The Honda-General Motors partnership isn’t entirely a new arrangement between the two automakers. Honda and GM already have an ongoing relationship around electrification that includes work on fuel cell technology as well as the development of the all-electric, self-driving Cruise Origin. Now, the partnership between the two brands goes up another level with the announcement that General Motors will help Honda build two crossovers, one for the Honda brand and another one for Acura.
The two crossovers won’t be built by General Motors alone. Honda will have design power of the two crossovers at least as far as the exterior and interior designs are concerned.
GM’s involvement revolves largely around the Ultium battery technology that it is developing for its own lineup of electric vehicles, including the GMC Hummer and the soon-to-be-unveiled Chevrolet pickup that the Bowtie could unveil as early as the 2021 Consumer Electronics Show next week.
Coinciding with the use of the proprietary battery technology will be the platform that both crossovers will sit on. The modular architecture will come from General Motors, but will be engineered to support Honda’s design, as well as the driving characteristics of the two models.
It’l be interesting to see how these two crossovers come to life with all the shared development between Honda and GM. We know that the design DNA of these two models will be all Honda, but the really curious part is the integration to GM’s platform and, more importantly, the latter’s battery technology.
Will these two models come with Honda’s famed reliability?
This is an interesting question that’ll only be answered once both crossovers are in the market. We won’t know how reliable they’ll be until then. Still, it’s good food for thought, especially when you consider that Honda has one of the best reliability ratings among all automakers in the market and General Motors’s slew of brands having some of the worst ratings in the market.
To be fair, GM has made considerable strides in recent years to improve its reliability rating. Buick, in particular, finished fourth in Consumer Reports’ Auto Reliability rankings, one spot ahead of perennial contender Honda. But the rest of GM’s brands — GMC and Chevrolet, in particular — were well below in the rankings at 16th and 17th place, respectively. Meanwhile, Cadillac finished 21st, one spot below Mercedes-Benz and a spot above Ford.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Honda will enter into an agreement with General Motors if it knew that a partnership of that sort would compromise its reputation. Besides, a lot of what GM is contributing to this partnership revolves around the latter’s own multi-billion dollar investment in electrification and mobility. If the upcoming Honda and Acura EV crossovers are unreliable because of GM, that’s going to spell disaster for the General and all of its own long-term electrification efforts.
Source: Automotive News
