Acura's Previous Attempts At Hybrids Were An Underpowered Compact, An Efficient Luxury Sedan And An SUV That Handled Like A Car

Honda has big EV plans, with the goal to have 30 EVs across its lineup by the 2030s. Part of those plans involve Honda's luxury brand, Acura. The recently released ZDX is currently Acura's only EV, while the upcoming RSX crossover is the only other one we know about so far. EV sales have started to stall as the industry gets rockier, which has caused Acura to rethink its EV plans and consider a pivot back to hybrids.

Acura is no stranger to hybrid powertrains. While none have been in its lineup since 2020, the brand had three hybrid models in its lineup during the last decade. Let's take a look at Acura's previous attempts at selling hybrids.

Despite Honda being a pioneer in the hybrid space with the original Insight, Acura was a bit late to the hybrid party. The brand wouldn't get its first hybrid until 2013 with the introduction of the ILX Hybrid. It was mechanically identical to the Honda Civic, which meant the ILX was powered by the same fifth generation of Honda's Integrated Motor Assist hybrid system. The system paired a 90-horsepower 1.5-liter inline-4 engine with a small 23-hp electric motor and a CVT.

If you were looking for performance from the ILX Hybrid, you wouldn't find it. Total system output was a 1990s-economy-car-like 111 horsepower and 127 pound-feet of torque. Despite a curb weight of just under 3,000 pounds, the ILX Hybrid was slow, with 60 mph coming in just under 11 seconds. The point was fuel efficiency, and the ILX's EPA ratings of 38 mpg city and 38 mpg highway were decent for the time. Sadly the ILX Hybrid was a flop — from May 2012 to May 2013, Acura sold just 2,660 ILX Hybrids. It was axed in 2015 because of those low sales.

Acura's second hybrid was a variant of the flagship RLX sedan. This time around, Acura wanted to make a hybrid model that was more interesting to drive, so it slapped the "Sport Hybrid" moniker onto the RLX Hybrid. It lived up to that name. Three electric motors were paired with Acura's 3.5-liter V6 for a total combined output of 377 horsepower, making it the most powerful sedan Acura made at the time and the second most-powerful car in the lineup after the NSX. The icing on top of this surprising sport sedan cake was Acura's excellent Super Handling All-Wheel Drive System and a seven-speed dual clutch transmission.

This made for an executive sedan that could hit 60 mph in just 4.9 seconds and get nearly 30 mpg on the highway. The downsides? It wasn't exactly cheap at around $62,000 to start, and not many people knew what the RLX was. Like the ILX, the RLX was discontinued in 2020 because of low sales. Just 1,237 were sold in 2017, and by 2020, those figures were even worse, as just 179 were sold in the first quarter of 2020.

Acura's third and final hybrid, the MDX Sport Hybrid, arrived in 2017. The company knew it had a winning performance formula with the RLX Sport Hybrid's setup, so it took that entire powertrain and dropped it into the three-row MDX crossover. Power was down a bit compared to the RLX, with the tri-motor V6 setup making 321 horsepower in the MDX. When we tested it in 2017 we saw 27 mpg combined, which isn't bad for the segment, and it drove pretty great too thanks to the SH-AWD and seven-speed dual-clutch.

The MDX Sport Hybrid was discontinued in 2020, right before the introduction of the current-generation MDX. Acura's reasoning for the model's discontinuation was strange. Rather than tout the marriage of performance and hybrid efficiency, the brand said that the gas-only MDX Type S would fill the brand's performance SUV shoes. There hasn't been a hybrid in Acura's lineup since.