Sony Honda Mobility used CES 2024 to show off a revised version of its Afeela prototype, which is getting closer to manufacturing. This elegant electric automobile has undergone numerous notable alterations, giving us a solid sense of what to expect when it officially comes in 2025.
The Afeela has a more polished appearance, beginning with a new front-end design. The lower bumper now sports a sleek black strip, LED badging, a full-width light bar, and wrap-around headlights. Traditional side mirrors and slightly bigger roof pillars, albeit with a gloss black finish and flush installation, were most likely required in the transition from concept to production vehicle.
The Afeela has a beefier bumper and an active rear spoiler in the back, while the trunk lid keeps its elegant appearance. The general look of the vehicle plainly shows Lucid Air and Toyota Crown inspirations.
Significant cabin modifications are also revealed for the Afeela. While the yoke-style steering wheel and a huge dashboard-spanning screen remain from the initial prototype, the current iteration adds a larger center console with dual wireless charging stations.
The vehicle’s driver assistance features will be powered by artificial intelligence (AI), in collaboration with several unnamed sensors. Sony Honda Mobility intends to use Vision Transformer, a deep learning model specializing in image recognition, for path planning, together with a redundancy mechanism to ensure safety. These systems will be powered by Qualcomm chipsets.
Sony Honda Mobility has collaborated with Epic Games to develop immersive displays capable of replicating exterior ambient conditions for people, weather, and other cars. Using the Unreal Engine 5.3 game engine, this collaboration could open the way for in-car gaming experiences that are a cut beyond what is already on the market.
Sony Honda Mobility has bigger hopes for gamers, announcing a partnership with Polyphony Digital to bring the electric Afeela to Gran Turismo 7 later this year. In addition, the company is collaborating with Microsoft on the development of a “conversational personal agent” based on Azure OpenAI software, with the goal of establishing itself as a leader in sophisticated digital assistants.
To recap, the Afeela has permanent magnet synchronous motors on both the front and rear axles, each providing 241 horsepower, for a total output of 482 hp. The vehicle’s range has not been specified by Sony Honda Mobility, however it can be charged at up to 150 kW on a DC charger. Surprisingly, the Afeela has increased somewhat in length, now measuring 4,915 mm, but all other measurements remain unchanged from the prototype.
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