Sony and Honda used the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to show off the Afeela 1 EV, which is the jointly-developed Sony Honda Mobility vehicle meant to compete with highly connected cars from China and Tesla. Instead, the company showed us an expensive sedan with performance specs you wouldn’t accept on a Hyundai that costs half as much. What’s going on here?
There’s no denying that this Japanese-developed sedan expected to be built in Ohio is tech-rich. It comes with a suite of 40 different sensors for advanced driver assistance system operation, spatial audio, a panoramic screen in the dashboard, and power-operated doors.
Here’s how the company describes some of the features:
The cabin of AFEELA 1 is designed with the concept of “Mobility as a Creative Entertainment Space.” Each occupant can enjoy a variety of apps and content provided by entertainment partners through an optimized, unique sound system and displays by seat. Sony Honda Mobility’s proprietary noise-canceling technology and expertise provides an overwhelming sense of quietness. The optimally placed speakers featuring Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Technologies offer an high-quality audio experience with immersive sound. SHM is working on creating unique entertainment experiences using driving and vehicle data through collaborations with external creators and developers.
Also, it has an Unreal game engine so you can, I guess, play Gran Tursimo when you don’t feel like driving.
That all sounds moderately impressive, but the Afeela 1 is a car first and foremost, and it seems to be coming up short on fundamentals.
Under the floorpan of the Afeela 1, you’ll find a 91 kWh battery pack, a 241-horsepower front motor, and a 241-horsepower rear motor. Combine that with the low-slung silhouette of a sedan, and you end up with an estimated 300 miles of range. Alright, why so little? When a cheaper and more powerful Lucid Air Touring offers 406 miles of range, and many competitors offer more than 300 miles of range, an even 300 miles of range feels disappointing. Oh, and that’s only the start.
Okay, so the range might be disappointing, but at least the Afeela 1 charges slowly. A peak DC fast charging rate of 150 kW is, well, swell for a $40,000 EV, but almost everything in this price bracket charges faster. Even the onboard Level 2 AC charger only clocks in at 11 kW, and that’s just not cutting edge.
So, for $89,900, you must be okay with black paint and a black interior, but it’s okay because this thing has an auto-dimming rearview mirror. If you want a shade other than black, along with stuff like rear seat entertainment, you’d need to step up to the Afeela 1 Signature, which stickers for a whopping $102,990. Yeah, six figures for a car with the powertrain specs of a $45,000 car.
Comparing the Afeela 1 to rivals, it doesn’t fare so well on price.
A Lucid Air Touring specced up with the 32-sensor DreamDrive Pro advanced driver assistance system suite, the glass roof, and the 21-speaker Dolby Atmos audio system costs just $1,400 more than the base Afeela 1, but it sports an extra 106 miles of range, boasts 620 horsepower, can dash from zero-to-60 mph in 3.4 seconds, and can hit peak DC fast charging speeds of more than 300 kW. Don’t need all that power? A similarly optioned Lucid Air Pure stickers for $77,800, some $12,100 less than the Afeela 1.
In the mood for something Korean? The Genesis G80 Electrified is fantastic, and a loaded example stickers for $79,775. Sure, a range of 282 miles is even less than that of the Afeela 1, but the G80 Electrified looks expensive, and it can DC fast charge at up to 233 kW, so it should get you back on the road faster when range runs out.
What’s more, the top trim level is in spitting distance of the BMW i7 eDrive50, and while you will need to spend some more bones to get the theater screen and other toys in the i7, it’s a Nimitz-class monolith for accelerationist plutocrats. It’s platinum-dipped sumptuous, and upholstered like a sex dungeon, and it causes people who can’t spend six figures on a luxury sedan to recoil in fear as it drives past.
Meanwhile, the Afeela 1 looks like what would happen if you asked Dall-e to conjure up the illegitimate child of a broom closet affair between a Lucid Air and a 1987 Mercury Sable. People shopping in this segment want presence, and the Afeela 1 just doesn’t have the presence of a BMW i7.
So, who is the Afeela 1 for? My colleague Matt Hardigree kindly pointed out that this is the four-wheeled equivalent of one of those $900 Walkmans. Walkmen? Potato, potato. The thing is, you don’t have to crash test a Walkman, nor do you need to do EPA range testing. Compared to, I don’t know, a car, a Walkman doesn’t carry nearly the same development and homologation costs, so that model probably doesn’t translate to luxury sedans.
Anyway, reservations are open. I’m sure this’ll make current Acura RLX Sport Hybrid owners happy. All seven of them.
Photos: SHM unless otherwise noted
Thank god. I was worried that we didn’t have enough $80,000 tech overburdened luxury EVs to go around. I feel much better now. They’ll sell tens of them.
Right? Heaven forbid manufacturers get to work on affordable, practical EVs. There are like two to choose from now, and those have a “Here, damn!” vibe to them.
The Chinese get it but the protectionist tariffs keep them away…for now.
If I had a nickel for everytime a traditional OEM released an overpriced underwhelming EV with less range than ICE counterparts, I’d have enough nickels to bail Fisker out of bankruptcy. This is a perfect example of large corporate machines and product managers trying to keep up with lean agile EV programs.
Looking forward to Honda saying “no one buys EVs” whilst selling a $90k EV with the range of a $45k EV
Eh, they’re selling Prologues as fast as they can make them. I suspect this one’s a Sony vanity project.
Huh are they? The Honda dealers near me are saying that for every 10 Prologues they get, about 2 of them sell and the other 8 sit on the lot for a few weeks until they get sold with major discounts because it wont move.
Old men in suits still not understanding that turning everything into a worse smartphone is the worst possible choice of market niche. People don’t want a worse smartphone. People want things that they can use, which might also interface with their existing smartphone in a seamless and non-intrusive way. Then again this is Sony, who are still stuck in 2004 in terms of design and are too prideful to accept being an accessory instead of a core device.
The whole thing is six years too late, honestly. $102,000 was late 2018 “EVs are a new and novel market” price. The interior is 2015 concept car shit. The exterior is… It’s a modelling buck. It’s not even finished. I’m all for clean smooth designs, but there’s detailing in chunks like somebody got a third of the way through and then stopped.
Well, I’ll say this. If you asked me what the Sony car would be like, it would be hard for me to describe something as perfectly Sony Car as this actual prototype is. Poor specs, shiny overpromising on the tech experience, and a general laggardly situation amongst its peers. Nailed it, for what it is.
…and of course there is the “well Tesla has it so it has to be cutting edge so lets copy it” Yoke steering wheel that literally no one wants.
Do not taunt Afeela!
This is gonna lose what 60% of it’s value in 1 year? I mean, we all know the rules, lease new EV’s, buy used. Even at 60% off used, who’s gonna look at this versus the plethora of better used EV’s out there and say I want one?
I don’t think that it will take a full year…
The best part is it’s going to be exclusive to California for the first year and won’t have leasing options so you can’t even take advantage of the $7500 incentives.
“Mobility as a Creative Entertainment Space.”
Afeela nauseous.
I’ll just add this to the long list of things in life that make zero sense to me and are just head scratchingly illogical. It doesn’t even have the benefit of being so hideously styled that I start cracking up just from the sight of it.
As the human population gets dumber, our corporate overlords need to get ahead of the curve and create even dumber products that the next generation of idiots will gladly go into deep debt to attain. Sony’s playing 3D chess while Telsa’s playing checkers.
I don’t remember seeing this car in Idiocracy, it would have been fitting as the vehicle driving off the end of the broken bridge. Maybe they should put a Brawndo dispenser in it?
“… the Afeela 1 just doesn’t have the presence of a BMW i7…”
And blast, THANK GOD, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU GOD FOR THAT !!!
It would be the product of a Soviet vacuum cleaner raping a mop that it will still look better, if we are to keep into bombastic crap yet again.
Of the three cars pictured in this article that sony thingie is the least ugly. It’s not good looking, but it’s the least ugly.
I love Genesis but their design sucks ever since they went to the split headlights/taillights thing.
The BMW I won’t even comment because it makes m…BARRRFFF…Shit. Too late.
The Sun may never set on the British Empire, but it sure looks like twilight for JDM.
I certainly feel like Japan is collectively going to look up after just plodding along for years, head down, and wonder where everyone went as they have been left behind.
Japan’s boom period in the ’70s and ’80s is at odds with it’s entire culture and history since the 1600s and it’s always felt strange that people keep comparing it to that one outlier period. The rest of us keep poking it with a stick mumbling “Do something” while Japan itself is staring at old photographs of 1986 and saying “Damn that was a weird time in my life.”
The thing to note isn’t that Japan’s been in survival mode since 1993. The thing to note is that the U.S. is now in the same position Japan was in circa 1995, right before the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 permanently kneecapped them. They’re a perfect example of what happens when you turn insular yet expect others to pull you forward with their progress.
Interesting thoughts, I wonder if there are any countries at this point that aren’t turning insular as you say? What happens when everyone does that at once, and there is no one left to pull forward with progress?
Small, rapidly developing nations (like Guyana in South America) are probably among the few countries opening up more to the world more rather than turning inwards these days
The world stagnates as the former leaders gatekeep. The formerly rising economic powers get halted and the legacy economic powers stay on top, pushing everyone down like a hydraulic press. This has been the developing situation since at least 2012, although 2020/2021 seems to have cemented it as the only future instead of a possible one.
It may, some time in March.
https://www.mondayeconomist.com/p/british-empire
Good. Fuck’em.
Edit: I just realized the post may be misinterpreted. I mean, screw the colonial masters. Given all the shit they did let them rot in the sea of irrelevance.
How about I would pay $100K to have a car with NONE of this bullshit?
Is Nissan rubbing off on Honda already?
All of the things mentioned here are legitimately and very problematic. But overall, I just can’t get past how boring this thing is. Just devoid of ANY interest whatsoever. It makes the facelifted Model 3 look almost exuberant in comparison. Hell, Sony’s own PS5 has more character and it should be just a goddamn box.
The first problem is that they call themselves a “mobility” company. This is the buzzword that everyone uses when they are trying to sell the idea of a self-driving entertainment consumption device and not, say, an actually useful vehicle that does what people want.
It’s also something most companies seem to be moving away from a bit, and here comes Sony/Honda late to the party on that as well.
The city where I work (and used to live) is building a parking garage downtown that they are branding as a Mobility Center, presumably because the environmental lobby would protest if it was called what it actually is, but are fine with it rebranded, or something. It’s a parking garage with ground level retail, that’s what it is
And just on the rhetorical level, “mobility company” sounds like they’re selling walkers
Those specs are amazing!
If this was 2014.
This isn’t so much a halo model as an admission that Japanese companies are not interested in developing a modern EV. When this inevitably fails to sell, the execs will sagely nod their heads about people not wanting EV’s. Of course it won’t sell when it’s outdone by a Model 3 Highland, much less anything fancier. Then they’ll bin this and go back to the hydrogen vehicles they wanted to develop all along. Pikachu face when those bomb too and BYD/Geely/Great Wall/NIO/etc. snaps them up for cheap.
The i7 is legitimately one of the ugliest sedans you can probably buy today but I guess that is still presence, like an ogre or a fromsoft giant might have
” [It] causes people who can’t spend six figures on a luxury sedan to recoil in fear as it drives past.”
He knew what he was doing with this line haha.
Honestly I think even people who can spend six figures recoil in fear or horror.
That name sounds like they paid Will.I.Am a couple million dollars to come up with it.
Saw this thing in person and it was probably the dumbest car I’ve ever laid eyes on. It has zero reason to exist especially for the price. The front logo is actually a screen and it changes from AFEELA (which is a dumb name) to the logo of whatever you’re consuming in the car and the biggest highlight was a ps5 controller in the center console.
It’s stupid, it basically is a mockery of a car. I’d be shocked if they sell more than a thousand of them.
It’s a Sony. Sony is always overpriced for what you get.
Just be thankful it isn’t Bose, Apple or worse a Nike.
A Nike Sedan would be a Kia Accent for $250k.
So it’s;
Who’s the chief product planner, Max Bialystock?
Excellent comment. I miss Zero Mostel. Gene Wilder, and Dick Shawn. I saw Dick Shawn in a one man play in Boston. I laughed so hard my tears were both of joy and my cracked ribs.
But wait, there is more! It comes with a SUBSCRIPTION for Level 2 ADAS after 3 years! That’s what we have all been clamoring for!
I appreciate that the car looks like an actual product that might ship in 2 years, and not vaporware, but this thing does look like cutting edge from 8 years ago. At that price, good luck selling it.
Honda’s first mistake was pricing it to make them money, an amateur move in the EV world
The way I put it somewhere else was: I feel like this was designed over 10 years ago, stuffed in a basement storage room, and then they pulled it out and buffed it a little, added some apps and screens, and full sent it.
There’s a theory that was the story behind the first Toyota Tercel in 1979-80, which was why it was a Fiat 128-like shoebox sedan or bargain-Volvo-P1800ES hatchback instead of a Rabbit clone. Except for the “apps and screens” part.
I always liked that short trunk it had. Gave it a neat stance.
They set the styling and spent those ten years working on the autonomous driving bit.
Shockingly, their millions spent on development weren’t able to produce anything different what other companies spent billions on and still no Level 3+.
So management came in and said they better have something to sell – at a profit – or everyone is fired and this is what could be made in time.
Afeela, you’re breaking my heart
You’re shaking my confidence daily
Maybe I’m new-fashioned, but to me nothing looks older and more out of date than gigantic grills. The subtle cyberpunk aesthetic of the Sony is cleaner and more modern, and I’m Afeel’in it.
Sony Walkman… hmmm…. I guess they should have named this Sony Driveman