After years of build-up, Yasuhide Mizuno, chair and CEO of Sony Honda Mobility, took the stage at CES 2025 to announce that the Afeela 1 joint venture between Sony and Honda is now available for reservation, with cars scheduled to begin arriving in 2026.
At last year’s CES, the car was driven onto stage using a PlayStation 5 Dual Sense Control, and this year a “near-final” version of the vehicle was called onto stage using a voice command to highlight the auto’s Afeela Personal Agent.
Sony describes Afeela as a bold step forward in mobility, creating an entirely new driving experience designed to connect, entertain, and inspire, and we now know the price of the new smart electric vehicle. The Afeela 1 will be offered in two trims, with the entry Origin at $89,900 and the premium Signature at $102,900. Both vehicles are designed to “make mobility a creative entertainment space,” and will feature seamless end-to-end driving support using Afeela Intelligent Drive. The vehicle’s entire UI is powered by Unreal Engine and will present real-time navigation and safety information in easy-to-understand visuals, including an immersive 3D map.
The vehicle will include a complimentary three-year subscription that will provide Afeela Intelligent Drive (Level 2+ ADAS), an immersive entertainment selection, a customizable theme, and the Afeela Personal Agent. As you’d expect from Sony, the vehicle is packed with technology, featuring 40 sensors, 800 TOPS (Tera Operation Per Second) of computing power, 5G connectivity, an immersive entertainment system, and a 1 kWh battery with an estimated range of 300 miles.
For $200 you can reserve your vehicle today at shm-afeela.com, though these are currently limited to California residents,
Sony Group president, Hiroki Totoki, brought NFL commissioner Roger Goodell onto the stage to discuss Sony’s ongoing technology partnership with the NFL. They stated that the last Super Bowl used over 160 Sony cameras and that the NFL is always looking for the best tools for players, staff, and coaches on the field. In line with that, Totoki showed a sample of the new coach’s headset Sony has developed with the NFL, which will make its debut in the 2025 season.
Enabling and powering the creative community also remains at the forefront of what Sony does, and Totoki stated that “imagination and creativity drive everything we do.” Sony continues to be invested in supporting creative talent, developing tools for creators that will bring new stories to life, and enable greater creative freedom.
By putting new tools and technologies into the hands of artists, previous limitations have been removed, giving filmmakers and creators more flexibility to tell their stories to bring their visions to life. This includes a new PXO Akira vehicle processing system introduced by Pixomondo’s COO, Jonny Slow, that will help creators shoot vehicles far more safely in any setting.
Sony also showed a new 3D CG production solution, XYN, an integrated software and hardware solution that will support every aspect of spatial content creation. It captures and converts real objects and spaces into high-quality 3D assets, allowing creators to easily bring them into their work, as well as improving motion capture technology.
Asad Qizilbash, head of PlayStation Productions, and Ashley Brucks, president of Screen Gems, took the stage to discuss the success Sony has had expanding on the powerful stories from such gaming franchises as Uncharted, Gran Turismo, The Last of Us, and Twisted Metal. They noted that successfully adapting a game to film comes down to respecting the source material, and Sony works directly with the game creators to focus on what fans love about the game and experience, taking the essence of what makes the game great while building it out to offer something fresh and exciting in a brand-new story.
In line with that, they announced Columbia Pictures is in the early stages of developing a film adaption of Horizon Zero Dawn along with a film adaptation of Helldivers 2. The popular horror title Until Dawn has a film scheduled for release this April, and Season 2 of The Last of Us will be returning to HBO in April.
Totoki discussed the desire to bring “kando” — the universal desire to experience joy, wonder, and amazement — back into the world, and said Sony aims to empower creativity by bringing new stories to life, to expand IP into unique and engaging experiences, and create infinite realities for everyone to create a boundless sense of kando.
“The future of our business is creativity,” Totoki stated, “and it always will be.”
