With summer more than halfway over, new-car debuts are about to start happening in rapid succession.
The transition from summer to fall brings California’s Monterey Car Week and IAA Mobility, the first of the season’s major auto shows, in Munich, Germany. This week, we got first teases of some of the major EV debuts at those events.
Honda’s new EV era gets closer
Debuting during Monterey Car Week, the Acura RSX Prototype previews the Honda luxury brand’s first in-house EV, which is scheduled to reach showrooms in the second half of 2026. Recycling the name of a sporty coupe sold in the United States as a 2002-2006 model, this RSX is an electric crossover SUV that leverages parent Honda’s latest tech.
While the current Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX are based on General Motors architectures, Honda is readying its own dedicated EV platform, plus a new operating system called Asimo — named after the humanoid robot that made the rounds at trade shows throughout the early 2000s — that Honda has claimed will enable more sophisticated driver-assist tech and an AI voice assistant.
The production RSX will have these features, wrapped in sleek styling inspired by the Acura Performance EV concept shown at last year’s Monterey Car Week. When Honda and Acura use the word “prototype” instead of “concept,” that generally means something pretty close to production-ready. So whatever Acura shows in Monterey should be indicative of the final version.The RSX will be built in Ohio alongside Honda’s own 0 Series EVs, expected to include an SUV and a sedan based on the pair of vehicles Honda showed at CES 2025 — also designated “prototypes” by the automaker. The Ohio facilities will also build the Afeela 1 electric sedan for the Sony Honda Mobility joint venture.
Mercedes-Benz continues its EV revamp
Mercedes swung and missed with its EQ EVs which offering luxury and comfort worthy of the brand, fell short on efficiency and alienated critics with their unusual styling. Starting with the 2026 CLA-Class compact sedan, Mercedes is pivoting to more commonality between its electric and combustion models. The new GLC EV will test that strategy.
Debuting at the IAA Mobility show, this crossover will formally be known as the GLC with EQ Technology because the Mercedes brass are apparently not fans of brevity. In addition to a complicated name, Mercedes revealed this week that the GLC EV will have a complicated grille comprised of 942 backlit dots in what the automaker describes as a “smoked-glass-effect lattice structure.” That allows for programmable designs — like the pixelated one shown here — as well as animation.
The internal-combustion GLC is Mercedes’ bestselling model globally, so the GLC with EQ Technology is an important product for the automaker’s electrification strategy. It will incorporate the latest Mercedes operating system, as seen in the CLA, and hopefully some of the efficiency improvements from that model as well. Mercedes will need them to take on the BMW iX3, also debuting at IAA, which represents that automaker’s latest and greatest EV tech.
Hyundai goes cheaper
There are already plenty of luxury EVs, but a lack of more-affordable models. According to the Korea Times, Hyundai is set to address that with the Ioniq 2. Prototypes of this smaller EV have already been spotted testing, but the Korean media outlet reports that the car will be publicly revealed in Munich at the IAA show.
Little is known about the Ioniq 2, but it’s likely to be a Hyundai version of the Kia EV2, a small crossover that Kia unveiled earlier this year. The EV2 is expected to use a lower-cost version of the E-GMP architecture that underpins current models like the Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 9, but with 400-volt charging (instead of the 800-volt system used in other E-GMP models) and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells to keep costs down.
The Ioniq 2 looks like a shoo-in for Europe, where its small size will allow it to fit right in. But it may be too small for the U.S., and the combination of 15% tariffs on Korean cars and the elimination of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit further weaken its business case, the Korea Times notes. Hyundai is building the Ioniq 9 and Ioniq 5 at its new factory near Savannah, Georgia, but those models are better suited to U.S. tastes. It’s unclear if Hyundai would be willing to add U.S. production of the Ioniq 2 — even if it would be a boon to EV affordability.
