How Honda Turned the Chevy Blazer EV Into the Prologue Electric SUV

Honda isn't hiding the fact that its new Prologue electric SUV is built on top of the same underpinnings as the Chevy Blazer EV. Executives talk about it openly, saying that Honda's partnership with GM helped the company speed its first mass-produced EV for the U.S. to market much quicker than they otherwise could have.

If we only had pictures of the exteriors to look at, the automakers could have pulled the wool right over our eyes. Looking at photos of the 2024 Honda Prologue and the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV, you'd never know the two electric SUVs are built from the same parts. The Prologue's minimalist "neo-rugged" design language is the dictionary definition of restraint in automotive styling, painting a stark contrast with the Blazer's Coke-bottle beltline, kinked roofline, and boomerang styling flourish just behind the front wheels.

The visual differences make it clear that the Prologue is more than a badge-engineering job, but just how deep do the changes go? Here's what we know about how the Prologue's development.

See All 110 Photos110

Minding the Details

The Prologue's unique sheetmetal is built on top of GM's Ultium electric architecture and around the same structural hard points as the Blazer EV. That means it gets the same 85.0-kWh battery that's standard in the Blazer and the same front and rear permanent-magnet motors that are good for the same combined 288 horsepower in all-wheel-drive models. The wheelbase of both SUVs measures 121.8 inches and their overall lengths are within fractions of an inch.

The design team at Honda's Los Angeles studio can take all the credit for drawing an SUV that looks like a Honda within the constraints of Chevy's engineering requirements. When it came time to ready the design for production and finesse the underpinnings, work moved to GM's Warren, Mich. technical center, where Honda stationed about a dozen employees to guide the GM engineers.

With most of the hardware already locked in, engineering the Prologue largely came down to turning the available tuning knobs to suit Honda's preferences. John Hwang, Honda's development lead for the Prologue, says his team targeted a sense of direct connection between the driver and the vehicle as they dialed in the suspension, steering, and accelerator calibrations. The three driver-selectable regenerative braking calibrations, however, are ported over from the Chevy untouched. After benchmarking GM's system, Honda determined there weren't any improvements to be made.

Honda did have a say in one critical detail of the powertrain layout, too. The electric Chevy Blazer will be offered with front-, rear-, and all-wheel drive. Honda's luxury division will sell rear- and all-wheel-drive versions of the 2024 Acura ZDX, which is also built from the same Ultium hardware. But the Prologue will not be offered with a rear-wheel-drive option, instead offering buyers either front- or all-wheel drive. That was important, Hwang says, to give Honda customers the stable, predictable handling dynamics they're used to.

See All 110 Photos110

Where Worlds Collide

Things get interesting when you open the door to the Prologue's cabin where you find an amalgamation of Honda textiles and GM plastics. The seats and armrests in the Elite trim prototype pictured here are covered in leather that looks like it was lifted out of a current Honda Pilot, yet the window switches, the steering wheel, and the climate controls are pulled straight off the shelves of a GM parts warehouse.

We're told the original Prologue interior design concepts moved most of the secondary controls into the touchscreen, but Wong ultimately insisted on a volume knob and physical buttons and dials for the climate system. Even if those parts are very clearly shared with the Blazer EV, they're one of many small examples of Honda's pragmatic engineers making decisions with their equally pragmatic customers in mind. The Blazer EV starts up as soon as the driver presses the brake pedal, but the Prologue features a push-button ignition on the dash. Where the Blazer's charging port door motors up and down, the Prologue's swings open manually like a conventional gas-filler flap.

Aside from the sheet metal, the biggest difference between the Chevy and the Honda has to do with the infotainment screens. Chevy's central touchscreen measures a monstrous 17.7 inches and feels even bigger because it wraps around the driver in a single housing with the digital instrument cluster. In the Prologue, Honda splits the cluster and infotainment system into two freestanding units, with the modest 11.3-inch touchscreen positioned centrally for easier access by a front-seat passenger.

We haven't yet played with a working version of the Prologue's infotainment system, but there's one good reason to believe it will be nearly indistinguishable from what you get in the 2023 Honda Accord. Both GM and Honda build their infotainment systems on top of Android Automotive OS with Google Assistant, Google Maps, and the Google Play app store baked into the user interface. That fact is one of the reasons that the Prologue partnership is a relatively natural fit. The infotainment system is so intertwined with the electronics and software powering the rest of the car that trying to retrofit a unique solution for Honda would have erased the efficiencies of the development partnership.

See All 110 Photos110

Is This the Future of EV Development?

There are two big lingering questions. The first is whether the Prologue drives substantially differently than the Chevy Blazer EV. The second question, regardless of the answer to the first, is whether buyers will notice or care. We won't have those answers until early 2024 when we'll get our first chance to get behind the wheel and the Prologue will go on sale to the public.

Honda has said that it's developing its own EV platform for future models, but the Prologue and the Acura ZDX could still signal the start of a major trend among electrified vehicles. As EVs commoditize smooth, quiet, powerful acceleration and battery and charging technologies mature, there will be fewer and fewer tangible differences among competitors. We're optimistic that the industry won't resort to the kind of badge engineering we saw in the 1990s and early 2000s, but don't be surprised if more comprehensive body engineering like what's on display in the Prologue becomes a common way to share development costs between two or more competing automakers.