Are You Not Entertained? 2026 Sony-Honda Afeela EV Is Here to Fix That

Sony showed off the latest version of its Afeela electric concept car Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show 2024 in Las Vegas, and it’s certainly one of the most entertainment-focused near-production concepts we’ve seen to date. Let me put it this way: When a concept car is driven onstage using a PlayStation 5 controller, it’s pretty obvious where its makers’ focus lies.

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While this flashy vehicle may just look like a cool demo for Sony’s future in-car infotainment systems, Sony actually co-developed the whole car with Honda. The joint project, Sony Honda Mobility, says it plans to put the Afeela EV into production starting in 2025 for the 2026 model year. The car will be built in the U.S., although we’re unsure at this time as to whether the Afeela will be an option for buyers looking to take advantage of the revised federal tax credit.

This isn’t the first year that Sony Honda Mobility has shown off the Afeela, but it looks closer to production now. Particularly noticeable is the fact that the rearview cameras shown on the 2023 version of the Afeela have been replaced by regular mirrors. The interior remains infotainment-focused, with Sony dropping additional specs about a car that looks ever closer to becoming a reality.

Technology Befitting a Tech Company

In its presentation at CES, Sony executives hyped up its high-tech features, touting both its incorporation of artificial intelligence as well as the Afeela’s potential as a platform for entertainment, gaming and other apps. Sony wants to make it easy for third-party app developers to develop new and interesting apps for the Afeela’s expansive infotainment system.

The car’s interior remains much the same from the previous Afeela concept: one expansive screen across nearly the entire width of the dashboard, plus two relatively large seatback screens for passengers in the rear. You can even drag display windows across the wide dashboard screen (as The Verge did in its quick demo of the car’s interior functions). The steering wheel is still a yoke — the same shape Tesla made optional in two of its models after customers found it awkward to use — but it does allow more of an unfettered view of the big dashboard screen.

Noise-canceling technology and in-seat speakers help further immerse the Afeela’s occupants in whatever music, movies or games they’re enjoying. The user interface features colorful blocks that clearly borrow a lot from Sony’s partnership with Microsoft, and you can use your PS5 controller with its in-car games. There’s also an additional customizable screen on the front of the car, just in case there weren’t enough screens inside.

Of course, the car’s tech doesn’t end with its smart TV-like features. According to Sony Honda Mobility President and COO Izumi Kawanishi, the Afeela will use both lidar and radar sensors to feed the car data about its surroundings. Its driver-assistance systems will use neural networks (yes, this is another AI-heavy concept from CES 2024) to help the Afeela continuously improve its ability to recognize objects or pedestrians on the road. Currently, the Afeela’s spec sheet lists Level 2 driver-assist tech, but the company maintains its goal is to get the Afeela to Level 3.

Perhaps the neatest thing about the Afeela’s ADAS is its ability to visualize what the car “sees” when it’s enabled through one of the car’s large interior screens. The Afeela uses Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 for graphics — a graphics engine usually used for video games. The car will be able to augment reality in real time, marking points of interest or enabling augmented reality games.

The Afeela also makes use of generative AI for its Personal Agent, which Sony Honda Mobility has partnered with Microsoft to develop. To make sure the Afeela doesn’t offer you a $1 Chevrolet (or worse), Microsoft Vice President of Data and Digital Applications Product Marketing Jessica Hawk assured the CES crowd the Personal Agent would make use of Microsoft Azure AI’s Content Safety Service, a collaboration between its research, policy and engineering teams that’s meant to keep AI-based services from delivering off-putting outputs.

It’s tough to say whether all of these items will be ready in time for 2025, however. While the Afeela will be capable of over-the-air updates, Kawanishi confirmed to The Verge that the AI powering the Personal Agent and Level 3 autonomous capabilities isn’t finalized yet.

How Will It Be to Drive?

There’s one elephant in the room every time the Sony Honda Mobility Afeela prototype shows up: its usability and performance as an actual car. Honda is certainly a capable partner to build the Afeela, but given how long it’s taken for Sony’s electric car to become a near-production prototype, you have to wonder how competitive the Afeela will be when it enters production. The Afeela first appeared as the Vision-S concept car at CES 2020, which later became the Afeela EV that debuted at CES 2023.

The Afeela’s spec sheet as a car seems mostly fine today, but only time will tell how it will age. It features dual-motor all-wheel drive, with one 180-kilowatt interior permanent-magnet synchronous motor per axle — good for roughly 483 horsepower combined. It all runs on a 91-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery, which is a fairly competitive battery size today. (For reference, the similarly sized Lucid Air has a 92-kWh battery pack in its dual-motor mid-range trim.) Other elements, such as top speed and range, aren’t finalized yet. Additionally, there’s one key feature where the Afeela already feels far behind: fast-charging speeds. The Afeela’s DC fast-charging speeds only go up to 150 kW, an amount that’s been eclipsed by numerous EVs you can spec with charging speeds over 250 kW, including the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Porsche Taycan and Tesla Model S.

Perhaps that’s why the Afeela focuses so much on its in-car entertainment tech. As it sits today, you may be hanging around at charging stations for longer than your peers on the road.

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