It fishtails constantly if its remotely slippery out in the winter.
And again, I’d guess this is from stock, low-friction EV tires. Which are awful in winter. This is just a guess though.
Why is ACC worse than regular cruise control?
Its personal preference. It make the drive a lot less smooth for me. It always slows down way too early and has me brake for things that I don’t need to brake for. It slammed the brakes for someone in a turn lane and people braking and moving over where I can move over a little and be fine. I don’t passively drive and notice the unnecessary slow downs constantly.
I get this actually. I don’t always trust ACC; sometimes I just want to set a speed and know the car isn’t going to mess with it, and get me rear-ended.
they had a big problem with failing ICCUs and overheating charge ports.
The biggest issue is the needless complexity they feel like they need to add to try and add value to a car that costs less than ICE to build.
The other issue is devaluation. Ioniq5’s are worth hallf after 3 years.
The other issue is devaluation. Ioniq5’s are worth hallf after 3 years.
Heh, yeah. They bought it used, and got a shockingly good deal on it.
TBH buying a new car feels pretty pointless to me, unless one is so critically short on “shopping” time that its worth the massive financial hit.
None of the legacy automakers seem to be able to make a truly good EV.
Because they are making electrified ICE cars, not thinking clean slate EV like China. 48V architecture is a must now, saves thousands per car in wiring and complexity. They also make these EVs too powerful, which just eats up tires and causes them to crash more.
Next: YASA axial hub motors, they weigh less than a brake rotor setup, and they are powerful to stop a car with just regen, no brakes needed. Can output 300hp per wheel.
The Honda e erasure o __ o
Not accurate. They tried to setup and EV line made in USA with Biden’s battery plant investment and EV incentives. Trump killed all that so they would be left trying to sell second rate tech at much higher costs against the Chinese.
You will see a Honda Civic EV, but it will be coming from China.
Outside of the states they have a bunch of EVs they built in China, I see them semi-regularly, so its just this one market they fucked up
I guess they don’t think it’s in their interest to spend a bunch of money convincing oil-addicted USians to buy EV’s. Kind of makes sense, there’s a lot of other markets with way more existing demand for EVs.
Consumers, mostly those who buy EVs from the likes of Tesla, Rivian, and BYD, have grown accustomed to the frequent updates, slick infotainment software, and advanced driver assistance systems of Tesla, Rivians, Nio or Xiaomi. Honda has yet to make significant progress in any of those domains.
Not me!
My dream car is a “dumb” EV with a tablet mount.
https://www.slate.auto/en/slatemaker?garageDrawerExperience=false
They’re designed to use your own phone or tablet, running their app, so probably not all “dumb”, but close to
Yeah, I know all about the Slate. It’s a very cool concept.
Also see this Scottish EV: https://www.munro-ev.com/
I wish more manufacturers would take those ideas, though.
170mi of range is asinine. Considering battery losses, only charging to 80%, and needing to charge at 10%, you’re lucky to get 100 miles. No one can drive on the highway with that little range.
It will be 100 miles in cold weather
There is a long list of EV companies that went nowhere. Canoo, Nikola, Aptera, Bollinger.
I dunno… my sibling can make it a long way on a single charge, all the way to me and back. They haven’t even had to use a fast charger yet. And my understanding is that Hyundai optimized the battery for charging speed instead of capacity.
How many miles do you consider a long way?
~70 miles. That’s how far they are from me.
And their daily commute is 25 miles in heavy traffic.
That’s not much really.
Slate trucks are DOA with their current specs. They can’t tow on par with any truck or EV, they have sub 200mi range which makes road trips impossible, and they’re so bare bones that it’s not worth the trade offs. My cellular remote lock/unlock/climate/location in my current EV is the most useful and favorite part of my EV. I’d never buy an EV without them, no matter how enticing it is that I can put my own infotainment in the Slate truck.
I don’t understand Americans obsession about the ability to tow stuff. I’ve been driving a Peugeot 107 the last 14 years, with no hitch. Most things fit in the back, if the rear seats are folded down, we can even fit a washing machine in it. We have a roof rack for things that don’t fit. It’s only been a handful of times we either had to borrow my in-laws car, or pay to have something delivered.
Yeah, the Slate is probably not for a construction worker, nor for you, but I would love to have one
Speaking for myself, I like to trailer my horse to different places to go riding. Other people take boats/RVs/motorcycles to local, but not close, recreational areas. It also trivializes being able to move, and when you live in an apartment (the amount of Americans that own a house is definitely not increasing), being able to tow is fantastic as an option. The US is simply just very spread out, and because our government doesn’t subsidize much to be built across all communities, you kinda are forced to travel to what you like to do. Forget being able to move somewhere outdoorsy while maintaining a high degree of quality of life (high paying, easy, fulfilling jobs, while excluding living in an assbackwards red state).
A horse definitely necessitates towing capabilities, that will never fit in my car!
Where I live the coast is rarely more than 60 minutes drive away, so boats are just moored at the harbours, as we have no lakes to speak of
Also, American appliances are much bigger than in Europe. My pedestrian washing machine at home holds more clothes than the washers I use at laundromats in Marseille when I visit.
Towing is just an excuse for fat people to buy a pickup.
Not really. Many of us really do tow things quite often. I personally have probably 150000 mi of towing trailers in the past 6 years. All over the intermountain West. On top of that as a work truck under 200 miles is also ridiculous. As I mentioned in one of my other comments there’s times where I fill up my gas tank four times a week. Just locally. That doesn’t include when I’m working out of town. Most of my trips even to the nearest state are almost 200 mi. And most of them are well over 200 mi. If I were to add in time on top of my travel and work for charging that would be extremely prohibitive.
Most people buy trucks to commute to office jobs, or construction workers who commute to job sites where they then use company trucks.
I was pleased to read VW crowing that they were “bringing back buttons” to the dashboard.
Exactly. At least in the US we’ve grown “accustomed” to those features on high-end EVs because that’s all we have here. Market affordable electric vehicles and they would have sold like crazy, even before gas prices skyrocketed due to Trump’s pointless war…
Yeah you say that yet there are a number of EVs that are less expensive than gas vehicles and yet they still haven’t sold like hotcakes. Overall you still have a lack of Ev adoption. I personally would love to have an Ev, but the lack of range is what really gets me. And the charge time on top of that. I drive far too much sometimes having to fill my gas tank 4 days a week. And the amount of time I would spend charging even at home would be prohibitive. My second car could definitely be an EV, but never my primary.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The first company that makes a “1990 civic hatchback, but as an EV” will fucking print money. Shoot for 170-200 miles of range in a small, efficient, and affordable EV. Keep the tech simple and make it “driver focused”. Once people are clamoring for those, release a “sport model” with dual motors and upgraded suspension.
$25000
Then…
dual rear hub motors, 540hp.
Renault is killing it in Europe, coming to Canada 2029.
Oh yeah. Strong “first car” energy there.
My parents have the yellow one. It’s a perfect little car.
Yyyyyeeessss
Of course america won’t get it, because its epic.
The Rivian R3 looks promising.
Honda always markets themselves as being innovative, but they’re a huge disappointment in this regard.
They haven’t innovated in years (decades?). When was the last time they released a good car outside their core competency? I feel like after the new NSX failed they really stopped taking any risks.
The original two door insight was pretty innovative. That’s the last car they put any real design effort into. 50 to 70 mpg.
Back in the 80s/90s they shipped a whole suite of great cars built on the civic platform. Wish they would bring those back. Especially the Del Sol. A small EV civic line up would make a great comeback car.
The 99 Insight was only two seats and most dealers wouldnt even sell you one, it was a compliance car.
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Honda lost interest with affordable cars.
Does Acura count? TLX type S felt like a risk, albeit not a huge one
What was the risk? It’s an up-badged Accord V6. Sedans that are sportier than Toyota is a core competency.
Accord never had a turbo V6 with AWD, and it’s a performance luxury sedan in the age where the market looked like it was gonna disappear. We know now that Dodge are bringing the V8s back and Cadillac is gonna keep the blackwings going, but that’s a different price bracket so less of a surprise there
edit: also stretching the definition of up-badging there, entirely new chassis, interior and drivetrain isn’t an upbadge
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Honda has never been innovative with cars. They just make boring cars designed by committees.
japan has this problem as all of its automobile companies decided to invest down the path of hydrogen (as it fit their home country/interests better) over the rest of the worlds EVs. because of it, japanese fully EVs tend to be kind of lackluster, because theyre usually second thought.
I don’t understand how anyone anyone thought or thinks it could be better to use electricity to pull hydrogen from water, then turn it back into water to get electricity again, with energy losses of 40-60%. Not while you could just keep the whole chain as electricity, with losses of ~10%.
Japan’s electrical grid is pretty outdated and has been pushed to it’s limit. It simply cannot support an influx of EVs. That’s why the government has been pushing hydrogen, which can be produced from electricity like you said, but is “better” produced from natural gas or coal, which they have easy access to. It’s a terrible solution to the problem.
Hydrogen also solves the range anxiety issue by being incredibly energy dense, with the minor downside of occasionally exploding.
Japan has the best mass transit infrastructure in the world.
It’s designed to greenwash natural gas. The petroleum industry threw their weight behind it because you can make hydrogen from methane.
You loode ~50% of electricity in transport.
Hydrogen isn’t great, but synthetic methane is much more efficient to store and transport
You loose ~50% of electricity in transport.
Wrong. Oil and gas “fact”.
1-2% of energy is lost during the step-up transformer from when the electricity is generated to when it is transmitted.
2-4% of energy is lost in the transmission lines
1-2% of energy is lost during the step-down of the transform from the transmission line to distribution.
4-6% of energy is lost during the distribution
Batteries used to kinda suck, and there are still issues Like weight and scarce minerals
scarce minerals
Rare earths are not actually rare. No one mined these metals until recently.
Also degraded batteries can be reprocessed into fresh batteries again, we will only need to mine a lot of them when growing, once the batteries are made we don’t need to mine as much.
Given inefficiency you need 10% of virgin materials to make a new one, and there are batteries that don’t end up in the recycling stream
It still means every gram of the materials are yielding essentially 10x of use. And when we make these huge batteries it’s easier to get them back to the recycling stream since we can easily make that the only way you dispose of them.
Fundamentally as long ad the atoms still exist they should be theoritically recoverable but the last percent is gonna be harder than the first 99%
Materials Recycling needs to be a major research focus
There is the theoretical advantage of storage.
There is the theoretical advantage of storage.
Storing HYDROGEN is an advantage? The thing where the atoms are so small, it diffuses through the walls? The thing that needs insanely high pressure containers? THAT should be an advantage? WTF?
Did you miss the word theoretical? And yes, AFAIK we are already storing some but certainly not at the scale required if that’s even possible (I wouldn’t want to live anywhere nearby a huge storage of hydrogen). Another related advantage would be the transport of stored hydrogen where transferring electric energy comes at cost when it comes to long distances.
Did you miss the word theoretical?
No and there is no theoretical nor a practical advantage. Throwing in the word “theoretical” to make a wrong idea sound valid doesn’t work with me.
Another related advantage would be the transport of stored hydrogen where transferring electric energy comes at cost when it comes to long distances.
A gasoline range extender makes more sense than hydrogen.
Gasoline in the EV? That is the worst combination. Also we are storing hydrogen today, so it works to some degree.
Gasoline in the EV? That is the worst combination.
No true. That’s way more efficient than hydrogen and the gasoline could be substituted by ethanol.
It’s only Toyota who went deep into hydrogen. Even then they have 1 model, the Mirai, which is horseshit even without taking the infrastructure problem into account (which should absolutely be taken into account). They sold like dozens. It was a fairly transparent anti-EV deflection. None of the other OEMs made serious foray into the tech, though some did pay it lip service (for the same reasons).
Also importantly, hydrogen doesn’t suit Japan any better than anywhere else. They have zero production capability and the import route is an oil exec’s fever dream
Oh no, Honda has been talking up Hydrogen just as long as Toyota. Toyota has the Mirai, Honda has the Clarity.
Both companies seem to be stuck going for it for whatever reason though. Hydrogen vehicles are literally more complicated EVs, still use a highly combustible fuel, need even more safety systems than gasoline to prevent fires and explosion at the fueling stations, and the large tanks naturally leak because hydrogen is such a damned small atom that it literally sublimates through the skin of the tank. Hydrogen fuel cells are used to generate electricity for standard electric motors. There is literally no good reason for it with battery technology advancing as it has the last decade.
Meanwhile a BEV can be slowly charged from any standard outlet, and very quickly at dedicated chargers. As quick as an 80% charge in 10 minutes from the cutting edge Chinese batteries and chargers. And that doesn’t even get into people being able to charge overnight at home and rarely needing to visit a dedicated charger at all.
Hydrogen makes no sense in any situation with modern battery tech anymore. But for some reason both Toyota and Honda keep trying to beat that damned horse to oblivion.
I don’t think I’ve seen a single hydrogen station or vehicle here in Japan.
Apparently there’s ~150, for a country of 125m.
its automobile companies decided to invest down the path of hydrogen
The Japanese government invested in hydrogen, with R&D grants. It was a huge fail.
Then, Toyota stockholders kicked out Toyoda because he said there was no market in EVs. He was right, Toyota is ruling sales with hybrids and PHEVs. Unlike Tesla, Toyoda needed Toyota to make money selling cars, not conning an investor cult.
Gasoline engine cars will eventually be limited to the US.
BEV will take over the world.
The US, despite the low margins has traditionally been a very influential market.
Ya, traditionally, as in, a thing of the past.
Key word being “has”. They’re going to quickly lose that status especially if the oil crisis keeps up.
The EU can’t get enough BYD vehicles and conversely wouldn’t be caught dead in a Tesla. Some EU cities, maybe countries, won’t even allow our stupid ass mega-trucks either.
Hydrogen is only good for large scale power plants because storage and transportation are insanely expensive, I’ve written this many times. For mobile vehicles it will never be competitive against battery electric especially as batteries get more energy dense. Honda is disappointing, and their lack of investment in EVs just shows that their executives have short profit vision.
Hydrogen as vehicle energy storage is about 30% efficient. Terrible.
It is useful for producing green fertiliser though.
We have a hard enough time selling people on the idea of electric cars here in the US. I mean, you can charge those anywhere. But hydrogen??? Yeah, good luck with that.
i wish their shareholders would fire the CEO or whoever was behind this decison. I get their justification but thats how disappointed I feel
The Honda Zero cars looked great. This is disappointing.
At this rate, Honda will become a division of BYD, Geely, or whatever.
Then Honda EVs will be as good as Chinese EVs.
No mention of the Sony / Honda Afeela EV shown at CES for the past 3 years? That one canceled too then?
There go my hopes of an electric ridgeline.
Now you can get a real truck.
Micropenis energy wave emitter source identified. Scan complete.
Aw man, I was looking forward to seeing that infinity mirror concept on the road late at night
