CES 2024 officially opened, Sony Honda’s first car AFEELA EV prototype was officially unveiled, out of the way very peculiar, Sony Honda Mobility CEO Yasuhide Mizuno with a PS5 handle remote control to drive up.
Driving up with a PS5 handle: can’t hold up Sony’s dream of building a car!
It also seems to fulfill the fantasy of a Sony-built electric car that combines gaming and automobiles, opening up the car as a large gaming device.
However, throughout the launch Sony didn’t mention any details about price, battery, or configuration, and didn’t reiterate that it would be available in 2026.
Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe was invited on stage to talk about the partnership, but he didn’t even mention the word “electric” in his speech.
This information clearly did not satisfy the curiosity of the audience, and earlier, Sony Honda Mobility (Sony Honda Mobility) President Izumi Kawanishi bluntly said, “China’s electric cars have no technological surprises.”
In contrast, Sony electric car and how much waves can be stirred?
01, toothpaste launch
At this year’s CES, Sony still used an entire pavilion to show off its muscles, but as a giant in the global consumer electronics business, like CES 2023, Sony did not release a TV this year.
In contrast, this year marks the fifth consecutive year that Sony has shown its upcoming electric car at CES, which shows that Sony is quite serious about electric cars.
Driving with a PS5 controller: can’t hold up Sony’s dream of building a car!
At the just-opened 2024 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Yasuhide Mizuno, CEO of Sony Honda Mobility, drove Sony’s upcoming 2026 mass-produced electric car, the AFEELA, onto the stage by controlling the PS5’s Dualsense handle.
Controlling a car with a joystick may be a reality, but don’t get your hopes up, as Yasuhide Mizuno says it’s “for stage display only.”
This puts a big dent in practicality. As a comparison, the domestic just-launched Smart S7 and Extreme Krypton 007, with their outstanding self-driving and self-parking capabilities, don’t even need a handle to drive themselves onto the stage. Picture.
The official did not reveal how to use the Dualsense handle, to realize the control of the vehicle, and did not disclose more information about the car, which will only be mass-produced in two years, and then hastily ended the press conference.
But then Sony announced a partnership with Microsoft in artificial intelligence, and Microsoft representative Jessica Hawk took the stage to explain part of the content about in-car AI, saying that Sony is working with Microsoft to develop an AI assistant in the AFEELA car.
Driving a car with a PS5 controller: can’t hold up Sony’s dream of building a car!
From the news revealed at the scene, the cooperation between the two sides will focus on the AI in-car assistant, which also fits the trend of this year’s CES – the absolute home of AI.
CES site, Volkswagen also announced that ChatGPT will be introduced into the car assistant, its existing IDA voice assistant will be introduced into the ChatGPT artificial intelligence technology, and used in a series of new models.
In fact, the new energy car on the frame of the big model is not new, the car as a large mobile intelligent terminal, in the big model just rise has been explored, at present, including Xiaopeng, Ideal and other brands, including the models, have a big model on the car plans.
For example, after OTA 5.0, Ideal car has the support of multimodal cognitive big model Mind GPT, which not only can network to check current news and provide the latest information, but also can be transformed into an encyclopedia teacher and a painting master, and the application scenes are also diversified.
Combined with the current domestic landing of the big model, there is not much innovative space left for Sony and Microsoft to cooperate.
At a time when the country has crossed over to AI-defined cars, Sony still believes in the theory of software-defined cars. Sony said that under this concept, the car will be turned into a “digital playground” to provide a new in-car experience.
To this end, Sony Honda has developed an ADAS simulator that simulates external environmental conditions such as information about other vehicles, pedestrians, terrain and weather. By combining this technology with AR, users will enjoy an immersive experience while enhancing safety.
Driving with the PS5 controller: not holding up to Sony’s dream of building a car!
Sony also showed a demo video of a game that renders a car in a simulated world next to Godzilla-like escaping monsters that you can capture for points.
In addition Sony also said that it wants to create a creative community (i.e. co-creation) between users and creators to “realize unique ideas” by accessing vehicle data, which can actually be interpreted as a meta-universe.
Driving a car with a PS5 controller: not enough to support Sony’s dream of building a car!
Although Sony used a lot of “high” definition, but in essence, some of the technology of the domestic automotive industry is not new.
02, PS5 must also need a large color TV
Last October, Sony Honda Mobility (Sony Honda Mobility) President Kawanishi Izumi, had publicly blasted the Chinese trolley, said “China’s electric cars have no technical surprises”, although the development speed “strong”, but in the In terms of information technology, “it’s just like arranging the icons of a smartphone”.
Izumi Kawanishi believes that basic entertainment services such as listening to music and watching videos can already be perfectly realized by smartphones, and it is nothing new to continue applying these operations in cars.
Driving a car with a PS5 controller: can’t hold up Sony’s dream of building a car!
In other words, he sees nothing new in the in-car entertainment offered by Chinese car companies.
In 2022, Sony set up a company called Sony Mobility to formally enter the new energy vehicle market, and later joined hands with Honda to set up a joint venture Sony Honda Mobility (Sony Honda Mobility), with each side holding a 50 percent stake.
Last year’s CES, Sony Honda Mobility released a pure electric car “AFEELA” prototype, plans to start accepting bookings in the first half of 2025, the first in the spring of 2026 in the North American market to open delivery.
Driving with a PS5 controller: not enough to support Sony’s dream of building a car!
AFEELA has not yet publicized the complete technical parameters, according to previously publicized information, AFEELA’s design is very avant-garde, the entire body appearance is very smooth, not only canceled the traditional mirrors, the use of electronic exterior mirrors, but also canceled the door handle, the whole car almost can not see the extra corners.
It is reported that AFEELA is positioned as a long wheelbase electric coupe, body dimensions of 4895 * 1900 * 1460mm, wheelbase 3000mm. according to Sony Honda public sample car, AFEELA front there is a through the front of the car is similar to the light band Media Bar, can be used to display the car logo, but also show the charging progress and other information.
Driving with a PS5 controller: not holding up to Sony’s dream of building a car!
AFEELA’s original concept, claimed to be powered by dual-motor all-wheel drive with a maximum power of 400kW (536 hp), 100km acceleration in 4.8 seconds, and a top speed of 240 km/h.
In fact, judging from this parameter, both the just-released Xiaomi SU7, as well as the Extreme Kryptonite 007 and Galaxy E8, can shake off the AFEELA by several lengths.
In addition, AFEELA will use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon digital chassis, with a total of 45 cameras and sensors throughout the car, and possibly an ECU with a maximum arithmetic power of 800 TOPS, which can meet the L2 level of assisted driving in urban driving scenarios.
Driving with a PS5 controller: can’t hold up Sony’s dream of building a car!
In-car features are Sony’s biggest reliance, and Sony believes that they can provide a better infotainment experience.
It is reported that Sony will move its own film and television, music, games, the whole family bucket content ecology into the car, will also cooperate with Epic Games, built-in Epic Games games and entertainment platform, will provide technology such as Unreal Engine 5.
Unreal Engine 5 is the fifth generation game engine announced by EPIC in 2020, and now that the Unreal 5 engine has been officially launched, Epic has announced that it is being made public in the form of a sample project, so that anyone can download it, check out the program’s content-generation framework and Substrate, among other features.
Sony President Kenichiro Yoshida previously revealed that the PS5 will also be on board, which will undoubtedly be AFEELA’s biggest competitive advantage in the EV market.
Driving with PS5 handle: can’t hold up Sony’s dream of building a car!
Even so, it’s just a PS5 on top of a color TV refrigerator and a big sofa.
From the exposure of the interior of the car, the front and rear rows have a “big color TV”, the official hope that through continuous OTA updates, to bring more gaming experience in the car.
This year is already the fifth time that Sony has shown off their electric car at CES, and it is conservatively estimated that there will be at least two more before it is released in 2026.
Driving with a PS5 controller: can’t hold up Sony’s dream of building a car!
But both Sony and Honda have been slow to announce any details on pricing, batteries, etc., and have just flip-flopped on in-car entertainment. Frankly, apart from the possibility of PS5 getting on board, the innovation of this Sony Honda electric car called AFEELA is not attractive enough.
Now Sony is moving aggressively closer to AI with a partnership with Microsoft on artificial intelligence, but with the AFEELA still a year away from delivery, rivals are running faster.
