Sony Honda partnership on EVs moves forward with new Afeela brand

The EV partnership between Japanese corporate giants Sony and Honda moves forward with the Afeela brand launched at the CES show.

Sony has been tinkering at the edges of car manufacturing for a while now, and we’ve seen both the Sony Vision S and Sony Vision S 02 revealed as Sony tries to garner interest.

Now, following a tie-up with Honda last summer, Sony has turned up at CES with a prototype EV and a new brand name – Afeela – to demonstrate where the Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) outing is heading.

Apparently, “AFEELA expresses an interactive relationship where people “FEEL” mobility as an intelligent entity, and mobility “FEELs” people and society using sensing and network IT technologies”. All very ‘now’, but did SHM workshop the name in English? Said out loud it sounds a lot like ‘I feel her’.

In design terms, a lot of what’s on offer seems very generic, with the exterior echoing much of the design cues on the previous Vision S Concepts, and an interior with what seems to be the current de rigueur full-width screenage on the dash – including door mirror screens –  and yoke steering wheel.

You can expect the un-named prototype, when it morphs into a production car, to be big on media considering Sony’s core business, with ample computing power and Level 3 Automated driving.

There’s no word on what powers the Afeela Prototype, but SHM does say it has all-wheel drive so we can perhaps assume it’ll offer something similar to the 536bhp the Vison S 02 was stated to boast.

SHM is planning to develop a production version of the Afeela Prototype and have order books open by the first half of 2025.