Sony Honda Mobility Inc. (SHM), the joint venture announced in March by Sony Group Corp. and Honda Motor Co., Ltd. and made official in June, revealed its new Afeela vehicle brand name and unveiled a prototype of its first EV (electric vehicle) at CES 2023. Representative Director, Chairman and CEO Yasuhide Mizuno did the honors at a press conference, explaining how SHM will strive to become a mobility tech company in line with a corporate purpose to “move people, through the pursuit of innovation with diverse inspirations.”

“We aim to create a new mobility lifestyle by leading people’s hearts and minds towards an open, pleasant, and exciting experience,” said Mizuno. “To realize this, we aim to revolutionize the mobility space as a mobility tech company, alongside like-minded people who are pioneering a new future with creativity, through cutting-edge technology, and with passion.”

With the Afeela brand, SHM is literally putting “feel” at the center of the mobility experience.

“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,” he said.

 

Simple, experience-focused design

The design of the Afeela prototype aims to create “new value standards” for mobility to address what the company says is the reaching of an inflection point where the key elements of cars for users are shifting from power and performance to software, networks, and user experiences.

This is reflected on the prototype’s exterior with a “media bar” replacing the traditional grille, which allows it to express itself to surrounding people using light, enabling interactive communication between mobility and people.

The interior design is based on gentle, rounded shapes wrapping the occupants in a soft cocoon. The atmosphere is meant to be comfortable and designed to be as simple as possible, minimizing distracting ornamentation and colors.

“We aim to realize a people-centric experience that provides functionality that people want,” said Mizuno.

While not much detail was provided on many of the underlying technologies, SHM did release the prototype’s dimensions and a few other specs.

It is 192.7 in (4895 mm) long, 74.8 in (1900 mm) wide, and 57.5 in (1460 mm) tall on a wheelbase of 118.1 in (3000 mm). The all-wheel-drive car seats five passengers, rides on front 245/40R21 and rear 275/35R21 tires, and is suspended by front double wishbones and rear multi-links.

A key enabler of the prototype’s demonstration of “a new relationship between people and mobility,” while realizing safety and security, is its impressive total of 45 cameras and sensors inside and outside the vehicle. The in-car cameras and ToF (time-of-flight) sensors detect the occupant’s and car’s situation to help avoid accidents.

The overriding design philosophy of the car is based on SHM’s value-added concepts of 3As: autonomy, augmentation, affinity.

 

Autonomy for safety and security

The autonomy concept is focused on a pleasant mobility space founded on safe and secure technologies. The company aims to develop Level 3 automated drive under limited conditions and to enable Level 2+ driver assistance in more situations such as urban driving.

SHM plans to use SoCs (systems on chips) from the Qualcomm Technologies Inc. Snapdragon Digital Chassis family for 800 TOPS (tera operations per second) maximum compute performance. The SoCs will enable key features in the areas of AD/ADAS (automated driving/advanced driver assistance system), HMI/IVI (human-machine interface/in-vehicle infotainment), and telematics.

“The car is becoming increasingly connected and intelligent, and how we experience our vehicles is changing,” said Cristiano Amon, President and CEO, of Qualcomm Inc., who joined Kenichiro Yoshida, Sony President and CEO, at its CES 2023 press conference. “The Snapdragon Digital Chassis serves as the foundation for next-generation software-defined vehicles, enabling new mobility experiences and services. We are excited to collaborate with Sony Honda Mobility to deliver on our shared vision for the car of the future.”

At CES 2023, Qualcomm Technologies introduced a new concept vehicle showcasing how the Snapdragon Digital Chassis solution that integrates technologies from a diverse ecosystem of companies to deliver experiences including immersive infotainment, driver assistance, and enhanced safety.

Combined with Qualcomm’s horizontal connected services platform called Car-to-Cloud, automakers can scale experiences across a range of vehicle tiers and personalize them for each occupant. They can also deliver feature upgrades and connected services on-demand throughout the vehicle’s lifecycle, allowing for an extended consumer relationship with ongoing revenue opportunities. This includes services packages including device configuration, data insights, and beyond all driven through APIs.

 

Augmentation for integrating real and virtual

For the augmentation portion of the Afeela prototype, a new HMI will be introduced, providing a personalized in-car experience through cloud-service connectivity. The brand aims to evolve the mobility space into entertainment and emotional space by integrating real and virtual worlds while exploring new entertainment possibilities through digital innovations such as the metaverse.

With Afeela, SHM will also provide intuitive navigation through augmented reality (AR) using its sensing technology. It aims to meld the mobility and entertainment spaces by integrating real and virtual worlds beginning with an Epic Games partnership.

“At Epic we are passionate about cars and the automotive industry, and we couldn’t be happier to see Sony and Sony Honda Mobility enter the innovative world of mobility and automotive technology,” said Kim Libreri, CTO at Epic Games.“Together with them, we look forward to bringing you exciting updates within this revolutionary space.”

Epic Games, founded in 1991 by CEO Tim Sweeney, is seeing the automotive entertainment potential for its brand of entertainment, especially with its Unreal Engine that integrates real-time, 3D visualization, and the cloud to bring its world into cars.

In October at Unreal Fest in New Orleans, the company welcomed creators from across industries including automotive. Rendering in Unreal Engine for automotive can take many paths, from quick design visualization and interactive configurators to final path-traced marketing images. At the event, attendees heard how BMW uses the engine to deliver experiences for customers and how Epic Games and Ford together are developing the future of HMIs, and what real-time technology brings to connected vehicles.

 

Affinity to build community

For the affinity concept, SHM will build an open community around Afeela for not only customers but also its automotive industry partners, leading players in other industries, and the creative community that it hopes will take on the challenge to create new mobility entertainment. The brand’s initiatives in new services will evolve and grow through continuous software updates via the 5G network.

SHM will develop the Afeela production model based on the CES prototype. Pre-orders are planned to begin in the first half of 2025, sales by the end of 2025, and delivery from the spring of 2026 in North America.