Forget about new TV’s and sound gear Sony is set to use CES 2025 to launch a brand-new electric car.
Developed in partnership with Honda the news was leaked by Izumi Kawanishi, president, and chief operating officer of SHM the Company that the two Japanese entities have set up to pioneer the project.
Apple canned their plans for a new EV earlier this year.
The new Sony offering will not be the final vehicle instead Sony will showcase the latest version of its fully electric sedan, the Afeela.
“The hardware, or car body, is pretty much complete. We’ll be working on the software until the last minute,” Kawanishi told Nikkei Asia, this week.
Sony believe that their software spanning both entertainment and navigation is cutting edge. The vehicle that will be manufactured in the USA is expected to go on sale in Australia in 2027 according to sources.
Initially the vehicle will be sold in Japan and the USA and then foreign markets.
At this stage there is no certainty that the vehicle will be a success, with analysts such as Takaki Nakanishi, chief analyst of Tokyo-based auto consultancy the Nakanishi Research Institute claiming that the joint venture operation is “”Entering the US market at “the worst possible time”.
One issue the operation is facing is that President-elect Donald Trump is expected to cut subsidies for EVs after he takes office in January.
Cancelling the current credits could cause electric sales to drop nearly 30%, according to an October working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a U.S.-based nonprofit.
Video of the Afeela prototype does look different from a traditional car. A screen between its headlights can display battery charging status, weather information or a personalised animation. The doors are stylish and devoid of handles.
Instead, they open when owners automatically approach. The steering wheel is a rectangular “yoke” designed to avoid getting in the way of a panoramic screen that spans the front seating area.
Sony has also used their strength as the world’s top seller of image sensors for smartphones with the new vehicle set to have a total of 45 cameras and sensors for monitoring inside and outside the vehicle.
The rear seating area has displays, while multiple speakers and noise-cancelling features aim to offer the ideal environment for enjoying movies, music, or games.
Data gathered by the Sony sensor sensors will be fed to Qualcomm chips and processed using artificial intelligence to enable self-parking and other driving-assistance features.
The car’s software will be updateable, much like a smartphone’s operating system.
Describing the car’s development, Kawanishi said SHM kept in mind leading players in the field, like Tesla or Chinese automakers, which he sees as pursuing a similar question, namely, how drivers can use the time in their cars differently. In SHM’s case, the focus is on entertainment.
Kawanishi did not go into gaming despite his background developing Sony’s PlayStation video game consoles, along with Sony’s robotic dog series, Aibo who has made an appearance at CES in the past.
The Afeela will be fighting for a place among the roughly 1 million EVs sold annually in the U.S.
“Any new models will need to compete against Tesla,” said Brent Gruber, executive director of the EV practice at J.D. Power.
Dunne estimates that the Afeela will be fighting for the remaining demand with about 20 models from other manufacturers, including Hyundai and Kia, which have “done a pretty nice job with their software setup” with recent models of its all-electric Ioniq and EV6 series. Annual sales of 30,000 to 40,000 cars would be considered “quite happy” for SHM, he said.
The first test of Afeela’s viability as a product is just around the corner, but Kawanishi seemed to be taking the upcoming release in stride.
“For me, launching the product isn’t the goal, it’s the starting line,” he said. The emphasis on software and update features will mark “a clear difference from the conventional world, in which you sold a car and that was it.”
