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Comment by tristanj | Hacker News Reader

This is an invalid comparison. There were enormous discounts on the Prologue, up to $20,000 off.

https://electrek.co/2025/09/23/honda-offering-over-20000-off...

Also, despite the Honda being a rebadged Chevy, the average buyer may not be aware and may be drawn to the Honda brand's reputation for reliability and quality.

I call this "brand mining." Take a brand previously known for quality, start selling shite, and then you get to pocket the delta until the market catches on. The brand is now worthless (you've "mined" it out) but hey look at all the money you made.

Basically every 90s brand has had this happen. Typically involves PE.

> Take a brand previously known for quality, start selling shite, and then you get to pocket the delta until the market catches on

Similarly how every former reputable consumer electronic brand from 'The West' that sells consumer stuff today like Philips, GE, Thompson, Blaupunkt, Gigaset, etc is now just a brand label for a Chinese consortium that's fully designed and made in China with zero employees in their original western roots.

Goodwill liquidation is what I’ve been calling it.

I think we might be coloring it as we’d like it to be, though. Only rarely does it end in brand death, more often they just get a bad reputation then keep going, sometimes not even less profitably. I think the intent might be more along the lines of recalibrating to a lower expectation of consumer discernment or rationality.

It's actually remarkable how long that takes. Craftsman is still chugging along 30 years later in name only.

Havent bought a Craftsman tool in about that many years. I buy Harbor Freight tools now, if I'm going to buy a cheap made-in-China tool at least I'll buy it from a place that makes no secret about it and charges about half the price.

Messrs. Sears and Roebuck are rolling in their graves.

But the brand no longer commands the massive delta, everyone knows that current craftsman is nothing like old craftsman.

It still has a pretty big delta, so much so SBD bought the name for nearly a billion dollars.

I think a lot of people realize it's not the same old company, but apparently enough don't such that it's still profitable to sell their stuff at a premium.

Reputation lag. Or just exploiting trust

I don't think thats what happened in this case. They explained it in the article. Honda was way behind in developing EVs, and as a "prologue" to their eventual EV strategy, they released a car called the Honda Prologue, which they licensed GM EV technology for. (fun fact, after Trump and the EV numbers that didn't materialize in the US, I think Honda has either delayed or scrapped a lot of their EV plans, which is unfortunate. )

Kinda like how Toyota just ignored turbos and pure EVs and instead sold cars to rich people (because rich people don't spew clapped out examples onto the used market) and now they're making money hand over fist on their reputation despite not having a competitive EV offering or being able to keep a turbo engine together but they'll still make money hand over fist for a decade because that's how long it'll take for consumers who've been astro-turfe'd at for years to realize that not everything is doctor owned, dealer serviced 2004 Solara.

Oh wait was I not supposed to say that out loud?

This is what I came to the comments for. The post didn't mention price a single time. It's not that expensive to retrofit CarPlay into any vehicle, and a 166% delta is hard to explain away with a single feature that can be retrofitted later.

79% of car buyers explicitly said they won't buy a car without carplay: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/22/apple-carplay-could-be-a-tro...

So the numbers check out and there's no need for you to find the blame elsewhere.

Doesn't excuse the article from making such a comparison without mentioning price.

Ask that 79% of car buyers if they would forego carplay for a $10-20k discount.

I would not buy a car without carplay, I would also not pay $20k to have carplay if that were my only option.

It's not the consumers only option though.

I went car shopping with CarPlay as a must have, and I ended up foregoing that requirement as soon as I drove a Tesla.

If the software is as good as Tesla's, I have no need for CarPlay. Having to buy from a dealership and spend a few hours there, having to pay monthly for software features like maps/remote start/phone key, and having to deal with ICE stuff ended up being far bigger issues.

I can believe a lot of people said that. But I'm not sure that means it's a true prediction of consumer behavior.

Buying a car is scary enough for most people, figuring out how to trust some unaffiliated rando to do work on the most expensive or second most expensive thing they own is truly intimidating.

It's practically impossible to retrofit CarPlay into most newer vehicles where the infotainment system is tightly integrated with the rest of the vehicle.

It's a $200 kit: https://evplay.io/shop/ev-play-lite-gm

Joe Blow doesn't want to have to 'retrofit', they want to plug in and go.

Also, warranty and services differences.

The entire premise is silly. People don't just compare spec-per-spec cars, brands, service, etc. also matter. The assumption that the Prologue sells more ONLY because of the integrations…

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