The Honda Prologue is the Japanese automaker’s fresh attempt to carve out meaningful market share in the emerging EV market. Governments all over the globe are ramping up their mandates to car manufacturers to offer more electric vehicles and eventually phase out gasoline-powered cars. Currently, brands like Tesla, Toyota, and Chevrolet are leading the EV charge (no pun intended).

Honda is willing to make a big bet that the Prologue BEV can propel the Japanese automaker back to the forefront of electric vehicles in the marketplace. One of the ways Honda plans on doing that is making sure that there are plenty of Prologues available in dealerships once the car releases in 2024

What is the Honda Prologue?

The Honda Prologue is the automaker’s first “volume” battery-electric vehicle. There was the fuel-cell hydrogen Clarity but that was not a high-volume vehicle. The Prologue will be an SUV targeted for a 2024 release and represents a new EV model line for the brand, which is why it is named “Prologue.”

“Our first volume Honda BEV will begin our transition to electrification, and the name Honda Prologue signals the role it will play in leading to our zero-emission future,” said Dave Gardner, executive vice president of American Honda. “The Prologue will provide our customers with a battery-electric SUV with the excellent functionality and packaging they’ve come to expect from Honda.”

There will be an Acura variant of the Prologue that will be released in the same year. Both the Prologue and the Acura variant will be built on Honda’s new “e:Architecture” platform and will be powered by Ultium batteries. Honda will co-produce these SUVs as part of a strategic partnership with General Motors.

Honda bets big on Prologue

Even though the Honda Prologue is part of the brand’s big push toward an all-EV future, the EV will not have a national roll-out initially. The Prologue launch will be regional and focus on California and other ZEV (Zero-Emission Vehicle) states.

Despite the regional launch for the Honda Prologue, the automaker is expecting the car to be well-received among EV customers. To put a stamp on how much confidence Honda has in the Prologue, they set an annual sales target of 70,000 units per year when the SUV launches in 2024. While that seems like a high number, consider that Honda’s overall goal is to sell 500,000 EVs by 2030.

Currently, significant details of the Prologue are unknown. We don’t know its range, how much it will cost, any of its stand-out features, or even what it will look like.

2024 is a little over two years from the time this article is published, and a lot can happen in two years. When the Prologue is ready for the market, a competitor could release a vehicle that shakes things up and shifts what customers expect from EVs.

To meet their goals, the HPrologue needs to be something extraordinary. Or at the very least, Honda needs to be flexible on the lead-up to its release.