General Motors to Build New Honda and Acura Electric SUVs
Partnership sees Honda and Acura team with GM to produce new electric SUVs on upcoming 2024 models.
General Motors plans for electrification have extended from their fleet of vehicles to their new logo. The automaker is committed to an electric future. And their scope is expanding. According to an Automotive News report via MotorTrend, GM plans on building a pair of electric sport utility vehicles for Honda. This includes one SUV EV badged as a Honda, while the other will be more luxurious, sporting Acura badges. Per this report, the GM-built Honda EV is scheduled to go into production in 2023, followed by the Acura in 2024.
GM-Built Honda and Acura EVs
The first Honda-badged vehicle to be built by General Motors will be produced in 2023 at the Arizpe, Mexico plant. That facility currently builds the compact Chevy Equinox and the midsized Chevy Blazer. Starting in or around 2024, General Motors’ Spring Hill, Tennessee plant will begin building an Acura electric SUV. The workers at the Tennessee plant current build the GMC Acadia and the Cadillac XT5, but it will also be the production location of the Cadillac Lyriq starting in 2022.
Details
General Motors and Honda will work together to develop the EV Hondas and it will be powered by GM’s Ultium Batteries. Sales are expected to begin in the 2024 model year in Honda’s United States and Canadian markets.
GM and Honda have worked jointly on fuel cells and the Cruise Origin: an electric, self-driving and shared vehicle, which was revealed in San Francisco earlier this year. Honda also joined GM’s battery module development efforts in 2018.
In most cases, vehicles built at the same production facility share chassis platform components. The fact that the Honda and Acura are being built at two different facilities suggests that one will not be a rebadged version of the other. If they were going to be the same vehicle with different exterior styling and badging, they would usually be built at the same plant.
The Tennessee plant only builds midsized SUVs and the upcoming Cadillac Lyriq is also a midsized model. That all-but-guarantees that the Acura EV will be a midsized SUV. The odds are good that it will share a chassis platform and a drivetrain platform with the Cadillac Lyriq, of course showcasing Acura exterior styling. The Mexican plant builds both a compact and midsized crossover, so the Honda EV could be either one of those two. It seems likely that if the Honda was going to be another midsized model, it would be built alongside the Acura and the midsized GM models in Tennessee. That leads us to believe that the Honda will be smaller, possibly based on the Equinox platform, but stranger things have happened. It could be based on the new Blazer.
Japanese automakers have led the way for electrified vehicles, but General Motors has had quite a bit of success, first with the Volt and now with the Bolt. The company recently brought the Hummer brand back to life with an all-electric pickup that boasts 1,000 lb-ft of torque. The fact that Honda has turned to GM for help in producing a pair of electric SUVs shows just how far the American automaker has come over the past decade.
Photos: GM; Honda; Acura