If you happen to’ve learn our assessment of the 2023 Honda CR-V Hybrid or seen that the 2023 Accord lineup is generally hybrids, it’s potential you would possibly suppose Acura would have some new hybrids on the way in which, too. In spite of everything, it could make sense — better gas effectivity and the opportunity of improved efficiency? Acura may promote a ton of them. Besides it received’t: The luxurious model is skipping new hybrids and transferring straight into all-electric automobiles.
Throughout a roundtable name with journalists, Honda shared numerous plans for 2023. During that dialog, the Japanese automaker stated it doesn’t intend to flesh out the Acura lineup with new hybrids. As an alternative, it should skip that half-measure and transition immediately into electrical automobiles, beginning with the ZDX.
Different Acura information was restricted, though we did hear that the corporate plans to increase this system that enables prospects to purchase a automotive on-line and decide it up on the vendor. It doesn’t reduce sellers out of the equation solely like Tesla does, but it surely ought to make the shopping for course of simpler for individuals who don’t like sitting throughout from a salesman making an attempt to promote you on dealer-installed pinstriping.
In the meantime, Honda itself plans to stay to conventional hybrids within the U.S., not less than for now. We’ll nonetheless get a plug-in hybrid fuel-cell CR-V, however exterior of that one exception, Honda plans to keep away from PHEVs. Additionally, whereas the company has already introduced plans to deliver the Civic Hybrid to the U.S., that received’t occur this yr. As an alternative, we’ll have to attend till 2024 for the electrified Civic. Equally, don’t anticipate a hybrid Passport or Ridgeline this yr, both.
The choice to introduce hybrids to the Honda lineup so slowly is a complicated one, but it surely sounds like provide chain points are not less than partly accountable. Nobody explicitly stated, “We’d have had extra hybrids in our lineup by now if it weren’t for issues with our provide chain,” however primarily based on the way in which some issues had been stated earlier within the name, that’s the impression they gave off.