The Honda-produced all-electric Sony Afeela sedan should apparently enter production by 2025.
Well, it appears that Sony has brought to life what most of the Playstation generation has been dreaming of, as Izumi Kawanishi, President and COO of Sony Honda Mobility, has recently used a Playstation 5 controller to drive its latest Afeela prototype on stage in front of crowds at CES 2024.
Now before any gamer gets too excited here, let it be noted that this might be nothing more than an admittedly rather cool marketing gimmick. Though what is looking more and more real by the year is this all-electric sedan of Sony’s, which is apparently already set to enter production sometime next year.
Born from Sony’s Vision-S concept that was first showcased back in 2020, this latest annual look at the since-christened Afeela concept shows for this almost-production ready sedan to have gained a more rounded and conventional exterior aesthetic relative to its rather sleek initial design. Gone for instance is its dainty (almost Taycan-esque) front end, with it instead replaced by flatter (and if being brutal, more generic) face that now relies on its digital display and full-width light bar to liven things up.
The swoopy electric sedan has also since eschewed cameras too for more traditional side mirrors on its side, with the eagle-eyed observers also probably noticing a slightly revised rear end design and thicker side pillars on this year’s concept relative to what was shown off in last year. Though the biggest change to the outside of the Afeela at least is literally its size, as this Sony sedan has grown by 20 mm in length relative to its 2023 iteration.
Now as for changes made within the Afeela meanwhile, the screen-heavy cabin now boasts a different rearview mirror, a discreetly revised steering yoke and dual smartphone wireless chargers from before. Sony has also apparently incorporated a camera atop the dashboard to serve as a driver monitoring system, but the consumer electronics giant would prefer that attention was paid instead to the availability of a ‘conversational personal agent’ within this all-electric sedan that utilises Microsoft Azure OpenAI.
And while on the topic of cool collaborative tech, Sony’s partnership with Epic Games have supposedly resulted in its game-like features including monster mode and an ocean theme to make an appearance in its immersive full-width displays. As perhaps should already go without saying too, this new Afeela prototype will be making an appearance in Gran Turismo 7 following the company’s all-but-expected tie-up with Polyphony Digital.
As for driving the Afeela in the real world meanwhile, motivation for this Sony sedan supposedly comes from twin electric motors that is currently rated at a combined output of 489 PS. Said motors are in turn fed by a 91 kWh lithium-ion battery pack, which has been confirmed to be capable of 150 kW DC fast charging as well as an 11 kW Level 2 charging capability.
Set to be built by Honda, order books for the Afeela in 2025 when production is scheduled to kick off. North American deliveries of this new Sony sedan on the other hand are currently earmarked for early 2026, with unfortunately no date set yet for a Malaysian debut thus far.
