Video: 2024 Honda Prologue Review: A Wrapper-Fresh EV

And as you may or may not have heard before, this is a technical partnership with General Motors. So underneath this very Honda wrapper is the new Blazer EV. While this specific vehicle is a pre-production example, I do wanna stress that the Prologue is a fully formed market-ready EV. That being said, Honda has already confirmed future plans for an entirely Honda-specific battery electric lineup. So in the key of Tenacious D, this is just a Prologue. Let's check it out. We've already covered a lot of the Prologue's exterior features before, but this is our first chance to actually get the new EV out on the road. But before we do that, there's a few funky exterior features that I wanna show you. Still not wet. Alright, the first thing I wanna show y'all is like most crossover EVs on the market, there is a spacious and usable frunk, front trunk space, on the Prologue. So, oh yeah, I mean easily enough space here for a duffel bag or two, you can put a roller size bag over here. Plenty of space for milk, eggs, ice cream, all that good stuff. In all seriousness, just like the new Blazer EV, the Prologue had to make use of this front space for a lot of the electrical componentry that goes into the EV powertrain. Now I'm gonna put this down, because it's not raining or anything. So I'll put this down so nothing gets a little sparky. But around back, one of the things that we have called out before, but I definitely wanna highlight again, is Honda's new font or script for the, well, Honda wording on the rear of the car. This is the first, at least in North America, that we have seen this new modern future-forward font. And I don't think this is the last time we are gonna see this in production. And I know if you're anything like me, you've probably done, you know, the crossover, rear-sensor door dance, trying to figure out where to put your foot. Well, Honda's got a little solution for that. So if you look down here, you've got a handy dandy little flood spotlight here where it shows you where to put your foot to either swipe or go up and down. We're not really gonna talk about the functionality. I have a feeling that this very dry weather is affecting it, but, hey, it's there and it's pretty handy. So like I said, we've already talked about the Prologue's interior in a previous video, but I just wanna show you a few cool features that I've found while spending time with this car. The first thing is how to control the regenerative braking. I found this a little bit tricky 'till somebody showed me. So here's the secret. Up here, tethered to the top of the screen is a little foot on a pedal button, and you hit that and you hit Set Level, if you wanna toggle between them all. And you have off, normal, high. Now I would say keep this checked because if you don't, you have to go find this buried in a lot of menus and it's kind of a pain. And if your trim has it, you will find the sport mode button to the left of the steering wheel on the dash. I found the center console kind of bare, but I really actually do kind of like this large, textured, rubberized surface. You can put phones, keys, wallet, whatever you want here and it kind of won't move around. Now if you don't wanna put your phone there, I would suggest sticking it right here in the wireless charging cubby that is bespoke for that. And if you don't wanna charge your phone wirelessly, there are two USB-C ports right here. Hey, Google. (monitor beeps) What's the weather out right now? <v Google>(beeps) Currently in Healdsburg, it's 53 degrees and mostly cloudy. Today there'll be showers, with a forecasted high of 53 and a low of 42. Yeah, it's rainy out. And like the Blazer EV, you have Google built-in infotainment. And unlike the Blazer, you've got wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. And your rear passengers will be just as happy as you are up front because they've got ample leg room and plenty of ways to charge, including a three-prong outlet and two USB-C ports. Finally, now this is what we came here for. So we've put already a decent chunk of miles on a dual-motor Elite trim, and we've driven it on wet roads, wetter roads, got a little sun, we drove into dry areas. And overall, it is exactly kind of what was advertised/what we expected. Myself, I've actually driven the Blazer EV and, yeah, Honda's not gonna want to hear this, but it is a Honda-fied version of Chevrolet's newest EV crossover. It's got the same powertrain, it rides in the same Ultium platform. So in this dual-motor trim we have 288 horsepower and 333 foot-pounds. All Prologues have the 85-kilowatt-hour battery pack, regardless if you get the single-motor front wheel drive drive-train setup, or if you get the all-wheel drive, they're both all available. And then kind of a mix of different charge speeds, mix of different power outputs and range. This particular one has just over 270 miles of range. The thriftiest, or most efficient front-wheel drive version, can have up to 296, which is pretty good. I must say, we have not driven the front-wheel drive trim, so it's gonna be a little bit longer till we get to try the front-wheel drive. But as you can tell from those numbers, this is not a dedicated performance or performance-focused EV crossover like the Blazer EV SS or the new Hyundai IONIQ 5 N. This is merely, you know, a little bit more powerful, a little bit more capable trim for consumers who are just looking for a little bit extra. That being said, Honda does build the Prologue as a bit of a sportier, more engaging take on the mass-market EV crossover. In that regard, it is more than capable for its intended use, but I wouldn't go so far as to say this was a sporty vehicle, both in acceleration and in handling. In terms of handling, it's really not all that exciting to drive, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's definitely not trying to be something that it's not. When it comes down to it, how the Prologue rides is far more important than how it handles. And in that regard on these arrow straight, very smooth highway surfaces, it's great, no complaints. Good composure, good body control, good rebound. Now when I turned off on an unexpectedly, really bumpy, really undulating broken side road, it was surprisingly stiff. For driver inputs like steering, braking, throttle-mapping, it's all exactly what you would want from a vehicle like this. Steering is a little slow for my tastes, but like throttle-mapping and power delivery, it's very smooth. And both steering and the throttle can be sharpened up by the optional sport mode. And like most EVs, of course, it has adjustable regenerative braking. So depending on your preference, you have three selectable modes of regeneration. There's, well, off, go figure. And then there's normal and high. My preference was normal, but for those who do like one-pedal driving, then EV's high is the one for you. And since this still is a GM-derivative product, you still have a wheel-mounted paddle to control on-demand region, which is pretty nice. Let's talk pricing. The 2024 Honda Prologue starts at just shy of $50,000 and runs all the way up to just short of $60,000. And, you know, we had a whole day driving it and trying to figure out if it's worth it. Ugh, that's a bit of a spicy meatball. But we are really looking forward to getting some more seat time in the near future in the Prologue, trying out different drive-train configurations, different trim levels, different price points, conducting a range test. And when we do all that, you can check it out on cars.com. (light celestial music)