This Afeela EV by Sony and Honda May Be Both Too Old And Too New To Be Viable

Sony has been showcasing an EV prototype car at CES for several years, but it looks like they are close to production this year. Apple considered making EVs but pulled the plug after investing around $1B in the project. Sony moved into a partnership with Honda and now appears ready to release its first car in 2026.

However, the design of the Sony Afeela hasn’t aged well and looks outdated. At the same time, the signature interior capabilities of the car are problematic before Level 4 autonomous driving, and this car is a Level 2+ offering.

Let’s talk about why this car is too old and new for the market.

The BYD Problem

BYD and other Chinese manufacturers are bringing ever-more-affordable, great EVs that vastly undercut Teslas, with the same features. Chinese car companies also seem to be cycling their designs far more quickly than traditional car makers, suggesting that designs in this segment must move to market quickly or be outdated at launch.

Sony has been working on this car for years. While the design resembles a blend of Lucid and Tesla, both car makers have had stable designs for years, making the design language rather dated.

At the high end, BYD cars sell for well under $100K, but this Sony Afeela car will initially be offered for over $100K, effectively pricing it above the Chinese competition it will face in most markets. China is changing the EV game, and Sony appears to be operating off data years out of date.

Design

The Afeela (I'm not a fan of the name) is designed as a rolling living room. Many displays and entertainment opportunities will be critical when we finally have Level 4/5 cars entering the market. However, Level 2+ cars, and the Afeela is expected to be Level 2+, require the driver to stay engaged and not be distracted while driving. Thus, the multiple screens in the Afeela can’t legally be used to their full entertainment potential until the car is parked.

Sony lost to Apple because it embraced Digital Rights Management (DRM) while Apple didn’t, and Apple took the market for MP3 players from Sony. Sony and many Japanese firms have had this problem historically; they feel they need to parent their customers so that they will conform to legal behavior.

This means Sony tends to overprotect the drivers and passengers, which could be great if you have kids but not so much if you want the freedom to make your own choices. The resulting rigid rules and hard-wired protections will likely upset the initial buyers, making it difficult for Sony to build advocacy for its brand in cars.

The Sony Brand

The Sony brand was robust in quality from the 60s to the 90s. However, it fell sharply this century, mainly due to a lack of focus on technology and user experience. They still build good products but don’t seem to have the halo of quality and exclusiveness they enjoyed in the days of the Sony receivers, tape players, and Trinitron TVs. Sony still makes car stereos, but they are no longer considered a leading brand, and the aftermarket car stereo business has declined over the years because too many car stereos are designed into cars these days and nearly impossible to replace with anything but another unit from the carmaker.

Thus, the Sony brand will likely not play that well with cars since the brand's connection has always been weak (they just aren’t in the car business) and has gotten weaker over the last several decades.

Performance

The performance of the Sony car in terms of range and power would be decent if the car had come out last decade. Still, now 300 miles of range is on the low side for cars coming in 2026, and Sony doesn’t appear to be pushing for a lot of power, suggesting acceleration will be towards the middle back of the pack for cars in the Afeela price range.

And even if they upped the performance, Sony isn’t a performance brand; it is a quality brand but quality concerning entertainment, not transportation. One interesting aspect of the car is that many of the features are supported through paid subscriptions, initially prepaid, but eventually needing to charge monthly after the first 3 years of ownership, and car buyers have largely rejected this subscription model for anything other than connectivity, which is the one exception.

In the end this car feels like the car itself was designed for the market as it existed around a decade ago in terms of performance and appearance, but with an interior that won’t be viable until around a decade from now when we get Level 4 autonomous driving at scale.

Wrapping Up:

The exterior design is about a decade out of date, the interior features are about a decade too early to be fully appreciated, and Sony’s brand isn’t yet connected to automobiles. This means this car will either need to be redesigned so it better fits today’s market, or it will need a ton of marketing to get people to see the car for its potential and get over the problem of the wave of subscriptions you’ll need if you keep the car over 3 years.

I don’t yet see this as a formula for success. Instead, it feels a bit like how they lost the MP3 player market to Apple. They don’t seem to get that EV drivers will want better performance and will not be able to use all of the screens in this car very well until the self-driving technology matures. 

I think Sony and Honda need to rethink this effort if they don’t want another embarrassing failure or to prove Apple’s decision to abandon this market was right.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery developments. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.