Sony Honda Mobility Still Here, Will Make an SUV Next
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Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) kicked off the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas today with a new prototype. Following a familiar model that now risks being out of date, the Japanese company has followed up its electric sedan with an all-electric SUV.
So far referred to simply as the Afeela Prototype, SHM didn’t share many details about the SUV. From what we can see, though, it will look a lot like the Afeela 1 sedan, but it will of course be taller and larger.
SHM would only say of the Afeela Prototype that it would offer “greater spatial flexibility” to customers and “deliver joy and value to a broader range of users.” The automaker expects to launch the production version of the SUV in the U.S. “as early as 2028.”
Whether or not the Prototype — or indeed, the Afeela 1 sedan — will enter the Canadian market has not yet been confirmed. Deliveries of the sedan, which is assembled in Ohio, are set to start in California this year. Sales will then expend to Arizona in 2027.
Pitched as a startup electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, SHM is the fruit of a collaboration between Honda and Sony that aims to leverage the automaker’s car design expertise and the consumer electronics giant’s tech savvy. However, the collaboration was announced at the height of market interest in EVs, which has now passed.
It follows a pattern of releases set out by other upstart EV brands, like Tesla, Lucid, and Polestar, which have produced impressive vehicles but are currently facing strong headwinds in the market due to financial concerns and fading political support. Since SHM's introduction, other startups, such as Nikola and Fisker, have gone bankrupt under the strain of introducing the world to a new car brand at a time when affordability is a big focus for consumers.
Like those startups, SHM has focused as much on high tech driver aids as it has traditional engineering. Indeed, the automaker also shared more about its vision for mobility at CES today, highlighting its focus on artificial intelligence (AI) tools that will “understand user preferences and emotions,” and will leverage partnerships with Microsoft, using its Azure OpenAI Service to create an artificial personal assistant for users.
The company will also use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis in its future electrical/electronic architecture to create an “AI-centred next-generation mobility experience” that it hopes will eventually allow it to deliver self-driving capability.
