Honda shows off “nearly production” EVs and new operating system at CES

LAS VEGAS—If you've always dreamed of a world where your vehicle is a "partner" around whom you can "always be yourself," Honda has the vehicles for you—at least that's what the Japanese automaker is promising with its new "near production" Honda 0 prototypes that debuted at CES in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

In a somewhat dystopian but highly sentimental video shown at the presentation, a woman drives along a desolate road in search of a sunrise, describing her favorite colors and laughing along with the Saloon concept. A calm voiceover intones, "Saloon is my partner—always by my side, opening me up to new experiences and expanding my world," as the passenger is zipped along the flat purple and pink landscape, sharing moments of joy and tears. The car even "comforts" her when she is sad.

This is Honda's vision for what Katsushi Inoue, chief officer of electrification business development operations at Honda, called the "ultra personal optimization" of a "new level of intelligent car."

While that strange and somewhat unsettling vision is probably still relatively far into the future, it's clear that Honda is leveraging a variety of technologies in its upcoming Honda 0 Saloon and Honda 0 SUV models, which the company showed off at the show, to move closer to that vision.

Level 3 Automation and a new OS

At last year's CES, Honda showcased prototypes that embodied the Zero platform ethos of "Thin, Light and Wise." This year, Honda focused on the "wise" portion of that proposition and announced a new Honda-developed OS called ASIMO.

Yes, the OS carries the same name as Honda's deeply loved bipedal robot ASIMO, which stood for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. ASIMO the robot wowed and endeared crowds around the world as it played soccer with world leaders, responded to human gestures like points and waves, and eventually said goodbye to the world in a heartwrenching presentation in 2022. Honda developed ASIMO to determine how robots and humans might coexist. The lessons the company learned from that 20-year project will be applied to future Zero products, including the two the company showed off at CES this week. Features include a "hyper personalization" of the user experience, Inoue said at the press conference.

The ASIMO OS will also work toward increasing levels of autonomous driving. Honda says it will offer "affordable" options for Level 3 autonomous driving features in the upcoming Zero line, which won't launch in the US until sometime in 2026. The first Zero vehicle will be the SUV, and it will be built in Ohio at Honda's EV hub.

Level 3 offers automated driving in specific situations (divided highways with clear markers, etc.), letting drivers take their hands and feet off the controls and eyes off the road for limited stretches of time. Honda currently offers Level 3 partial automation on only one model available for lease in Japan, the Honda Legend, which is equipped with Honda's Sensing Elite technology. Honda says the future autonomous driving system will allow drivers to remotely join a video call or watch a movie when engaged.

In its press release, Honda said it would also leverage its relationship with Helm.ai (a company that Honda invested more than $30 million in 2022) to develop its Level 3 systems further. Stephen Frey, vice president of development operations at Honda America, spoke at length about how the new system, with the help of Helm.ai, assesses data, including looking at trees and buildings to better estimate the vehicle's surroundings, "just like a human driver" does.

The company is also developing its own AI to help the system "learn with smaller amounts of data," so the autonomous driving (AD) system can rapidly learn and expand the range of conditions it can be used in, making "AD possible on a road that it has never been on before, even if the white lines aren't visible," Frey said.

During a roundtable following Honda's CES press event, Mahito Shikama, VP and head of Honda's software-defined vehicle business development unit, said the company would move to Level 3 in stages, starting with highway driving and moving to local roads as the system gets smarter. While Shikama declined to give specific details of speed ranges (the Legend currently operates at Level 3 autonomy in relatively slow stop-and-go traffic on specific roads in Japan), he said the biggest challenge would be Level 3 on local roads.

The Zero Saloon's interior.

The Zero Saloon's interior.

The Zero SUV looks quite spacious inside.

Honda

The Zero SUV looks quite spacious inside. Honda

The Zero Saloon's interior.

The Zero SUV looks quite spacious inside. Honda

In addition to the work on AD, Honda is also planning to build a new electronic architecture for the Zero vehicles, which, along with Asimo OS, will handle suspension, ride feel, energy management, and more. Honda has formalized an agreement with Japanese semiconductor business Renesas, a company that helped it achieve its Level 3 autonomy on the Legend in Japan.

According to Vivek Banh, the SVP and general manager of high-performance computing at Renesas, the new SoC (system on a chip) that will be jointly developed with Honda will "target the world's top-class 2000 TOPS level AI processing performance and 20 TOPS/W (tera operations per second, per Watt) power efficiency."

According to Frey, this will help Honda create an EV that "changes the value of EVs as a space for people." The system will determine emotion, intention, and further personalization—hence the "partner" terminology that peppered the somewhat creepy video Honda showed at the unveiling.

Toshihiro Akiwa, director and EVP at Honda, told a group of gathered journalists that the idea of the vehicle as "partner" originated with the customer at the heart of the solution. "Utilizing the capability of the vehicle to actualize what the customer wants to do with the software we will create is what we showed off today," he said through a translator.