Honda recently canceled the only EV it was still selling in the US, the Prologue, and this month it started telling Prologue owners to “consider a hybrid” next. But virtually zero EV owners are interested in switching back to gas after they had the EV experience.

Up until this month, Honda sold one of the best-selling EVs in the US: the Honda Prologue. The car was the result of a collaboration between GM and Honda, largely using the underpinnings of a Chevy Blazer.

It was a big hit: it outsold everything GM had to offer in 2024, its first year on the market. It continued to beat expectations and remained in the top 10 EV models in the US until its unceremonious discontinuation just last week.

Honda’s strange decision to eliminate the Prologue came after the company canceled three upcoming EVs in the US and killed off the EV it was building with Sony.

Originally, the ‘Prologue’ was meant to be the start of Honda’s EV ambitions, a sign of things to come, a co-development when Honda’s first-party offerings were still being prepared. Now, the story is stopping after the prologue, and Honda didn’t even get to the first chapter.

First annual loss

Honda said that the net effect of all these cancellations would be a loss of up to $15.7 billion, which would lead to the company’s first annual loss ever in its history. The main drivers behind this loss are tariffs and increasing competition in Asia, mainly from Chinese firms that are electrifying rapidly and eating everyone’s lunch.

What’s a company to do when faced with fast-moving competition? Well, just like almost everyone else seems to be doing nowadays, choose to lose money instead of competing.

So, Honda threw its toys out and canceled all its EVs. Now, it’s telling its owners “pretty please, buy one of our gas-guzzlers instead.” Honda is retreating to hybrids, trying to pretend that an ICE car that gets 100% of its energy from gasoline is somehow anywhere near as “environmentally-friendly” as one that does not use gasoline at all. Apparently, its customers won’t join in that retreat.

Laughable

Honda Financing now tells its EV owners and others to “consider a hybrid”. The note, flagged by the magazine Business Insider, appears on the bottom of all Honda auto statements for the month of July.

But for an EV owner, going back to a car that burns gasoline is a non-starter. Business Insider interviewed several Prologue owners, who found the statement “laughable.” One said, “With very few exceptions, anyone who has gone fully electric would never want to downgrade to a gas or hybrid vehicle again.”

A recent study showed that 96% of EV owners won’t switch back, and that study was done after republicans inflated the price of EVs in the US by $7,500 by abolishing incentives and subsidies. Once a driver experiences the superiority of electric driving in many areas, there seem to be very few reasons to switch back.

It isn’t the time to go back to fossil fuels

With oil prices taking headlines around the globe, EVs have gained renewed interest both abroad and at home. Whole countries have made the smart decision to stop importing gas cars entirely, and they’re not in bad shape.

So, as a manufacturer, pulling back from the rising part of the global auto market and committing to the falling part is not a great idea. Ask Kodak, Nokia, and Blockbuster, for example, how that worked out for them.

Honda’s note telling EV drivers to switch back to gas rings rather hollow, given everything the world is up against right now, and given its customers’ exposure to a better option.

Certainly, a majority of Honda customers still don’t know any better, because most of the cars that Honda sells in the US are still ICE cars, but its EV owners understand that oil’s time has come and gone.

Of course, there will always be a few Honda die-hards who, when their Prologue lease is up and Honda refuses to sell them a good electric vehicle, will suck it up and get one of the company’s ICE cars instead. Also, a few for whom the EV just didn’t work out for whatever reason will go back.

But that small percentage of owners may not even be worth the ink Honda is spending on the letters they’re sending to all their clients, given how high overall EV satisfaction is.

And for those owners who won’t go back, the statement will only show Honda’s cluelessness about the current global auto market, where it seems only Chinese firms (and certainly not Japanese ones) have any idea what’s going on.

Because Honda is surely not the only Japanese manufacturer that panicked when the EV transition didn’t go as smoothly and as fast as expected. They reversed gear very quickly and now have to swallow their losses from EV investments gone bad. The Chinese are waiting to eat them alive around the corner.