The Sony Afeela Was Doomed to Fail

Sony-Honda is no longer Afeelin’ it. This week, the Japanese associated task that for years had promised to bring a video-game sensibility to a digital-first electrical car was abruptly canceled. The 2 companies snuffed retired 1 vehicle, the Afeela 1, that was archetypal announced 3 years ago, and besides halted enactment connected different exemplary nether development.

Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) pinned the blasted connected Honda’s larger EV pivot. Earlier this month, the automaker canceled its “0 Series” lineup of electrical vehicles aft posting a $15.7 cardinal nonaccomplishment amid bigger changes successful the planetary EV market. Because of those shifts, the associated task wrote successful a property release, “SHM volition not beryllium capable to utilize definite technologies and assets that were primitively planned to beryllium provided by Honda.”

Reservation holders volition get afloat refunds, the institution said, and "discussions" astir the aboriginal of the Sony-Honda concern “will continue.” So the PlayStation-first car of everyone’s dreams whitethorn inactive beryllium acold up connected the horizon, maybe.

The Afeela, though, was a weird acceptable from the start. Let’s enactment speech the unusual sanction and its cornucopia of associated pun opportunities. (We volition judge late-breaking submissions successful the comments.) For 1 thing, the Afeela 1’s merchandise was interminable.

Sony archetypal announced its precursor, past called the Vision-S, backmost successful 2020. The Afeela itself was the prima of the Sony-Honda amusement astatine CES 4 consecutive times. A “near production” refined prototype made an quality successful Las Vegas conscionable this past January. But by then, the full conception felt a spot stale. A “computer connected wheels” was benignant of caller successful 2020; now, a “software-defined vehicle” is the assumed starting constituent for each caller car.

The vehicle’s specs, erstwhile announced successful 2025, didn’t bash the marque immoderate favors. The Afeela 1 was an electrical sedan successful the US market, wherever electrical SUVs are the preferred profile. It had an estimated scope of 300 miles, piddling compared to different caller luxury EVs similar the Lucid Air (420 miles), the Mercedes-Benz EQS (390 miles), and the Rivian R1 (410 miles). On that luxury point: The Afeela 1’s $90,000 terms made it peculiarly uncompetitive-feeling arsenic different automakers kept announcing caller models. The Afeela 1 was slated for debut successful precocious 2026, but lone for buyers successful California.

It’s an unfastened question whether the Afeela 1’s amusement selling constituent is thing consumers privation oregon request from a car close now. The sedan’s promised autonomous driving capabilities were expected to beryllium imminent, and truthful the car was stuffed to support each nondrivers bully and distracted: screens connected the dash and successful beforehand of rider seats; built-in PlayStation Remote Play; ocular “themes”; tons of in-car apps. True self-driving functionality, though, has yet to travel to idiosyncratic cars. Do radical truly privation to beryllium successful their stationary vehicles and game? Now it’s a question for the farther-off future.

But Sony-Honda’s top situation whitethorn person been America’s stop-start attack to electrical vehicles. Consumer uptake of battery-powered cars has stalled since the US national authorities chopped enactment for some EV-curious customers and those assembling EVs and their components successful American factories. BloombergNEF, which estimated successful 2024 that EVs would relationship for astir fractional of caller US car income successful 2030, reduced its projection to 27 percent past year—a chopped of 14 cardinal car sales.

Honda, already a late-bloomer successful the EV space, intelligibly doesn’t judge that it’s worthy spending gobs of wealth close present to drawback up with the industry’s battery-powered leaders. The bittersweet communicative of the Afeela, then, is astir apt a C-plot successful the darker communicative of the US EV market. We’re Afeelin’ blue, too.