LAS VEGAS—Sony used a portion of its CES press conference here tonight to unveil a prototype electric vehicle it developed with Honda, which will be marketed under the brand name Afeela.
The car rolled on stage during a presentation by Yasuhide Mizuno, CEO of the newly formed Sony Honda Mobility (SHM), which plans on taking pre-orders for the vehicle in 2025 with deliveries to customers in North America in the spring of 2026.
"At the heart of this mobility experience is the word 'feel'...the concept of an interactive relationship using sensing and AI technologies," Mizuno said.
Sony and Honda first announced plans to team up on an entertainment-focused EV back in October. The idea is that the cars will eventually be able to drive themselves, allowing passengers to relax with content created by Sony, like games, movies, and even AR-like experiences.
We didn't get a ton of new details about the vehicle at tonight's CES press conference. A "specs" section on the Afeela website detailed only the car's size and that it can hold five passengers.
Mizuno's presentation didn't even touch on the electric aspect of the car— like battery capacity, charging speed, or range—though we confirmed later with a Sony rep that the Afeela will indeed to be an electric vehicle. Pricing was not revealed.
The company did say the Afeela will have 45 cameras and sensors, which will enable autonomous driving via Qualcomm's Snapdragon Digital Chassis.
"We aim to develop Level 3 automated drive under limited conditions and to enable Level 2+ driver assistance in even more situations such as urban driving," says SHM. (We got a glimpse of a Level 2+ vehicle in action earlier today.)
SHM also promised "best in class entertainment for customers," including music, movies, and games (Epic Games is a partner).
CES veterans may remember that Sony surprised show attendees three years ago by showing off a car. Dubbed the Sony Vision-S, the vehicle boasted a "Safety Cocoon" comprising 33 sensors, as well as entertainment features and other tech inside the cabin, from speakers built into each individual seat to a panoramic screen that took up nearly the entire dashboard.
It was intended as a way to test autonomous vehicle tech, and Sony announced in mid-2020 that the Vision-S would hit public roads in Japan to do just that. At last year's CES, however, we got a second-gen Vision-S SUV, suggesting that Sony was interested in more than just self-driving technology research.