The Honda Prelude Could Come Back as an EV: Report
An unconfirmed rumor suggests that the Honda NSX and Prelude will see a revival in 2028. The pair might come back as dedicated EV sports cars.
The EV future is truly upon us. All signs point to this generation of cars being the last that will be pure gasoline cars. Though there’s still about an eight-year lifecycle to the current golden era of internal combustion, automakers are just starting to lay concrete plans for the next generation of products. With that, the rumormill is sputtering to life, and the latest news comes from Honda: the Prelude could come back as an EV.
Japanese publication Best Car reported on rumors about future EV Hondas, including some Japanese-only cars, the Prelude, and the next NSX. The least spicy of the rumors include a new Honda ZR-V, which looks like the U.S. market HR-V, a slightly larger SUV, and a small van called the Freed. All will be powered by a hybrid powertrain. The most interesting (and speculative) of the lot are the Prelude and NSX. We reached out to Honda for comment on the rumors and will update when we hear back.
Still, there are little bits of information to digest here. Honestly, a lot of it is stuff that makes up all EV rumors. According to Best Car, the NSX will be an all-wheel-drive solid-state battery supercar that is meant to compete with the not-yet-announced next-generation Nissan GT-R. Reading between the lines, the most interesting part is the solid-state batteries. According to reporting by our ace Managing Editor Jerry Perez, Honda believes solid-state batteries are the key to performance EVs like a future Civic Type R.
The Prelude rumor that follows has about as much concrete info. I’ll be frank, I’m skeptical that Honda would do this. As a business plan, it could only be viable as something of a marquee product or a heavily parts-shared car. Trust me, I’d love to see the return of the torquey sleeper ‘Lude, but I’ll believe it when I see it. The market ebbs and flows with its desires and sporty compact coupes haven’t come back since they died in the late ‘90s. Maybe it could even come back as a performance hybrid. Honda themselves have stated their intention: carbon neutrality, not an outright EV lineup.
Either way, I won’t be proven right or wrong until 2028. But maybe there is hope that Honda builds a cool EV coupe for folks like you and me.
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