Honda’s first US-market EV is here—the 2024 Prologue, driven

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Honda definitely doesn't want you to think of the Prologue as a rebadged Chevy Blazer EV, and it has worked quite hard to make it feel like a Honda.
Enlarge / Honda definitely doesn’t want you to think of the Prologue as a rebadged Chevy Blazer EV, and it has worked quite hard to make it feel like a Honda.
Robin Warner

HEALDSBURG, Calif. — The beginning of Honda’s transition story away from internal combustion starts, fittingly enough, with the Prologue. The Japanese brand’s first mainstream battery-electric vehicle for the United States market plops right in the center of the red-hot midsize crossover SUV segment.

At first glance, the Prologue looks awfully similar to the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV, and for good reason. The two share the Ultium platform structure as a foundation, not to mention the same 121.8-inch (3,094-mm) wheelbase and very similar dimensions. However, the Prologue measures a smidge shorter, wider, and lower at 192 inches (4,877 mm) long, 78.3 inches (1,989 mm) wide, and 64.7 inches (1,643 mm) tall.

A nod to ’80s design

Indeed, Honda engineers moved to southeast Michigan to join GM in creating this platform, and much of the Prologue’s development happened in Michigan, not Ohio. “We didn’t want to change the Ultium platform,” John Hwang, project lead of the Honda Prologue, said. “We want to take the best part of that: great suspension, great performance, great range.”

Hwang added, “How you differentiate is by the top hat.” The “top hat” is the outer body panels and all the parts of the vehicle other than the core chassis. Honda focused on making the Prologue’s top hat stand out from the Blazer EV with a different style and interior, with tunable parts of the suspension, like the shock absorbers, bushings, and springs.

America loves midsize crossovers, so Honda's first US-market EV is a midsize crossover.
Enlarge / America loves midsize crossovers, so Honda’s first US-market EV is a midsize crossover.

And with a closer look, differences immediately appear. Where the Blazer EV cuts all sorts of sharp angles into the front and rear fascias, including sharp-edged head and taillights—not to mention several creases and flares into the doors and body—the Prologue looks decisively clean and rectangular, almost giving a nod to ’80s design.

The most pronounced difference is in the back. The vehicle’s designers baked a lot of texture and curves into the body of the Blazer adding punk-rock-style, capital T-shaped tail lights to top it off. The Prologue, alternatively, uses an assembly of rounded-edge rectangles making up the tail lights. And they added new “Honda” lettering across the center, just above the license plate. That, along with a new lowercase ‘e’ with a colon, makes up Honda’s signature for its new EV products.

Generally speaking, while the emblazoned Blazer screams, “Look at me!” the Prologue politely states, “I’m here.”

https://arstechnica.com/?p=2004605