The Honda Ridgeline has gained a devoted fan and customer base over the years, and the automaker is now working on a next-gen model.
Whenever we talk about midsize trucks, the Honda Ridgeline certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of strong coffee. Nevertheless, Honda hasn’t seem particularly bothered about some of the more polarizing opinions through the years, because it has reliably clocked up 4,000 to 5,000 sales a month, every month for the past several years, with few exceptions. Now, after a full decade in production, it’s time to bring out a new Ridgeline — and Honda confirmed it is doing just that in a statement Thursday.
The automaker is designing the third-generation Ridgeline at its California design studio and hammering out the engineering details at its Ohio development center. Within the next two years, Honda says, we’ll have a brand-new truck rolling out of the Lincoln, Alabama plant that’s built the Ridgeline for the past 18 years, and currently manufactures it alongside the Passport and Pilot SUVs.
Honda’s VP of Auto Sales Lance Woelfer promises the next-gen truck is “gaining even more rugged design and capabilities”. That’s on top of the utilitarian approach the automaker already takes toward its midsize offering, focusing on a range of capabilities it contends most recreational truck buyers actually want. (Bringing in my own take: I’ve argued the Ridgeline offers the level of capability most folks actually need, if they can get past the unibody construction over the body-on-frame design of its rivals. That said, if you must have a body-on-frame truck, there are plenty of options out there to satisfy that demand, too.)
For the moment, Honda isn’t offering up any technical details for what we’ll actually see for the next Ridgeline truck.
When it does arrive sometime in calendar year 2029, though, it’s likely we’ll see some major shifts from the last two generations, beyond the updated styling. The biggest “rumor”, if you can really call it that, brings a new V6 hybrid system, to improve both performance and fuel economy over the 3.5-liter J-series V6 that’s been with us for the past 30 years, predating the original Ridgeline. An updated infotainment system is also another fairly safe guess, as Honda has been touting more capabilities like Google built-in apps and Gemini AI capability in its most recent updates.
What won’t change with the next-generation Honda Ridgeline (at least we hope) are features like the dual-action tailgate, the in-bed truck and the generally spacious cabin, since Honda builds its midsize pickup on the same platform as its midsize SUVs. That said, I would expect all the updates to include a move to the latest version of Honda’s Global Light Truck Platform, as well as its latest i-VTM4 all-wheel drive system, like what we see in the fourth-generation Passport. Or, if the Ridgeline goes to a hybrid powertrain and the Passport somehow doesn’t, at least a similar setup to what we’ve experienced in the SUV.
This teaser is just the start, obviously, so we’ll know more with certainty when Honda reveals more information in the next year to 18 months. As it prepares a new Ridgeline, though, Honda announced it would stop production of the current Ridgeline later this year. That means we may not see a 2027 Ridgeline at all, though the company will likely launch the next-gen version as a 2028 model — though that is broadly going to depend on when in the calendar year Honda decides to roll it out.
