Month: April 2023

Enlarge / The Acura ZDX will use GM's Ultium tech. (credit: Honda)

Honda hopes to recharge its electric car portfolio with a pair of new models—plus an Acura—in the coming years. The Japanese automaker has just held a briefing on its business plan, which calls for the company to have an entirely electric portfolio worldwide by 2040. By 2030, it plans to be building 2 million EVs a year.

Here in North America we should start seeing the first of those cars next year. 2024 sees the debut of the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX, a pair of electric crossovers being developed with General Motors, using the latter's Ultium battery family. Ars got an early look at the Prologue last year on a visit to Honda's virtual reality design studio. (We expect some cheaper EVs to emerge from the GM/Honda partnership as well, but not until 2027.)

In 2025, we'll see another Honda EV, this one on a vehicle architecture it is developing in-house. Honda says this will be a mid- to large-size EV for the North American market. There are also new EV models for China, and some EVs for the Japanese market—three small cars, including a Kei car—that will amplify whatever FOMO feelings you had when Honda didn't import the Honda e.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Tim Graham)

An eye-opening analysis of common, over-the-counter sleep aids finds they contain wildly variable amounts of melatonin, with some packing up to 347 percent of the amount on the label.

The study, published Tuesday in JAMA, found that 22 of 25 melatonin gummy products analyzed—88 percent—were inaccurately labeled. That is, they contained over 10 percent more or less melatonin than what was listed on the packaging. Together, the dietary supplement products contained a range of melatonin that spanned 1.3 mg to 13.1 mg per serving. And those actual quantities represented a range of 74 percent to 347 percent of what they were supposed to contain based on their labeling.

The finding highlights a larger concern over the quality, safety, and effectiveness of dietary supplements, which are not vetted or approved by the Food and Drug Administration like over-the-counter medicines, such as ibuprofen and allergy medicines. The multi-billion dollar industry has long shrugged off substantial concerns over quality control, safety, lack of effectiveness data, and hyped health claims.