Acura to lead Honda's push into EVs

Tuesday, 7 December 2021

The Acura Integra will bring a new generation of buyers to the brand, right in time for a big EV push.

Acura has confirmed it will bypass the hybrid generation and push ahead into EVs, leading Honda’s overall development of the technology.

Talking to Automotive News, Emile Korker, assistant vice president of Acura national sales, said that the recently revealed reborn Integra will help bring a new generation of buyers to the Integra brand before it moves into EVs.

Acura has brought the Integra back as a five-door fastback.

While both Acura and Honda have new battery-electric vehicles launching in 2024, and Acura has had hybrids on sale previously, it will skip over hybrids and push fully electric vehicles harder than its Japanese counterpart has committed to.

'For Acura, we're going much faster than the Honda brand in terms of our transition to electric vehicles as a percentage of sales,' Korkor said. 'We're going to bypass hybrids altogether. So our shift is going very rapidly into BEV. That's our main focus.'

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General Motors’ Ultium platform will power Honda and Acura’s first EVs.

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* Honda changing course, will build its own electric vehicles

Honda does have some of its own EVs in the works, although most are destined for China.

* GM and Honda to go on in EVs together

The EVs launching in 2024 will be based on General Motors’ Ultium platform with Ultium batteries, the same underlying technology as the new Hummer EV. There aren’t any major details regarding the Honda/Acura EVs, but the platform can offer battery capacities up to 200kWh, 350kW of power, and ranges in excess of 640km.

Don’t expect GM to give out the top-tier Ultium hardware, particularly as Honda and Acura want to keep prices as low as possible. Honda is targeting around 70,000 annual sales for its version, currently called Prologue, while Acura’s as-yet-unnamed SUV is aiming for 30,000.

Letting Acura take the lead on EVs will reduce developmental costs for Honda, especially as it works with GM. It currently has a few new EVs of its own in the works, but they are all for China. It also frees Honda up to work on hybrids and combustion-only models for other markets, particularly as it hasn’t confirmed any EVs beyond the GM-based models.

The GM-Honda tie-up is only valid for the first two EVs as well, with the Japanese maker going it alone after that.

Kokor added that Acura isn’t just pushing ahead on EVs because it needs to. “It's because we want to. Acura is really focused on performance, and electrification is one of the greatest ways we can augment that performance.”

The American arm of Honda wants EVs to represent more than half of its total sales by 2030, while Honda is targeting roughly 40 per cent.

Honda has also promised to convert its entire fleet to either battery-electric or fuel-cell-electric power by 2040.