A lady drives alongside a bucolic coastal highway at daybreak in her Honda 0 Collection Saloon, which then asks her if she desires to see a “stunning view” someplace. It is aware of her favourite coloration, the names of her mates, what sort of temper she’s in and the right way to care for her after she’s had a foul day.
In case you drive a Honda proper now, it would not do any of that. (Effectively, perhaps the final one, should you’re in a Civic Sort R or one thing.) And also you most likely have not ever thought that it ought to. However Honda—like a lot of the remainder of the automotive business—is banking on a future the place you want, and pay for, options powered by synthetic intelligence that may completely redefine the expertise of proudly owning and working a automotive.
However is that what individuals really need out of their automobiles within the coming years, and may it really be executed? All of that’s laborious to say.
As anticipated amid its present growth, AI was in all places at CES 2025. House devices, highly effective new processors and, sure, automobiles. Most of our collective expertise with AI thus far, if we’ve got any, has most likely been restricted to utilizing ChatGPT to cheat on time period papers, sifting via an infinite slop of pretend pictures in our social media feeds and fretting for the day when it may take our jobs. However buyers and the tech business writ massive are bullish in regards to the methods AI may remodel each approach we work and dwell—together with, sure, how we drive.
Photograph by: Honda
03 Honda 0 Saloon inside
Honda desires in on this too. The 0 Collection Saloon and SUV could have made waves for slick, wedge-like designs that boldly present the world that Honda is lastly taking electrical autos significantly. However this household of automobiles, that are headed to manufacturing in 2026, are extra than simply Honda’s first fashionable from-the-ground-up EVs—they symbolize all of the methods Honda desires to plant its flag on the “mobility” tech of the long run.
That, after all, means AI. So what does that imply within the context of a automotive? To Honda, it should be the “engine” that unlocks loads of what makes the 0 Collection particular.
A ‘Private’ Contact
“Our EVs will supply ‘ultra-personal optimization’ by considering utterly in regards to the buyer, and optimizing all particulars together with exact management settings for car dynamics,” Honda electrification government Katsushi Inoue stated in his CES keynote speech. “Like a smartphone, numerous features of 0 Collection fashions will proceed to advance even after the acquisition. The extra it’s used, the extra personalised it can grow to be.”
The “like a smartphone” half is straightforward sufficient to know. Proper now, within the U.S. no less than, only a few automobiles really get higher over time with new options, with Tesla and Rivian main the best way. Most others have struggled deeply with over-the-air software program downloads past navigation system updates and perhaps bug fixes. However all of them wish to get there as a result of they assume they cannot solely make their automobiles higher that approach but additionally cost for a lot of completely different subscription companies alongside the best way.
Photograph by: Honda
“With the utilization of AI and large information, the car will study the person’s preferences similar to music, in addition to the driving force’s behaviors and tendencies whereas driving, and can make numerous recommendations,” Honda stated on the 0 Collection web site.
Now, the AI private assistant that understands while you’re having a crappy day like within the video above could sound like a troublesome promote in 2025—perhaps individuals will need it, however perhaps they will not. (We do have a loneliness epidemic throughout almost the entire world.)
Photograph by: InsideEVs
A Higher Charging Expertise
However there’s yet one more tangible space the place Honda hopes AI will make the EV possession expertise a lot better: charging. Mainly, it hopes to lean on AI to remove issues like routing to chargers which can be offline, or too gradual, or jam-packed with individuals or in any other case simply not viable. Proper now, any EV driver most likely leans on a hodgepodge of apps like ABRP, PlugShare or Tesla’s app to determine that out. Sooner or later, a 0 Collection Honda will type all of that out for you.
“By incorporating [Amazon Web Services] generative AI and associated applied sciences into Honda clever know-how, and analyzing information obtained from the Honda 0 Collection and the in depth charging community”—on this case, the Tesla Supercharger Community it is natively suitable with and the Ionna community Honda is a part of—”we’ll present a personalised charging expertise for every particular person by way of discovering charging services and simplifying cost,” stated Jay Joseph, American Honda’s Vice President of Sustainability and Enterprise Improvement.
No matter makes public charging higher will surely be welcome.
Autonomous Driving
Photograph by: Honda
Arguably, getting a automotive to totally and safely drive itself will likely be AI’s largest occasion trick within the 0 Collection. Tesla, after all, is leaning on AI too to make Full Self-Driving a actuality (maybe, as many critics say, to a fault.) However each automaker will want some extent of superior synthetic intelligence to actually make command selections on the highway—particularly the proper ones.
The 0 Collection automobiles will purpose to come back with so-called Stage 3 automated driving help, that means a human driver can take his or her fingers off the wheel and eyes off the highway, whereas being able to intervene if obligatory. Up to now the one U.S. automobiles able to true Stage 3 driving are the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and EQS EV, however solely in California and Nevada and solely underneath very particular circumstances. (Maybe pushed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the incoming Trump administration is in search of to modernize and federalize the foundations round autonomous automotive testing.)
However Honda acquired there first in Japan with the Legend sedan in 2021, though that system was additionally restricted to below-highway speeds and not particularly spectacular in follow.
Photograph by: Honda
Honda 0 Collection Saloon Driving
So the place does AI are available in? Supposedly, by studying in regards to the many alternative edge circumstances and nuances concerned with driving, identical to a human can—besides higher, as a result of there can be no level in any other case. Some examples Honda gave embody “AI that may acknowledge and perceive its environment by itself,” together with several types of bushes alongside a highway; turning left whereas avoiding bicyclists and motorcyclists in a crowded metropolis; auto-braking when one other car cuts into the automotive’s lane; and detecting and avoiding a chunk of burst tire on the highway.
Photograph by: Honda
“The power of our know-how is that it will probably reply appropriately to irregular conditions,” stated Steve Frey, the Vice President for Improvement Operations at Honda’s North American growth heart. “Our AD was developed for each potential occasion to make it usable in site visitors environments the place ‘something can occur.’”
That is an enormous promise to make. It is the purpose that numerous automakers and tech firms alike are chasing, and to consider the 0 Collection will likely be prepared to totally obtain all of that when (and if) it goes on sale in 2026 can be to imagine so much. However the automotive will include some potent {hardware}: a “system on a chip” (SoC) from Japanese tech firm Renesas that is tailor-made particularly to this undertaking.
“The fact is {that a} general-purpose SoC can’t unlock the complete potential of AI software program for the 0 Collection,” Frey stated. “If we will understand the complete potential of this ultra-high-performance SoC, we will run [autonomous driving], dynamics, vitality administration and extra on a single chip.”
Can It Be Carried out, And Do Individuals Need This?
Photograph by: InsideEVs
These are large guarantees to make at CES, a present identified for giant guarantees. And so they symbolize a wholesale transformation by Honda into a brand new sort of tech firm, one targeted extra on delivering automated driving and personalised app experiences than high-revving engines.
Extra not too long ago, when “conventional” automakers and newcomers alike have tried this, the tip end result has been product delays or transport incomplete automobiles—or typically, each. It might be laborious to see an automaker with a blue-chip repute for high quality like Honda wish to do the latter, so if it runs into points, the previous is extra doubtless, particularly as that is Honda’s first actual foray into the reinvention of the automotive that is occurring proper now. And what’s extra, the far-off guarantees of AI have, as I write this in 2025, stayed largely conceptual.
However the 0 Collection is due out within the first half of 2026. Within the fashionable automotive business, a 12 months to 18 months could as effectively be 10 years. We’ll quickly see what Honda can ship right here, and what position AI will actually play in it. And one factor is for sure: the AI-in-car wars are simply getting began.
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