August 18, 2025 - Acura Shows Its First In-House EV

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for August 18, 2025, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.

Monterey Car Week in California has evolved over the past two decades from being just the Pebble Beach Concours and the Historic races at Laguna Seca to the pinnacle American auto show for premium brands. As such, numerous additional events have sprung up over the week that have become locations for automakers to both design concepts like the Cadillac Elevated Luxury and near production models. This year, the latter category included the Acura RSX Prototype. 

In the Honda nomenclature, they have production models, prototypes and concepts. Concepts tend to be the more out there ideas like the Space Hub van concept shown at CES in 2024. However, some Honda and Acura concepts are much closer to production previews such as the 2022 Precision EV concept that evolved into the 2024 ZDX and last year's Performance EV Concept. Both concepts are exaggerated versions of the production models. Earlier this year, Acura released a teaser image of the upcoming RSX SUV coupe wrapped in camoflague. Last week, they dropped the RSX prototype. Most of the styling cues of the 2024 carry over into the new vehicle including the side vents and new lighting look. The most prominent difference is that the concept's compressed greenhouse has been expanded into a more usable size. 

The most notable difference between the prototype and production models is the use of digital camera side mirrors which are legal in many other countries but not in the US so those will be replaced by optical mirrors for production. The RSX is the first of several new battery electric models from Honda's new global EV platform that will also spawn the Honda 0 SUV and Saloon in 2026. It features a new zonal electronic architecture with a software platform called Asimo OS. These will also be the first products eventually featuring a hands-off, eyes-off conditional driving automation system. 

The RSX and other EVs will be produced in Marysville, Ohio with RSX production scheduled to start late this year.