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.
Oh definitely. That’s why I ended up with a Prologue Elite before the credit expired, even though I’ve still had to pay for the Polestar this entire time (still am technically since the lemon stuff hasn’t been finalized yet).
My plan was for the 3 year lease to do exactly that. Be a bridge to good EV options at reasonable prices.
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.
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
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.
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Honda has never been innovative with cars. They just make boring cars designed by committees.
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Toyota sold the Prius in 1997. The Insight was a terrible car, and dealers even refused to sell them.
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.
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%.
There is the theoretical advantage of storage.
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.
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
We need a fuck ton of the minerals, not just rare earths but nickel and sometimes cobalt
You loose ~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
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.
ICE cars have bright future are we seeing today with gas prices and a lot of wars for oil, right.
At this rate, Honda will become a division of BYD, Geely, or whatever.
Then Honda EVs will be as good as Chinese EVs.
Geely and Volvo already make up Polestar.
They already have joint ventures with GAC and Dongfeng, and their chinese-built EVs are about as exciting as you can imagine. At least they’re not expensive
I was going to say that the prologue didn’t look too bad and then saw this note lol
Honda was going to stop production of the Prologue, a vehicle that was essentially designed and entirely built by GM.
I have one. It’s a Chevy through and through. No Honda DNA at all.
It’s not a bad vehicle per se… But not a Honda.
Rebadge of a Traverse, right?
Pretty sure it’s the EV Blazer.
The Honda Zero cars looked great. This is disappointing.
Yeah I was looking forward to seeing what they had come up with.
Aw man, I was looking forward to seeing that infinity mirror concept on the road late at night
No mention of the Sony / Honda Afeela EV shown at CES for the past 3 years? That one canceled too then?
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