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. (credit: Robin Warner)

Honda provided flights from Detroit to San Francisco and accommodation so Ars could drive the Honda Prologue. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

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."

Enlarge / A GM Ultium battery pack like that found in the Lyriq. (credit: Santa Fabio for General Motors)

General Motors ended 2023 as the number one automaker in the United States, selling 2.6 million new vehicles during those 12 months. That's a 14.1 percent increase from its performance in 2022, and comfortably eclipses the 2.3 million cars that Toyota sold during the same period. It had a strong year in terms of electric vehicle sales too—up 93 percent year-on-year.

But a quick look at the data reveals a somewhat less rosy picture. Yes, it was a banner year for GM EVs, with 75,883 deliveries in 2023. But only because of the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV . Chevy delivered 62,045 Bolts in 2023, a 62.8 percent increase on the 38,120 Bolts it sold in 2022.

But as Ars has detailed in the past , the Bolt is no more. Production ended at the Orion Assembly plant in Michigan on December 18, and GM is laying off 945 workers at the plant as it retools the factory to make electric trucks like the Chevy Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV .

Enlarge / A GM Ultium battery pack. (credit: Santa Fabio for General Motors)

Bad news for fans of cheaper electric vehicles: The planned collaboration between Honda and General Motors on a range of cheaper EVs has been canceled. The joint project, which was announced in April 2022 , was supposed to develop a new platform for use in lower-cost EVs for North America, South America, and China, with cars appearing in 2027. But on Thursday, the two companies revealed that the plan is no more.

"After extensive studies and analysis, we have come to a mutual decision to discontinue the program. Each company remains committed to affordability in the EV market," Honda and GM said in a joint statement.

"After studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business, so at the moment we are ending development of an affordable EV," said Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe in an interview with Bloomberg . "GM and Honda will search for a solution separately. This project itself has been canceled," Mibe said.

Enlarge / The Ultium platform is the foundation of GM’s EV strategy, including the battery cells, modules and pack, plus drive units containing electric motors and integrated power electronics. It underpins GM’s EV architecture and was developed with a common set of components, providing energy for nearly every segment on the road. At least that's if it can ramp up production. (credit: General Motors)

Last Thursday, the United Auto Workers went on strike at a trio of factories owned by Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. Negotiations to replace an expiring contract reached a stalemate, leading to thousands of UAW members stopping work in Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio. The strike has been targeted to disrupt profitable production lines like Ford's Bronco, but there might be a silver lining to the strike for General Motors.

That curious idea appeared over the weekend in Reuters . You see, GM has been having somewhat of a production problem. The automaker has publicly committed to going all-in on electrification, developing a new battery platform to be shared across Brightdrop, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC.

An Ultium-shaped headache

Known as Ultium, the new batteries are meant to be far cheaper to produce than the batteries that power the Chevy Bolt; when Ultium was first announced , CEO Mary Barra said that costs would drop below $100/kWh "early in the platform's life."

Enlarge / This is Acura's first battery-electric vehicle, the new ZDX. (credit: Acura)

Today in California, Acura took the wraps off its first electric vehicle. It's called the ZDX, and it's the product of a partnership between Honda (which owns Acura) and General Motors, using the latter company's new battery platform and battery EV architecture. Acura says the first customer deliveries should begin in early 2024, with single-motor versions priced at around $60,000.

"The arrival of the new ZDX is an exciting moment for the Acura brand," said Assistant Vice President of Acura National Sales Emile Korkor. "It signals our transition to a zero-emissions future and demonstrates our commitment to precision crafted performance in the electrified era."

Honda is still at work developing an in-house EV architecture it can use for North American vehicles, but it has also partnered with GM to create a range of other EVs for this market. The ZDX and the related Honda Prologue, which we got a preview of last year , are the first two, but in the coming years, we also expect to see some smaller, affordable EVs as a result of the collaboration.

Enlarge / GM recently announced home charging hardware that was capable of bidirectional charging. Today it filled in the missing piece, announcing V2H capabilities are coming to Ultium EVs. (credit: Chevrolet)

General Motors is adding capabilities to allow its new electric vehicles to send power from their batteries to the owner's home. Known as V2H, or bidirectional charging, it's a relatively simple idea: an EV is a giant battery on wheels, so why not be able to use that to power other things? GM says the rollout will begin with model-year 2024 EVs and will continue through to model-year 2026.

There are actually a couple of different approaches to using an EV's battery to power non-car stuff. An increasing number of EVs like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 or Volkswagen ID. Buzz offer AC outlets, and, depending on the region, can provide either 120 V or 240 V power. That is usually known as vehicle to load, or V2L.

V2H amps things up a bit—quite literally—by sending power from the car back into a home electrical circuit, similar to a home storage battery. Nissan demoed but never implemented the idea for the second-generation Leaf back in 2018 , but Ford did implement it with its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck .

Enlarge / The Chevrolet Blazer EV is one of a number of electric vehicles that General Motors has put into production this year. (credit: Chevrolet)

Chevrolet has begun customer deliveries of its new Blazer EV crossover. Announced at last year's CES keynote alongside a new Equinox EV, the electric Blazer makes use of General Motors' new Ultium battery platform, albeit with styling cues that call back to the gasoline version. Now, Chevy has released pricing information for the 2024 Blazer EV, and if you were hoping for a 1LT entry-level trim, there's some bad news, as that option has been dropped entirely.

Originally, the 1LT was announced with a starting price around $44,995 and was scheduled for the first quarter of 2024. Now, the cheapest Blazer EV will be the front-wheel drive 2LT, although that version won't see showrooms until next year, and pricing won't be revealed until closer to that time.

Currently the Ramos Arizpe factory in Mexico is only building all-wheel drive Blazer EVs, and right now just in RS trim, which starts at $60,215. This Blazer has an EPA range estimate of 279 miles (449 km). That actually makes this Blazer EV more expensive than the entry-level Cadillac Lyriq— which starts at $58,590 —an EV that has more range but also only a single electric motor driving the rear wheels.

Enlarge (credit: Jeffrey Sauger for Chevrole)

One of the first modern mass-market electric vehicles we tested remains one of our favorites. It's the Chevrolet Bolt, which we first sampled at CES in 2016 , then drove for real when it went on sale the following year . A fun-to-drive hatchback that could feel a little spartan—some people hate the seats in early models—it was also quite affordable, with prices dropping well below $30,000 for a car with a range of 259 miles (417 km).

Understandably we were pretty upset to learn that General Motors was calling time on this solid little EV; in April this year it announced it was ending the product line. But today, during GM's Q2 results call, CEO Mary Barra revealed the Bolt will be back.

"Our customers love today's Bolt. It has been delivering record sales and some of the highest customer satisfaction and loyalty scores in the industry," said Barra. "It's also an important source of conquest sales for the company and for Chevrolet. We will keep the momentum going by delivering a new Bolt… and we will execute it more quickly compared to an all-new program with significantly lower engineering expense and capital investment by updating the vehicle with Ultium and Ultifi technologies and by applying our 'winning with simplicity' discipline," Barra said.

Enlarge / In March BrightDrop shipped the first 500 vans built at its factory in Canada. (credit: BrightDrop)

General Motors has idled production of some of its electric vehicles due to a battery shortage. BrightDrop—a GM startup brand that's building last-mile delivery vans for companies like FedEx and Verizon—has stopped building EVs at its plant in Ingersoll, Canada, due to a lack Ultium battery cells.

GM debuted BrightDrop and its delivery van during chairwoman Mary Barra's keynote address at CES in 2021. The van was developed in record time—just slightly quicker than the electric Hummer , and like that EV, it leverages GM's new Ultium batteries .

Production began later in 2021, at first being conducted under contract in Michigan with an unnamed company as GM refitted its CAMI plant in Ingersoll. CAMI started production in December 2022, and BrightDrop has years of orders to fulfill, but some of those customers will end up waiting longer due to a lack of batteries to power the electric vans.