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Mar 28, 2025

Honda Advanced Compatibility Engineering™ (ACE™) Body Structure

Honda has a long history of leadership in the development and application of advanced active and passive safety technologies. The company's "Safety for Everyone" approach focuses on advancing safety

Honda has a long history of leadership in the development and application of advanced active and passive safety technologies. The company's "Safety for Everyone" approach focuses on advancing safety for everyone sharing the road. Honda designs all of its vehicles with safety in mind, not only the safety of Honda vehicle occupants, but safety for the occupants of other vehicles.

The Honda global safety approach is to build a collision-free society where everyone sharing the road can safely and confidently enjoy the freedom of mobility. Centered around the Safety for Everyone philosophy, Honda strives for zero traffic collision fatalities involving Honda motorcycles and automobiles globally by 2050. In order to achieve this goal, continued work toward advancing technology, improving human behavior and collaborating with like-mind organizations is needed.

In support of this direction, Honda operates two of the world's most sophisticated crash-test facilities – one in Ohio and one in Japan – which have contributed to numerous pioneering efforts in the areas of crashworthiness. This includes the company's proprietary Advanced Compatibility Engineering™ (ACE™) body structure used in Honda cars and light trucks.

Designed to improve crash compatibility between vehicles of varying sizes, such as an SUV and a small car, the ACE™ body has continuously advanced to help protect occupants in a wide variety of frontal collisions.

The first ACE™ body was developed by Honda engineers more than two decades ago and debuted on the first Honda model – the Odyssey minivan – in reaffirming the company's commitment to small car safety in response to the growing popularity of pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles. Honda has continually refined ACE™ body structure design and introduced the enhanced next-generation of the ACE™ body structure in 2022 on the all-new 11th-generation Honda Civic.

The latest version of ACE™ is now employed on Civic, Accord, HR-V, CR-V and Pilot, and is specifically enhanced for even better compatibility with larger vehicles and achieves top-level scores in NHTSA and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) crash tests. The innovative body structure also performs well in the future National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) oblique crash test standard, the new Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's (IIHS) Side Impact Crashworthiness Evaluation (SICE) 2.0, as well as anticipated future standards.

Since the ACE™ body structure debuted on the 2005 Honda Odyssey minivan, Honda has sold more than 22 million cars and light trucks in the United States with the technology.

ACETM Body Structure Design The Honda-exclusive ACE™ body structure is one example of proven technology that, when continuously advanced, helps prevent and mitigate injuries in a collision.

In an effort to improve occupant protection while improving compatibility between vehicles, Honda has developed this collision-safety body technology to minimize damage to Honda vehicles and other vehicles caused by a mismatch in vehicle size and weight during an impact. The ACE™ body structure achieves this by spreading out the forces of a collision over a larger area of the body and frame, thereby avoiding concentrated impact forces that cause injuries.

The ACE™ body structure utilizes a network of connected structural elements to distribute crash energy more evenly throughout the front of the vehicle. Enhanced frontal crash-energy management helps to reduce the forces transferred to the passenger compartment and more evenly disperse the forces transferred to other vehicles in a crash. As a result, occupant protection is significantly enhanced, as is reduced aggressiveness toward other vehicles in a collision.

The design also helps reduce the potential for misalignment with the frame of an opposing vehicle, whether it is larger or smaller than the Honda vehicle. Additional structural elements are engineered to enhance vehicle performance in small overlap frontal collisions.

ACE™ actively channels frontal crash energy to both upper and lower structural elements, including the floor frame rails, side sills and A-pillars. By creating specifically engineered "pathways" that help distribute these frontal impact forces through a greater percentage of the vehicle's total structure, ACE™ can more effectively direct those forces around and away from the passenger compartment to help mitigate cabin deformation and further improve occupant protection.

Honda Safety Engineering and TestingHonda has continually refined ACE™ body structure design at its two sophisticated crash safety research and testing facilities in Ohio and Japan. This includes an omni-directional vehicle-to-vehicle crash test facility at the Honda automobile R&D center in Japan. About the size of a major league baseball stadium, it was the world's first indoor all-weather facility of its type when it opened in 2001 – and the location where the first ACE body structure was finalized.

In addition to standard barrier and regulatory tests, the facility tests in situations that simulate actual traffic collisions between vehicles. Not all collisions in the real world are head on, so Honda testing goes well beyond head-on collisions to include many types of crash scenarios, including car-to-car impacts, car-to-barrier collisions, front, side and rear impacts and offset and oblique-angle collisions.

To supplement these tests, Honda helped develop an advanced safety visualization technology called Real Impact that results in extremely reliable, accurate and cost-effective crash simulations. This technology creates highly detailed three-dimensional models of a vehicle's crash safety structure and allows Honda engineers and designers to better visualize how these systems work in a variety of collision scenarios.

These simulations are so accurate that the metal deformation from a virtual test and a real test can differ as little as 15 mm. The simulations also can be run again and again with differing inputs/parameters in a much smaller time period than a physical test and at lower cost.

Honda engineers can manipulate the 3D rendering, rotate the view in any direction and strip away parts of the vehicle to isolate a section or component for more thorough analysis. The crash barrier can be rendered transparent in the virtual environment so that the immediate effects of a crash are visible from multiple points of view, including from the driver's seat.

This kind of flexibility and affordability allows Honda to enhance road safety for everybody by engineering for worst case scenarios in an unprecedented way and help advance toward the 2050 goal of achieving zero traffic fatalities.

Next-Generation ACE™ Body Structure The latest version of ACE™, introduced in 2022, features a robust upper member constructed of high-strength steel, and an A-pillar structure, side frame and lower firewall structure all designed to route crash energy around the cabin, especially in oblique impacts.

Additionally, side impact protection has been enhanced to meet new, tougher side-impact standards. New stiffer pillars, side sills and stiffer structures in the roof are used, along with stronger door stiffening beams and a stronger rear wheelhouse. The body also is designed to route energy into the floor in the case of a rear collision.

Moreover, the latest version of ACE™ architecture minimizes weight gain with the extensive use of lightweight materials, such as aluminum and various grades of high-strength steel, as well as an expanded application of structural adhesives.

The Honda Civic, Accord, HR-V, CR-V and Pilot all employ the latest version of ACE™ architecture and every tested Honda vehicle for 2024 has earned an NCAP 5-Star Overall vehicle safety rating from NHTSA.

Five Honda models have earned an IIHS TOP SAFETY PICK (TSP) rating or better, with three achieving the pinnacle TOP SAFETY PICK+ (TSP+) rating. Contributing to the top ratings, each of the five models achieved the top GOOD score in the institute's rigorous updated side crash test, which involves 82% more crash energy than the original test.

Honda 2024 IIHS Award Winners:2024 Honda Accord (TSP+)2024 Honda CR-V (TSP)2024 Honda HR-V (TSP+)2024 Honda Odyssey (TSP)2024 Honda Pilot (TSP+)

Honda ACETM Body Structure Applications

Current Honda Models

Past Honda Models

2005-Present Honda Odyssey 2006-Present Honda Civic 2007-Present Honda CR-V 2008-Present Honda Accord 2009-Present Honda Pilot 2016-Present Honda HR-V 2017-Present Honda Ridgeline 2019-Present Honda Passport

2009-2020 Honda Fit 2010-2015 Honda Crosstour 2010-2022 Honda Insight 2011-2016 Honda CR-Z 2017-2021 Honda Clarity

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