Sony and Honda unveil AFEELA, their first electric car

The alliance between Sony and Honda is already bearing fruit. The two companies, which in March 2022 announced the formation of Sony Honda Mobility (SHM), a joint venture to sell both electric vehicles and “mobile services”, announced the announcement at CES 2023 in Las Vegas. which will be the brand of their future cars. As well as his first electric car prototypebaptized as AFEELA.

AFEELA, in fact, is also the name of the brand that we will see in cars developed jointly by Sony and Honda. It’s kind of a nod to “feel” (Spanish for “feel”), and from SHM they claim that it “expresses an interactive relationship in which people ‘feel’ mobility as a sentient being”, and in which “mobility “feels” people and society with the help of sensor technologies and information technology networks”. The brand itself is important because it will be present on all electric vehicles that the new company develops jointly.

In the meantime, both companies wanted to show a preview of what the first model will be, which, we repeat, will be called AFEELA, and which It will be available from 2026 for now only in the US. Either way, it’s a four-door sedan that combines the benefits of Honda’s mobility with Sony’s advances in mobile entertainment.

On a technical level, there are still many details to be revealed. However, according to previously published data, it is likely that the car with 400 kW (536 hp) twin engine and all-wheel drive, as well as the ability to accelerate from 0 to 100 km / h in 4.8 seconds. The maximum speed is 240 km/h.

Experience with software: AFEELA’s trump card in the fight against Tesla

For now, both Sony and Honda wanted to showcase the advancements in technology coming with this first AFEELA model. The electric car, in particular, will have a total of 45 sensors to be able to use autonomous driving. Some of them will be located inside, in order to guarantee the safety of the driver. AFEELA, moreover, with important software features to improve not only the field of entertainment.

Sony and Honda are essentially using the Epic Games Unreal Engine graphics engine to not only improve game rendering, but also to improve the area of ​​communication and security, as detailed in TechCrunch. Sony also confirmed that the car you will receive continuous software updates keep improving the experience.