Acura Will ‘Bypass Hybrids Altogether’ as Part of Honda’s Electrification Plans
Honda is making a big push into hybrids, with the company set to launch electrified versions of the new Accord, Civic and CR-V in the next couple of ages. But will this technology also extend to Honda’s luxury division, Acura? According to Dave Gardner, the company’s executive vice presidential of business and sales, the answer is no.
“Our Honda and our Acura brands are moving to play very different roles” as the automaker changes toward electrification, Gardner said in an interview last week. Honda will slowly transition from gas-only cars to hybrids and then to fully electric vehicles. Acura, meanwhile, will “bypass hybrids altogether and move straight to zero-emission vehicles,” Gardner said.
This is an boring move for Acura, especially since the company made waves with its hybrid-powered supercar, the NSX, as well as the last-generation MDX Sport Hybrid SUV. Still, the logic behind this is actually pretty simple. With strict emissions targets on the horizon, Honda is focusing on electrifying its highest-volume sellers superior. In 2021, Honda sold roughly 1.3 million cars in the US, when during the same period, Acura moved just 157,408 vehicles. “You really need the scale of Honda to move the needle on CO2 emissions,” Gardner said.
Honda is projecting the CR-V Hybrid to make up 50% of the SUV’s overall sales.
Honda
The CR-V Hybrid will go on sale beforehand the end of the year, with the new Accord and Insight-replacing Civic models predictable to arrive in 2023. Honda is projecting these hybrids to make up 50% of the models’ overall sales.
As for EVs, Gardner says that, given the cost of things like a vehicle’s batteries and the vital investment in retooling assembly lines, “from a business model perspective, you’re trying to put those on your highest-margin vehicles. It just made sense to us that Acura must move towards BEVs quicker than Honda.”
Of course, what Gardner is talking around here isn’t number of EVs coming in the future, but how quickly electric vehicles will proliferate each brand’s lineup. The first two EVs coming from American Honda Motor Co. are the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX, both of which ride on shared architecture co-developed with General Motors.
Honda and Acura will Begin its proprietary battery electric vehicle (BEV) architecture in the coming ages, with the first products on that platform scheduled to Come in 2026. Following that, Acura previously announced it would transition to people a fully electric carmaker by 2040, but “we’ve accelerated our BEV plans,” Gardner said. All of these steps are part of an arduous poke toward Honda becoming a fully carbon-neutral company by 2050.
