Acura, the American luxury and performance marque owned by Honda, is eyeing several performance-oriented, Type-S-branded all-electric vehicles, in a bid to differentiate itself from rival battery-powered cars.
The first will be the ZDX mid-size SUV that sits on the same General Motors Ultium platform as the all-new Honda Prologue and Cadillac Lyriq, which will also spawn a Type S variant. Both the base ZDX and the ZDX Type S will be built at GM’s Spring Hill Complex in Tennessee, alongside the Lyriq.
Speaking with Automotive News, Emile Korkor, assistant vice president of Acura National Sales, said that “the last thing you want is a numb feeling in a car.”
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“You put the pedal to the metal and it goes great in a straight line, but what good is that in the street where you have speed limits? You can do all kinds of things with battery power, like how much you draw from that battery to generate performance, or how you tweak the suspension system. Those will be defining characteristics so you’re not in a sea of sameness.”
Parent company American Honda Motor Co. wants to sell as many as 800,000 EVs in North America by 2030, with 500,000 earmarked for the Honda brand and 300,000 for Acura. However, Acura’s electrification strategy remains a mystery, saying only that its transition will be more aggressive than sibling Honda’s and that it expects 60 percent of its volume to come from EV sales by 2030.
In other words, the American brand will still sell internal combustion engine vehicles well into the next decade, with typical Acura customers that usually consider buying an Integra Type S unlikely to consider EVs just yet.
The California-based automaker wants to keep these potential customers engaged until they’re ready to make the switch, Automotive News writes.
“We feel like what we have available today, from the entry point all the way up, will sustain that performance-minded customer as we transition to electrified, with Type S as part of that structure,” said Korkor. We still have a lot of [engineering] space when it comes to the agility and performance characteristics of EVs, so outside of streamline acceleration, dynamic performance will be another clear strength for Acura as we move into the future.”
The technical details of the upcoming Acura ZDX haven’t been released yet, but they’re expected to closely match those of the Cadillac Lyriq and Chevrolet Blazer which share the same Ultium platform, so a high-voltage battery of around 100 kilowatt-hours and up to 415 kW (557 horsepower) for the top-spec, all-wheel drive variants. The driving range could be somewhere between 250 and 320 miles, judging from what the Blazer offers, but it remains to be seen what Acura’s specs will show when the ZDX debuts.
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