Honda Used VR to Design the Prologue and Pilot TrailSport
It’s easy to pile on with criticism of the metaverse and Mark Zuckerberg’s ridiculous virtual reality fantasies, but there are plenty of practical uses for the technology. Honda used VR to continue pushing forward with vehicle design during the pandemic.
Honda said its engineers and designers used VR to design the new 2024 Prologue EV and 2023 Pilot TrailSport. The technology allowed teams to collaborate without being in the same place and helped enable quick, responsive updates to feedback. Clay modeling is likely a lot more fun in VR than sitting in a Zoom meeting in your home office, and it allowed the team to make endless revisions without fear of ruining an expensive and time-consuming physical model. The automaker said it doesn’t want to remove humans from the process altogether, so we won’t see CR-Vs and Civics designed in the metaverse anytime soon.
Honda developed the Prologue in partnership with GM. The EV will ride on General Motors’ Ultium platform. We don’t have many details on the vehicle yet, but Honda said it will go on sale in early 2024. Spy shots show a vehicle strikingly close in size and appearance to the Chevy Blazer EV, so there’s a good chance the specs will be similar.
[Image: Honda]
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Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.
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Having tried some modern VR games and applications, most were too limited and gimmicky to be truly immersive. The one exception was the 3D painting and sculpting stuff, which was genuinely impressive and didn't make me feel like I was about to lose my lunch. I could see VR allowing designers to sculpt a vehicle (like they did in the olden days, just virtually) while also leveraging AutoCAD software before any designs are finalized.
However, I think Honda just wants people not to think this is a rebadged Chevy Blazer and while making itself seem futuristic.
Apparently VR is more skilled at design then their blind human designer which have been infecting our highways for years with increasingly hideous garbage. Perhaps Toyoduh should also employ VR because that company's products and badge-engineering "psuedo luxury variants" are some of the ugliest stuff on the highway.