Sony is making a car. No, seriously – we’ve reported on it before, and it drove a prototype out onto its CES 2023 keynote stage just to prove it. The new Electric Vehicle, designed and developed in partnership with Honda, will form the foundation of a new brand: Afeela. And the Japanese giant expects to start taking pre-orders as early as 2025.
So, what are some cool features? Well, you can play Horizon Forbidden West in it, as the game was shown running on a screen in front of the backseats. It also has a customisable display on the front bumper, with a Spider-Man theme briefly shown during the press conference. You could certainly see this potentially being used by Uber drivers.
According to the presentation, the Afeela will have 45 cameras and sensors both inside and outside the vehicle, and Qualcomm is helping build some of the semiconductors for the car.
All in all, this is an unexpected pivot from Sony – it spent a good 15 minutes during its presentation talking about the vehicle, and didn’t show a single television set or pair of headphones, which perhaps underlines just how different the organisation is looking these days. We’ll be fascinated to see whether Afeela really can disrupt the growing EV market.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 25
My grandparents had a car when we were younger that you could plug a PS2 into. Funnily enough, we used it about once.
While that look tempting. I’ll stick to my gas guzzling v8s. Maybe next time, Sony.
45 cameras? Why is that necessary?
I expect given the tech, this car will be $80k minimum.
If their batteries can give me good range in Canadian winters, I'll consider it
It’ll probably have a price in between the Truly Exquisite golden PS5 and the Golden Rock PS5.
That’s the budget I’m able to spend on a gaming console nowadays, so that’s perfect!
Because cars just weren't disposable enough before. Now we can throw them away every few years and declare it green and conveniently good for sales growth.
Autonomous ride share when?
Cool reveal. I understand them spending 15-20 minutes on it. What I don’t understand is why they spent the same amount of time on the GT movie that very few care about, and only a couple of minutes on their new gaming platform that must have made them at least £500 million in revenue already, and which is releasing next month. Bit of a slap in the face to all early adopters.
Afeela this is bound to flop.
Now who's this for again?
@Octane Jar Jar Binks posts here?
They have to stop with these rectangular ("yoke") driving wheels. There is no way this is as safe as full circle ones when you need to make quick hard turns in different directions.
https://slate.com/technology/2021/09/tesla-yoke-steering-wheel-safety.html
I got afeeling this isn't going to sell well.
PlayStation releases a console for on the road!
The car and tech looks awesome, love it. This is a concept model by the way so things will change.
Aloy will probably tell you where to drive as soon as you get in.
@thefourfoldroot1 because there i far more drivers, than the still niche VR scene.
@stvevan
I would say the amount of people interested in a GT movie is much lower than those interested in trying VR. But, whatever. If Sony would rather talk about a film than give any attention to the consumers who just bought a £600 device from them and were eagerly awaiting info from a presentation advertised with the PSVR2 product…well, that’s just another example of their lack of marketing know how.
Or, if you just didn’t read my post properly and thought I said they shouldn’t have devoted as much time to the actual car reveal. Well, maybe try reading it again. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough.
@tameshiyaku for people who want Electric Cars
@Uncharted2007 all cars usually have a bucket load of cameras and sensors to help with parking, cruise control or self driving, lane assist, security recordings, so and and so forth.
As much as I think the idea is great and the car is great but maybe Sony could pump more money into Sonys gaming department to either get more devs or at least try to invest in new ips to stay ontop of pumping those games out.
Why would you want to play a game while driving? I don't understand this?
A car with Sony battery tech... I can't wait for the Afeela Edge that has up to 3 custom driver configuration profiles, a modular, replaceable steering yoke, and "moderately reduced battery life" for only $10,000 more!
@UltimateOtaku91 @Octane But I think the government sales channel for law enforcement will do extremely well for the EV fleet armored police cruiser model: The Cop Afeela.
What a car should do have the weather, GPS, AC and such. Genuinely useful things. To me this makes the Toyota Pod look more sensible and it was for being an intelligent prototype car for 2001 motorshow and a great race in GT 2001/2002 Concept.
I don't think an open world pushing a car's 'sensibleness or even capabilities' should be a thing it's dumb.
'Don't worry kids while I'm on the side of the road and you want the Air Con or have your handhelds and on the road cheap screen games (I had some as a kid I forget what they were but were knockoff games basically) on I'll be playing Horizon and wasting car battery life and petrol to play it on' I mean I can make so many jokes with how silly this is.
It's like with 3G a good option on Vita but no one used it, it was too expensive to be viable besides the limited providers.
People have to be really desperate and that bored/be so rich and not care to waste their money (which as far as I'd think most rich people are smart with money that's how they got rich in the first place besides putting it in different areas) to want to do that.
I mean there is the big cases for their console and a TV (for your PS4/Xbox One because why not just bring the Wii U or GameCube/Xbox with a screen instead of a CRT/small screen size TV in a caravan or RV or the car) instead of using a handheld, streaming or a consolised handheld third party retro companies make (like a Hyperkin NES/SNES kind of thing, or Sega did the MegaJet/Nomad for the Genesis) that blend the line and then there is this stuff.
Can we say we can have a on the go streaming service to. Beating Google to a Stadia Google Maps car type thing. XD
I know it won't cars have a lot going on these days and the tech is possible and they have designed around it to be playable but still. Cars are 'a luxury item' in my mind whether early thousands or not that we get told to own (even when you don't want one you never hear the end of people not shutting up about owning one) and this just makes it more clear they are and it's dumb. Play it from the cloud if people are really desperate for on the go PlayStation experiences not from their car.
Who remembers the PS3 sitting in the back of the g60 on Gran Turismo 5
@huyi It an electric car… which means sitting at chargers for 2-3 hours while that car charges if you don’t have charger at home or work.
I think most people just plug them in at home overnight...
It's not super fast, but it still works fine.
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