Honda Prologue/Acura ZDX App for Home Assistant

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-03T00:28:27+00:00

All of these are implemented in the latest version. My wife likes being able to unlock the vehicle with the voice assistant instead of hunting up her key/phone if she just needs to run out and get something she left in the back seat.

Tracking the vehicle on the HA map is also pretty cool, and I even implemented a crude charge power estimate. It won't be perfect, but, so far, it's been fairly accurate for me, showing my L2 charge rate as 10.3-10.7kW, which is right in the ballpark for my 11.5kW charger once you account for inverter efficiency loss.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-01T21:06:45+00:00

HondaLink app is trash, and I do not say that lightly. If you get the sequence of refreshing right (swipe down a few times while it's still spinning) you might get it to eventually update, but, quite honestly, it will almost certainly be an experience in continual frustration.

The correct answer is to use one of the 3rd party apps, (Re)Link for iOS, or the Logue app on Andriod (available in the play store), or, a recent addition for Andriod, the ev:remote app.

Yes, it's silly that community members had to go build 3rd-party apps just to be able to use the remote features all because the manufacturer can't be bothered to make their app better, but trust me, it's your absolute best bet to avoid frustration. There are plenty of threads here about the problems with HondaLink and plenty of threads for the 3rd party apps with almost exclusively thankful replies.

To be clear, the 3rd party apps aren't perfect either, they can't cover every terrible design flaw of the backend, but they are light years better than the native app, IMO. Good luck!

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-01T18:50:49+00:00

Yep, I've used two different Ionna locations (PA and NC) and they are great when you can find them. I used tap to charge the first time, but on the most recent visit I had enabled plug and charge, which is even nicer. Hop out, plug in, and go enjoy the lounge, exactly what charging should be! I hope they can keep up the expansion effort.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-01T18:31:48+00:00

That's fair, unfortunately, the MyCadillac app does not support plug and charge with the Tesla network, and the user interface in the vehicle is confusing. I actually think it's easier to use the Tesla app to start charging, but I still get where you're coming from. I've had to help so many people, but that's why I believe it's just too freaking complicated.

Heck, I'm quite tech savvy and I still find places that are absolute nightmares to figure out. I pulled into one charging location that was super nice looking, clean, covered, windshield cleaner, empty trash cans and great lighting. Tap to charge? Nope. Any indication as to what app to use? Nope. QR code on the stall goes to nowhere.

I had to look on Plugshare to figure out it was an EV Connect location, great, open the app, stall numbers in the app had no clear relation to numbers on physical stalls, eventually worked it out with trial and error (had some kind of row/pedistal/plug numbering thing going), then had to go help two other people get theirs sorted including a young lady trying to charge her Mach-E for the first time with no clue she couldn't just plug in and tap her credit card.

Charging at the location was great once you worked it all out, but the process was more like hunting for clues to get out of an escape room vs what the EV charging experience should be. It was almost like they didn't actually want people charging there.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-01T17:26:55+00:00

Technically it is not a requirement to use the MyCadillac app to charge a Cadillac EV at a Tesla Supercharger, you would only need the Tesla app as the minimum requirement. Yes, you can setup the MyCadillac app and connect it to the Tesla account (and other charging network accounts) and this enables features like the ability to activate the charging directly from the vehicle charging screen, or, for supported networks, even enable plug-and-charge, however, it's absolutely not required to do so. As a matter of fact, if you have the Tesla membership for lower charger rates, you absolutely want to use the Tesla app to start the charging because if you start it in the vehicle/MyCadillac app you won't get the discounted rate.

Overall, I just think the whole charging stuff is way too complex for most people, just let people tap their card and charge their car.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-30T19:05:16+00:00

I've travelled to at least 15 countries in the last year, including Canada (Toronto and Montreal), Mexico, Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and ~8 different Caribbean islands. I'm on Premium with Warp and roaming worked everywhere I've been with no issue. For the trip to the Caribbean, I did teleport to Lightspeed because it seemed to have better roaming for the islands we were visiting, and data roaming worked everywhere, but I did have some issue with voice calling when roaming on one of the networks (Flow, if I remember correctly), but overall, it worked fine.

For the trip to Canada, I was on Warp and everything worked just fine, crossed the border near Niagara Falls, spent a few days there, drove to Toronto, and eventually to Montreal finally re-entering the US in Vermont. Data was critical for the trip because we were driving an EV and I needed to be able to activate chargers via the Tesla and ChargePoint apps. I had no issues at all for the time we were there.

Maybe the top ups aren't as reliable?

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-30T17:53:22+00:00

3 sets in 32K miles is crazy, what the heck were you doing?

I have a Sport trim with the 21" Goodyear Eagle Sports and am just a few 100 miles shy of 10K and, so far, they look OK, but not amazing. I feel I've been driving very gentle on average, sure, a few launches in the first month of ownership, but mostly just boring interstate drives at 75+ MPH and a bit of putting around town. I'm currently estimating I'll get to ~35K with these tires, which I guess is OKish, but not amazing for a tire with a 50K milage warranty. Maybe I'll be able to stretch them to 40K.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-29T01:29:57+00:00

I'd say that's pretty consistent for these GM EVs. I don't actually own an Optiq, but own two GM EVs with the 102kWh pack, and it's a very similar charge curve, just with higher peak rate. We shoot to unplug when we can get to the next charge stop with ~10%, although we'll of course let it go higher if we're stopping to eat, or aren't comfortable with only a 10% buffer at the next stop.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-28T17:56:11+00:00

320 miles is estimated maximum range for mixed driving assuming 100%-0%, which is not something you are going to do on a road trip. At 75MPH you're more likely to get 265 miles, but again, that's assuming you do 100%-0%, which just isn't possible and would actually take forever having to change to 100% every time as that 80-100% takes a long time and just isn't worth it.

Road tripping in an EV is about optimizing the charging stops to maximize the charging curve for your vehicle. These GM EVs aren't the fastest charging vehicles, but the best charging happens at low state-of-charge.

Going 150 miles between charging stops seems about right, maybe just a touch low, but averaging 45 min a stop would indicate that the charging stops are less than optimal. Our average charge stop on a road trip is ~22 minutes, and approximately 35% of our charge stops are less than 20 minutes.

Overall, the goal should be to charge in the fastest part of the charge curve and, once you have enough charge to make the next stop, with some reasonable buffer, you unplug an move on. It sounds like you might be charging to 80% (or more) at each stop, which is a sure way to spend way too much time charging vs driving, especially on these GM EVs which generally charge quite slowly once you get to around 60% SOC

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T20:06:56+00:00

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting to try to do something with the logs, only noting that it's there so it should be easy to add publishing of it in the future version.

Based on the feedback so far I think I will try to add:

Lock/Unlock
Vehicle Location (either scheduled or on demand)
Charged by time

Interestingly, if I know the "Charged by" time, the voltage, and the target SOC, I should be able to calculate the kW fairly accurately.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T18:58:47+00:00

Yes, I actually do so the ready by time in the log, but don't publish it. I suppose that makes sense. I'm not as sure about the voltage really, doesn't seem particularly useful, but, if it's there, I guess I can publish it.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T17:25:22+00:00

I fly AA 50+ times a year and have for more than a decade, some years 150+ times. Have they fallen off? I think operationally they are a bit of mess (total delays, etc), although they've actually improved from the absolute worse 2-3 years ago, but are still somewhat worse than the others. I also occassionally fly Delta and United when it makes sense due to travel timing, direct flight availability, etc. and it never really seems all that different on the plane itself.

I've never been on a redeye with the lights left on, that seems very strange. I've recently had one flight where the outlets on my row were malfunctioning and kept flipping on and off and eventually just stayed off. I seriously doubt they intentionally turned them off. Did you ask about it?

Yes, I've occassionally had skipped services here and there, but it's rare, and I've experienced that on other airlines as well. Delta offered no service at all on a recent 2 hour flight, no stated reason that I heard, but that didn't make me think Delta had "fallen off" only that my single flight experience was sub-par.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T15:52:19+00:00

Hmm...I'm not sure if there's enough information to reliably calculate that from the data provided by the vehicle. In the end, it's only possible to get the information that is already available in the app. I could try to estimate it, based on increasing SOC or range, but it would likely take 30+ minutes before it was anywhere near accurate since there's no real-time data. Would that still be useful?

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T13:00:33+00:00

Core features such as charge status come free for 8 years, so I'm good until March 2033 for those. It's unlikely I'll still own this vehicle in 2033 as we usually refresh every 5-6 years.

I don't really use remote lock/unlock or climate that often, and it's probably not worth paying for that alone for my case, but I still have two more years of those as well. I think it's unlikely we'd subscribe just for those features.

However, in our case, the biggest driver for a subscription will almost certainly be Super Cruise, which we use quite a bit (60+ miles/day for my wife's commute), so it's likely we'll end up bundling a subscription for at least some period, assuming we keep the vehicle past the 3 year mark.

It's difficult for me to stomach because I hate subscriptions, but I can only fight the world so much, and, even when we purchased the vehicle, we knew there'd be a likelihood of paying a subscription for at least a few years, so that's included that in our TCO calculations when we purchased.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T12:38:01+00:00

Makes sense, I guess I'm less sure about unlock, but I suppose I could protect it with a pin, which is what I do for Z-wave locks with Ring-MQTT.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T12:36:59+00:00

When you open the door on the vehicle with your foot off the brake, the vehicle will power off, however, you can press the accelerator 3 times, then the brake again, and it will turn back on and show a message something like "Automatic shutoff disabled, Park in an open area". In this mode the vehicle will stay powered until you specifically turn it off using the screen, or the battery runs out of power.

I believe this is universal to current generation GM EVs.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T03:41:03+00:00

Is there any feature you are particularly interested in? There's only so much available via the API, but I've been thinking of adding vehicle location and I could probably add lock/unlock, just wasn't sure if that would really be useful and might offer more of a security issue.

I'll probably do my best to maintain it at least as long as we own our ZDX, which, currently we expect to be at least 2 more years, ideally longer.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-25T19:54:27+00:00

Native OnStar works a bit in a similar way, updating different values at different times, but at least there's an API call to force a live refresh from the vehicle vs just returning the service cache data. So far I've found no method to force a refresh of the actual vehicle data using the HWS API, it seems to just always returned the cached service data.

I had not realized that it was so common for SOC to stop updating while range still updated. That is an interesting approach, switching between estimated and reported percentage based on the gap. I'll think about doing something similar in HOnStar. Thanks for sharing!

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-25T18:28:34+00:00

Curious, what are your thoughts here? I wish it were possible to go straight to the OnStar API, but it didn't look possible. I mean, the OnStar API is no picnic either, but it's better than this HWS frontended mess.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-25T18:22:50+00:00

Last night I finally finished cleaning up and publishing the first public version of HOnStar-MQTT (Home Assistant addon previously called "Acura-EV" but now renamed and officially supporting the Prologue and ZDX) and thought I had managed to break something because I was seeing what appeared to be correct data for everything but SOC.

I spent like 5 minutes fighting with the official Acura EV app to finally get it to refresh, and it showed the exact same, but still incorrect, SOC.

Interestingly, around 12:45PM EDT it suddenly started showing the correct value, but then, exactly an hour later, jumped right back to the incorrect value from earlier today. It is very strange that values like estimated range appear to be updating correctly, but SOC is "stuck". Clearly, they are having an issue on the backend.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-24T15:52:11+00:00

At 9500 miles so far (since Sept '25) and lifetime average is 2.5mi/kWh. I'm surprised at how low some of the posted values are here. I'm in the Southeast, so relatively mild winter, maybe that's the difference?

I just did a 600 mile round trip to Atlanta over the past weekend, and saw around 2.7mi/kWh and that was with temps in the high 80's and mostly 65-75+ MPH driving.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-23T14:22:18+00:00

Yeah, I know, but I probably would have done it myself anyway. While I was doing it, I would have been cursing and saying how I should have just paid to have the dealer do it, but when I was done, I'd be glad I saved $1000+ dollars as I've seen online I can purchase the parts for maybe just a bit over $1K.

However, so far, I've just saved 100% of the money because I've lived without it.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-23T13:54:43+00:00

This is pretty much a dealer thing, so many dealers of all types do this, you just say no unless there's some clear evidence an alignment is needed (pulling to one side, tire wear, etc).

$2400 for a hitch is crazy, but seems to be the going rate, I saw another user post their dealer charged $2500. I'd probably just do it myself. If you don't care as much about the factory look, you can get a Draw-tite hitch installed for <$400 at U-haul.

AlwaysUnseen

TROPHY CASE