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Honda finds new Green Path to reduce CO2 emissions

In the wake of the Volkswagen diesel scandal, it's impossible to hear an automaker talk about its overall environmental efforts and not think to yourself, "for real?" Still, we're willing to listen. And Honda representatives gave it their best shot yesterday in Marysville, OH as they introduced a small group of journalist to the company's expanded initiative aimed at cutting CO2 emissions and the total life-cycle environmental impact of Honda products. Called Green Path, the initiative now includes a $210-million expansion at Honda's Marysville, OH manufacturing plant to install a better, cleaner paint shop. Speaking at the facility yesterday, Honda representatives said that the plant room is not only better for the environment (it uses limestone dust instead of water to capture paint particles, for example, reducing water usage by about 2 million gallons annually. Overall, the new paint shop will have 60 percent less VOC emissions and reduce CO2 emissions by 18 percent), it also makes the cars look better. That's whey the two-step temperature curing process will initially only be used on Acuras to differentiate them from the competition. Honda will fire up trials in late 2017. There's more to Green Path than the new paint show, of course. The company wants to reduce - in some cases eliminate - what it calls substances of concern (SOCs), things like lead and mercury. There are also new wind turbines in Ohio to supply power to Honda plants, the Environmental Leadership Program for independent dealerships to make their own green moves, and swapping out fluorescent light bulbs for LEDs, among other efforts. In the Marysville Auto Plant, for example, the Assembly department has over 10,000 task light bulbs. The fluorescent ones used to need to be replaced every three years, but the new LEDs have a life span of 16 years. Honda says that calculating up the impact of all of these little changes will remove an average of 3.822 kilograms of CO2 from the production tally of each car it makes. The company's stated goal is to reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent (compared to 2000 levels) by 2050. You can find out more in Honda's press release and video, below. Honda Announces New "Green Path" Initiative to Reduce Total Life-Cycle Environmental Impact MARYSVILLE, Ohio (Sept.

The future of Acura is coming to Detroit

What you're looking at here is a teaser of the Acura Precision Concept – a showcar that will introduce the new design language for the brand. Acura is determined to inject some a larger performance aura into its brand, and for now, it plans to do that with stronger design language. "The Acura Precision Concept will serve as the inspiration for the styling and proportion of the next-generation of Acura vehicles, especially for our sedans," says design director Dave Marek. We like what we see, too. The showcar has a long hood, short rear deck, and very strong character lines down the side. Those are classic rear-wheel-drive proportions, but as we know, that's kind of a long-shot for a new Acura. We'll see the full concept at the Detroit Auto Show in January. Here's hoping it looks awesome. Acura Precision Concept to Debut at 2016 North American International Auto ShowCreated by Acura's U.S. design team, Acura Precision Concept points to performance focus of future Acura design TORRANCE, Calif. (Dec. 18, 2015) – Acura will unveil the Acura Precision Concept at the 2016 North American International Auto Show in Detroit on January 12 at 8:00 am ET, the brand announced today. Created by the Acura Design Studio in California, the Acura Precision Concept will help set the direction for future Acura design; in particular, the next generation of performance-luxury sedans. "The Acura Precision Concept will signal the stronger and sharper focus of Acura styling on our core DNA we call 'precision crafted performance'," said Dave Marek, global creative director for the Acura brand. "It is our intention to more strongly express performance through design and the Acura Precision Concept will serve as the inspiration for the styling and proportion of the next-generation of Acura vehicles, especially for our sedans." Acura today also announced details of its launch plans for the next-generation NSX supercar, coming to market next spring. Acura is on track to post its fourth consecutive year of U.S. sales growth in 2015, and best sales since 2007, with sales up 6.9 percent through November.

This is why Acura hasn't yet announced its EV strategy

Despite parent company Honda's green and friendly brand image, luxury marque Acura hasn't made a grand statement about electrifying their lineup. Even as brands like Jaguar, Land Rover, Bentley, and Infiniti pledge to entirely electrify their lineups in the coming decade, Acura has held back. The reason, according to Acura head honcho Jon Ikeda, is that it's focusing on reestablishing itself as a performance brand. In a wide-ranging interview with Automotive News, Ikeda says Acura came out of the gate strong in 1986 and did well for the first 20 years, but when the bottom fell out of the market in 2008 the brand experienced "growing pains." That spawned a period of self-reflection and, as Ikeda puts it, "What are we about?" The decision was made to go back to Acura's roots as the performance division of Honda. "That's what Acura is. That's what I fell in love with," Ikeda says. Ikeda joined Honda in 1989, but his promotion to Acura boss in 2015 was a surprise to many, including himself. That's because Honda had a tradition of putting engineers at the helm, and Ikeda was a designer, responsible for the looks of such cars as the FSX concept, 2001 Civic Coupe, and beloved 2004 Acura TL. 2021 Acura TLX Advance View 38 Photos When asked by AN whether Acura is worried that luxury competitors are putting stakes in the ground to claim EV brand identities, Ikeda says no. "For us as a brand, we needed to kind of refocus and reestablish ourselves as a performance brand... We want everybody to understand where we are, what we're about first. Even if we go electric we will continue to be a performance division of Honda and performance will be our focus." To earn its performance street cred, Acura poured resources into the second-gen NSX hybrid supercar, which served as testbed for how electricity can work harmoniously with performance. They will continue to campaign IMSA race cars to earn trophies as proof, and Ikeda also wants to bring more Type S models to the lineup. Ikeda says Acura is still in the process of rebuilding its foundation, but when he's done he expects people to associate Acura with performance. That sure seems ambitious to us, but products like the new TLX are a helpful stepping stone. It also explains why Acura is investing in different platforms to differentiate itself from Honda. To be clear, Ikeda isn't ruling out electrification.