After new Integra, Acura to push hard on EVs

Acura is basking in nostalgia with the revival of the Integra nameplate next year. The compact hot hatch, with a six-speed manual gearbox and high-revving engine, will complete Acura's return to its performance roots after overhauling its entire lineup over the past several years.

But the future beckons — urgently.

So Acura will lead Honda Motor Co. away from its combustion-engine glory and into the future of electrification. To do so, Acura will skip the hybrid phase now going on at the Honda brand and instead go all-in on battery electrics, or BEVs.

"The benefit of returning to the Integra right now is that it's going to help shepherd a new generation of customers and build loyalty as we move into a new era," Emile Korkor, assistant vice president of Acura national sales, told Automotive News. "That new era is, of course, electrification."

Both the Acura and Honda brands have new BEV crossovers launching in 2024 as part of the automaker's partnership with General Motors. But while Honda will ramp EVs alongside hybrids, Acura plans to push battery-electric vehicles as a greater percentage of sales more quickly, Korkor said.

"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."

The previous generation of the MDX crossover had a hybrid option, but the current generation, launched earlier this year, does not.

Honda and Acura haven't offered much public detail about their first BEVs, but both will be built on GM's Ultium platform with Ultium batteries. Honda and Acura will control the exterior and interior styling of their vehicles. The Honda EV is named Prologue while Acura hasn't publicly named its EV.

Honda has targeted about 70,000 annual sales for the Prologue in 2024 and 2025. Normally, an Acura vehicle would sell about 10 percent of its Honda counterpart. But for its first EV, Acura expects to deliver about 30,000 per year, Korkor said.

"We're not just dipping our toe in the water with electric at Acura, we are jumping all in. And that's not just because we need 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," Korkor said.

Acura believes EVs will represent more than half of its total volume by 2030, and perhaps upwards of 60 percent, Korkor said. For the Honda brand, the EV sales target is closer to 40 percent by the end of the decade, he added.

Following its collaboration with GM, Honda will introduce its own EV platform, called e:Architecture, in the second half of the decade. But Honda has not spelled out its EV investment plans in detail as other automakers have done.

Korkor said Acura is well positioned to introduce electric vehicles at a moment when customers are less anxious about EV range and charging infrastructure.

"Looking at the short-term right now, there are a lot of things we need to solve — range anxiety for customers, charging stations, infrastructure in major cities, the cost of BEV vehicles, incentives available on the cars," Korkor said.

"When I look at when we are going to launch our first BEV, I feel like we will mature a lot more as an industry toward that end," he said. "I think our strategy is smart. It's more calculated, and partnering with GM just makes it more efficient."