If you’re driving a relatively new car, you sort-of expect your gauges to just work, right? Well, that hasn’t been the case for every owner of the electric crossovers produced as part of a joint venture between Honda and GM. The Japanese automaker is recalling 65,135 examples of the 2024 Acura ZDX and Honda Prologue due to digital dashboards going blank. While this isn’t the first time a modern car has seen a similar recall, the sheer lead time here is definitely noteworthy.
Back in 2020, Honda and General Motors announced a partnership that would kick off with a pair of electric crossovers based on GM’s Ultium battery technology. It wasn’t the first time the companies had worked together, as certain first-generation Saturn Vue crossovers came equipped with Honda V6 engines, but this was a new era. How much of these EVs would be GM, exactly? As it turns out, a whole lot.
Under the skin, the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX were basically siblings of the Chevrolet Blazer EV, from underpinnings to certain pieces of interior switchgear. The Honda-badged model used the standard 85 kWh battery pack; the Acura model used the optional 102 kWh battery pack. Really, the biggest functional change over these EVs’ domestic-branded brother was the presence of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Unfortunately, the Blazer EV didn’t enjoy an especially smooth rollout, with software glitches dominating the early experience. As it turns out, not all of the bugs of that platform were eradicated because Honda is finally launching a recall for the screens on its electric crossovers going blank.
According to the recall report, the story starts in June of 2024, when Honda “received notification” that the instrument clusters and infotainment screens on the Prologue and Acura ZDX crossovers could simply go blank while driving. It shouldn’t be surprising that the former is a safety issue, as the recall report spells out clear as day:
If the instrument cluster display goes blank while driving, the driver may be unable to view critical vehicle information, including vehicle speed and warning indicators, reducing the driver’s situational awareness and increasing the risk of a crash or injury
As for the infotainment screen, it’s where the feed from the federally mandated backup camera pops up; that’s a mandated piece of safety equipment. Not being able to see that feed would indeed be a regulatory issue, not to mention a safety issue because the view out of the Prologue’s rear window is roughly the size of a mail slot.
However, after seven months of fiddling with the models, Honda’s team only had an update that wasn’t really an update: “Honda failed to recreate the issue and continued to investigate.” Continued investigation lasted another 11-plus months until Honda received word of where things might be going wrong. The culprit? The Bosch-supplied radio control module. As further probing of the issue revealed:
The vehicle’s display control software for the instrument cluster and infotainment system contains six independent software defects within the Radio Control Module. Each defect can occur independently and result in a processing error within the Radio Control Module. When triggered, the Radio Control Module may fail to properly transmit data to the instrument cluster and/or infotainment display, resulting in a system restart or crash and both displays to go blank.
One software bug can be irksome enough, but six different ones culminating in the same failure mode is like playing a game of whack-a-mole. Still, 20 months from initial complaints to recall? All while 143 warranty claims rolled in? That’s an unusually long lead time. What’s especially puzzling is how Honda has effectively had functional software for a year, with an on-the-line fix rolling out on Jan. 11, 2025, according to the recall report.
Even more frustrating is that despite the Prologue and ZDX supporting over-the-air software updates, fixing this multitude of radio module bugs won’t be something owners can do from home while their cars are parked. According to the recall report:
Registered owners of all affected vehicles will be contacted by mail and asked to take their vehicle to an authorized Honda or Acura dealer. The dealer will update the vehicle Radio Control Module with improved software.
What’s especially interesting is that while the Chevrolet Blazer EV hasn’t been recalled for similar issues, the Cadillac Lyriq has. Oh, and that recall for 2023 to 2024 Lyriq displays going blank was announced in May of 2025, taking only three months to roll out after an NHTSA inquiry. However, while the fixes for both the Lyriq and Prologue both pertain to their Virtual Cockpit Units, the part numbers and software version numbers aren’t the same, meaning it’s likely that additional development was required to roll out the fix to the Honda twins.
Still, with Honda largely dissolving plans to collaborate with General Motors on future EVs, this recall does answer the question of future support for these weird stop-gap models. It shall continue for the foreseeable future, but lead times may not be optimal.
Top graphic image: Thomas Hundal
More reason to check which manufacturers are on the BBB Auto Line list. This seems like a “please take it back and give me everything I paid already” situation to me.
Where’s the accountability? When does Bosch get sued? When do they get dropped by everyone for future supply contracts?
Working as a service admin – eg booking cars in for services and seeing the diag reports – I hope Stellantis and VAG read this
I still can’t understand why something as critical, as say how fast you are going, is left to a screen like that. I do get that a lot of modern vehicles aren’t setting RPM or Speed by a cable but at least there were gauges so if something was off it might only be one or two things…not the entire dash.
If I were a 2004 Chevy Silverado you’d know I was in good condition because my fuel, temp, battery, and coolant gauges would be making full rotations by now.
Not exactly true. I had a 2004 Yukon XL and at various times while driving every single gauge would quit working at the same time. Sometimes they’d come back on their own, some times you’d need to “reboot” the truck. I believe that they’re also being fed data by some computer. I tried several things to find out where there may be a bad connection, broken wire, etc. but later inadvertently fixed it after I replaced the factory radio. Obviously the radio wasn’t running the gauges but I’m guessing it was communicating to some other module maybe for things like the speed sensitive volume or something and effectively caused the exact same problem as here, or I bumped a wire into the perfect spot where things started working again.
Sounds promising for the Polestar4
We haven’t had the screen go blank, but we have had to replace the front axles twice, and now they think this time it’s the front differential and not the axles…
Maybe they need to do a… Differential Analysis…
Yeah…