In this edition, our UX experts test the 2024 Acura ZDX, the Honda brand’s first battery-electric vehicle. It is also the first vehicle by Acura to feature Google built-in, which provides native versions of Google Assistant, Google Maps, and the Google Play store. These apps and more are hosted across the EV’s two interior screens - an 11-inch Precision Cockpit Driver Information Cluster, and an 11.3–inch Center Information Screen.

SBD’s HMI UX Evaluation Report Series provides a comprehensive assessment of the latest systems released globally. Over the course of this year, our team of HMI and UX experts will benchmark vehicles from Europe, the US, China, and Japan to understand who is leading in the space, and who is falling behind. Each report helps provide an indication of what the final customer experience of each vehicle should be. In doing so, the team thoroughly scores and analyses them across several HMI domains.

These include the vehicle’s ADAS, infotainment, navigation, voice recognition, connected feature, and convenience capabilities. Our experts assess the reliability of each domain - testing their repeated usability, evaluating whether their solutions provide the features that customers expect and need, and gauging how easy these features are to learn. Likewise, the potential perceived quality of individual HMI components is measured against its impact on the overall customer experience.