Acura Will 'Bypass Hybrids Altogether' as Part of Honda's Electrification Plans

is making a big push into hybrids , with the company set to launch electrified versions of the new , and in the next couple of years. But will this technology also extend to Honda's luxury division, ? According to Dave Gardner, the company's executive vice president of business and sales, the answer is no.

"Our Honda and our Acura brands are going to play very different roles" as the automaker moves toward electrification, Gardner said in an interview last week. Honda will slowly transition from gas-only cars to hybrids and then to fully electric vehicles. Acura, meanwhile, will "bypass hybrids altogether and move directly to zero-emission vehicles," Gardner said.

This is an interesting move for Acura, especially since the company made waves with its hybrid-powered supercar, the , as well as the last-generation MDX Sport Hybrid SUV. Still, the logic behind this is actually pretty simple. With strict emissions targets on the horizon, Honda is focusing on electrifying its highest-volume sellers first. In 2021, Honda sold roughly 1.3 million cars in the US, while during the same period, Acura moved just 157,408 vehicles. "You really need the scale of Honda to move the needle on CO2 emissions," Gardner said.

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The CR-V Hybrid will go on sale before the end of the year, with the new Accord and Insight-replacing Civic models expected to arrive in 2023. Honda is projecting these hybrids to make up 50% of the models' overall sales.

As for EVs, Gardner says that, given the cost of things like a vehicle's batteries and the necessary investment in retooling assembly lines, "from a business model perspective, you're trying to put those on your highest-margin vehicles. It just made sense to us that Acura should move towards BEVs quicker than Honda."

Of course, what Gardner is talking about here isn't number of EVs coming in the future, but how quickly electric vehicles will proliferate each brand's lineup. The first two EVs coming from American Honda Motor Co. are the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX, both of which ride on shared architecture co-developed with .

Honda and Acura will launch its proprietary battery electric vehicle (BEV) architecture in the coming years, with the first products on that platform scheduled to arrive in 2026. Following that, Acura previously announced it would transition to being a fully electric carmaker by 2040, but "we've accelerated our BEV plans," Gardner said. All of these steps are part of an arduous journey toward Honda becoming a fully carbon-neutral company by 2050.

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