Electric VehiclesConsumers, 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.
I was pleased to read VW crowing that they were “bringing back buttons” to the dashboard.
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.
i wish their shareholders would fire the CEO or whoever was behind this decison. I get their justification but thats how disappointed I feel
Aw man, I was looking forward to seeing that infinity mirror concept on the road late at night
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.
Honda: "We have tried nothing and we're already out of ideas!"
The Honda e erasure o __ o
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.
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.
You're right, it is standard for cars in general, but that's my point. I can't say it's the case for all modern makers, but the one reference I can go off from is polestar and it has all that shit figured out and it's a new EV company (mostly/kind of at least). I don't know if its the same for companies like Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, etc. There's no reason not to change the dash settings when that's all stored in a computer now unlike back in the day where the head unit and heat controls with separate entities entirely from the seat settings. It just seems like a hold over from how things used to be done.
I know the shit I laid out are all updatable with a software update to add toggles and I've heard guesses that that fishtailing is an issue with torque vectoring or something (bad tire choices could be part too, but it drives fine in snow). Its still a problem for a legacy vehicle maker that should have it more figured out than they do right now.
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.
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.
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.
The US car market in general is insane by most standards, that's why it's so hard to enter. And why many automakers left it and haven't looked back
Honda always markets themselves as being innovative, but they’re a huge disappointment in this regard.
At this point a no frills, low cost EV or even ICE vehicle would be innovative but they'd rather do a shitty job copycatting other models.
In 1999, Honda released the Insight, the first hybrid available in North America, and their innovations have been going downhill ever since.
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.
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
If it is a risk, it’s not a very good risk then? Like the Prelude is a risk and it just seems like a bad decision.
What do they gain by making a new car that sits in the luxury midsize sedan segment? Is it really selling better than upgrading the Accord would have?
Also it seems Acura has been mismanaged for years, and investing their limited resources on a sedan seems kind of silly.
ICE cars have bright future are we seeing today with gas prices and a lot of wars for oil, right.
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%.
It’s designed to greenwash natural gas. The petroleum industry threw their weight behind it because you can make hydrogen from methane.
Batteries used to kinda suck, and there are still issues Like weight and scarce minerals
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.
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?
Don’t forget hydrogen embrittlement which means the entire fuel system must be replaced every so many years.
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
Honda had the Clarity.
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.
it suited japan better because japan doesn't remotely have the capacity to be making batteries. something china has a huge grapple on. It's governement when to push its basic hydrogen strategy and it keeps pushing for it if you read japanese headlines.
Toyota, Nissan and Honda literally are in consortium for hydrogen mobility
It was a fairly transparent anti-EV deflection.
The entire drive train is electric, though. Nobody really does hydrogen combustion (I think it's the nitrogen in the atmospheric air that reacts with the hydrogen to make poisonous gas.)
Taking the drivetrain seriously would mean improvements to all cars with either kind of energy store.
The main issue from what I hear is that they realy though hybrid would be the perfect middle ground, hence why every vehicle they both had was hybrids.
And those should have been easy to move to fully EV when they saw that was the way forward, but apparently they didn't see that, so kept on with the hybrids.
[EDIT] noticed from the reply under that i forgot to add Toyota on this. that is what i ment by "both": Toyota and Honda.
Who's "they"? Cause other than Toyota, the rest of them didn't even care about hybrids until very recently.
But yeah, Toyota really dropped the ball after being the defacto leader of hybrid tech for so long.
Honda has been selling Hybrids since atleast '99, when they came out with a hybrid right before Toyota came out with the Prius.
for a while they have had Hybrid version available for most of their car models.
Ah I stand corrected. I see they never sold them globally outside the local & American markets. And eclipsed by Toyota by about 20x.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yup, china is going to gladly take all that influence. Electrification in the rest of the world isn't suddenly going to stop, it's just going to come from elsewhere.
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
There go my hopes of an electric ridgeline.
Now you can get a real truck.
Micropenis energy wave emitter source identified. Scan complete.
If it doesn’t have an actual frame, it’s not a real truck. I don’t care what size it is. A Ridgeline is a modified Odyssey van.
That the thing. I hate real trucks. And I definitely dislike people who disparage others for the car that they drive with the exception of cyber trucks, of course.
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.
