It’s been almost a year since Honda announced that its first mass-production battery-electric vehicle for the U.S. will be . (No, we won’t get the adorable .) It was quite an early announcement, because the Prologue wasn’t pegged to hit showrooms until 2024. It still isn’t, but now at least we have a render of it.

It’s hard to say how much we can really glean from this official illustration. Honda’s artists seem to be playing fast and loose with perspective here — not to mention setting. The car looks like it’s underwater, but among trees; maybe that’s an omen. (Those are probably meant to be birds flying overhead, but they look like fish.) What’s certain is that the Prologue looks long, which might have something to do with the fact that it’s built on GM’s Ultium platform, just like the .

Will the Prologue be a high-riding Lyriq with rugged plastic wheel arches and an air of adventure? Who knows! This image is all we have to go on right now — well, this image and a little background about the design brief for the Prologue, which was apparently worked on by teams of designers in both North America and Japan.

A team of designers in the Honda Design Studio in Los Angeles used virtual reality to overcome challenges related to remote work requirements during the COVID pandemic and to collaborate virtually with Honda design and development team members in Japan. Prologue was conceived as a modern and fresh design that will look comfortable in the same showroom with existing Honda SUVs.

“As the project leader for the exterior design of the Honda Prologue, it was very exciting to work with a young team of designers with new capabilities to create an SUV with clean, simple lines and a strong influence from our global EV models, including the Honda e,” said Jiro Ikeda, Exterior Design Leader. “We balanced that with a neo-rugged look that you see in our current lineup to ensure Prologue represents a true Honda EV.”

The team also focused on aerodynamics, fine-tuning the body with a simple surface direction and fewer lines to improve range and reduce cabin noise. This is something that will become even more important for customers driving an EV, as the absence of engine sounds will make any wind noise and other sounds entering the cabin more noticeable.

I’ll say this much: as someone who really hasn’t admired Honda’s design direction over the past decade, the Prologue seems to herald a shift to a softer, cleaner, less angry look. That’s a step in the right direction, I reckon. But this is just a rendering that doesn’t mean much until we see a finished product — in two more years. Like Chrysler with the , one has to wonder if Honda has pulled the cover off too early here, and how the Prologue will have aged by the time you see one on the road in 2024.

The Prologue will be accompanied by an Acura variant that same year, and both will be followed by vehicles built on Honda’s own EV architecture in 2026. Those later EVs won’t share technology with GM. This SUV might be a ways away, but if not for Ultium, Honda wouldn’t have any EV presence in North America until the second half of the decade. Perhaps that’s why the company is making noise about it now.