MONTECITO, Calif.—Acura's first fully electric SUV has just gone on sale. The luxury automaker wants all its vehicles to be zero-emissions by 2040, and parent company Honda is investing billions of dollars in electric vehicle manufacturing in North America to help that happen. But its homegrown EVs aren't quite ready yet, and in the meantime, Acura has resorted to a bit of platform-sharing to fill the gap. Scratch under the skin of the 2024 Acura ZDX Type-S and it's pure General Motors, using the same Ultium platform as the Cadillac Lyriq. But the polish is all Acura, including the software.
The ZDX range starts at $64,500 for the single-motor, rear-wheel drive A-Spec model, which is similar in specs to the Cadillac Lyriq we drove a couple of years ago. But Acura brought the $73,500 2024 ZDX Type-S to the first drive. This is the top-spec model, with a 499 hp (372 kW), 544 lb-ft (738 Nm) twin-motor, all-wheel drive powertrain, air suspension, and rather large Brembo brakes.
It’s no lightweight
Those last two features are highly welcome, because they help control the ZDX Type-S's considerable mass—its curb weight is a hefty 6,052 lbs (2,745 kg). Air springs are fast becoming the default choice for premium EVs, and it's quite remarkable how quickly they can react to weight transfer. But the steering lacks feel and makes up for it with weight, and maneuvers like avoiding road debris on the highway will give you a definite reminder that you're driving nearly 3 tons of vehicle. You do get a smooth ride thanks to those air springs, though.
- The ZDX is 197.7 inches (5022 mm) long, 77 inches (1,956 mm) wide, and 64.4 inches (1,636 mm) tall.Jonathan Gitlin
- The seats are comfortable, and there's good visibility from here.Jonathan Gitlin
- The surround to the Acura diamond prow is illuminated.Jonathan Gitlin
- The details become a bit fussier as you move to the rear.Jonathan Gitlin
- The ZDX has pretty pronounced hips.Jonathan Gitlin
- The air suspension for the Type-S has three height settings.Jonathan Gitlin
- There's 29.7 cubic feet (841 L) of cargo volume with the rear seats in use, or 63 cubic feet (1,784 L) with the rear seats folded flat.Jonathan Gitlin
Which is good. Although this is a Type-S, and therefore second only to the extreme Type-R when it comes to factory-tuned Acuras, and despite the fact that it has more torque than any other Acura, this ZDX feels peppy in normal mode and quick in Sport mode, although Acura hasn't published acceleration times. (Sport lowers the air suspension by 0.6 inches/15 mm, changes the damping curve, and gives you access to the full complement of horsepower. There's also a snow mode that raises the ride height and remaps the throttle for low grip conditions.)
AdvertisementSimply put, it's not an EV that will make you pick the long-and-twisty route home, but it does its best to make the boring road home as comfortable and easy as possible. It's a mostly quiet ride, too—what I first thought was a bit of wind noise was the cabin ventilation blowing from the passenger-side A pillar, and the ventilated seats.
Building batteries
A lot of the ZDX's mass comes from its 102 kWh lithium-ion battery pack. When GM first announced its Ultium battery platform in 2020 it had ambitious plans to break under the $100/kWh price barrier. And in 2022, a few months before the first Ultium-based Cadillac Lyriqs and GMC Hummer EVs were ready to drive, GM predicted it would sell 400,000 EVs in 2023. Instead, it managed fewer than 14,000.
The problem hasn't been with making the Ultium cells themselves, but rather the step of assembling those cells into packs. The robots that the automaker bought to automate the process of putting together 9 kWh battery modules turned out to be far harder to get right than GM expected. But now things are going a lot more smoothly. In January, GM told Ars that it did not expect its EV production to be battery-constrained, and last month it started producing packs at a second assembly plant in Tennessee.
Which is good, because Honda is expecting tens of thousands of Ultium-based Honda Prologues and ZDXs a year, starting now.
The ZDX Type-S, which comes fitted with substantial 22-inch wheels and summer tires, achieves an EPA range of 278 miles (447 km). DC fast charging maxes out at 190 kW, which will take the battery from 20 to 80 percent state of charge in 42 minutes. (Acura says it can add 72 miles of range in 10 minutes on a DC fast charger.) The 2024 model-year ZDX is fitted with a CCS1 port, but owners will be able to charge at Tesla Superchargers (with an adapter) as well as EVgo and Electrify America, plus the IONNA network once that goes online.
That range estimate was calculated based on the car being in Sport mode, so total range might be closer to 300 miles in Normal, but getting a proper sense of how efficient or not the ZDX is will require a bit more time with the EV on familiar terrain.
Acura did the software
The ZDX's HMI is all-Acura, and that's mostly a good thing. For starters, it means you still get CarPlay, which has been excised from some but not all Ultium-based GM EVs. But there's also an Acura UI for the Android Automotive OS infotainment system, and you'll even find the usual over-eager forward collision warning common to Hondas and Acuras.
- Hands Free Cruise—GM's Super Cruise by another name—makes freeway driving a little easier.Emme Hall
- When Hands Free Cruise is engaged, the LED bar in the steering wheel goes green. The system will warn you and disengage if it can't see that your eyes are on the road ahead.Jonathan Gitlin
- The ZDX's infotainment system uses Google Maps, but if you have an iPhone it will cast Apple Maps to the main instrument display. (If you have an Android phone it can cast Google Maps from your phone to the main display.)Jonathan Gitlin
What isn't in those other Hondas and Acuras is the ZDX's "Hands Free Cruise." Other than the name, it's identical to GM Super Cruise, combining adaptive cruise control and lane keeping that, coupled with a driver-facing infrared gaze-tracking camera, allows you to go hands-free but eyes on the road, as long as the car is on one of the 400,000 miles (644,000 km) of pre-mapped highways in the US and Canada.
Our drive route included plenty of highway driving, and so my co-driver and I had lots of opportunities to engage the system. Both of us would have preferred the ZDX to have positioned itself a little more to the left side of the lane, but that's a complaint I've made about Super Cruise in the past. From the driver's seat it can seem like the system is making a lot of steering adjustments, but you'd never know it if you were sitting in the passenger seat and not actively watching the steering wheel—from the right side of the cockpit it cruises calmly and unremarkably.
AdvertisementWhat didn’t I like?
I do have a few little bugbears, however. While it's very easy to tell if you're using Hands Free Cruise, because the big LED in the steering wheel goes green, the ZDX is a bit more opaque when it comes to letting you know the status of other systems—like, which of the three levels of one-pedal driving you're in. According to the settings menu—accessible by a permanent icon that lives among a grouping of icons at the top-left corner of the infotainment screen—you can set this to strong, normal, or off. But nothing on the digital driver display tells you which level you're in, and even in off, the car will regeneratively brake to some degree if you take your foot off the accelerator.
Changing drive modes is also a little annoying in terms of ergonomics, with the button to cycle through the modes being found on the same panel low down on the dash, between the steering wheel and the door. With regular use, muscle memory will probably develop, but during our three hours with the car it meant looking down from the road for a second or two.
In all, it was a largely positive first drive for the ZDX Type-S, and certainly much more problem-free than my last Ultium adventure in the buggy Chevrolet Blazer EV. Will customers cross-shop the ZDX against the Cadillac Lyriq though? Both are eligible for the full $7,500 IRS clean vehicle tax credit, and the fully loaded Lyriq has a slightly higher MSRP. Perhaps it will come down to looks.
