Gasoline engine cars will eventually be limited to the US.

BEV will take over the world.

Honda: "We have tried nothing and we're already out of ideas!"

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.

The US, despite the low margins has traditionally been a very influential market.

The Honda Zero cars looked great. This is disappointing.

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 think I've seen a single hydrogen station or vehicle here in Japan.

Apparently there's ~150, for a country of 125m.

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

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%.

Honda had the Clarity.

At this rate, Honda will become a division of BYD, Geely, or whatever.

Then Honda EVs will be as good as Chinese EVs.

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.

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.

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

There is the theoretical advantage of storage.

ICE cars have bright future are we seeing today with gas prices and a lot of wars for oil, right.

My guy out here collecting cars like infinity stones.

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.

Geely and Volvo already make up Polestar.

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.

Yeah I was looking forward to seeing what they had come up with.

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

Does Acura count? TLX type S felt like a risk, albeit not a huge one

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gasoline in the EV? That is the worst combination. Also we are storing hydrogen today, so it works to some degree.

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

There go my hopes of an electric ridgeline.

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.

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.

The Honda e erasure o __ o

Rebadge of a Traverse, right?

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.

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.

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.

What’s wrong with the Kia and Hyundais? There’s an Ioniq 5 in the family, and it seems great.

Don’t forget hydrogen embrittlement which means the entire fuel system must be replaced every so many years.

Ya, traditionally, as in, a thing of the past.

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

Now you can get a real truck.

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.