It’s a Sony.

It’s also a Honda, of course. And it looks a lot more like a Honda than a Sony, even if it does look a little bit like the cassette deck on your mum’s old hi-fi system.

This is the new electric Afeela, and it’s what happens when two Japanese industrial giants collaborate to take on Tesla and produce an affordable electric vehicle.

This isn’t some fictional concept car, full of promises but never to see the light of day. Pre-orders of the Afeela are due in the first half of 2025 (in North America, at least) and should be on the road in 2026. The sedan, pictured, is the first in a range of EVs Sony and Honda are set to produce as part of this collaboration. An SUV and a compact car are set to follow in 2027 and 2028, respectively.

Despite the Afeela heading for mass production in the very near future, Sony Honda Mobility (the name of the collaboration) has remained very tight-lipped about the vehicle specifications.

Let’s start with the bit that feels like a Honda

We know the Afeela sedan is about the size of a Tesla Model S or BMW i5, at 4895 mm long, 1900 mm wide and 1460 mm tall, with a double-wishbone air-spring suspension at the front and a multilink suspension in the back.

We understand it will be all-wheel drive, powered by two electric motors (one on each axle) each producing 180 kW of power. There’s no news on range just yet, but there’ll be a 91 kWh battery pack and the company says the Afeela will have fast-charging abilities.

Naturally, it has plenty of driver assistance technology (although plans for digital wing mirrors appear to have been dropped between an early concept and the latest version).

The Afeela has LiDAR sensors in the top of the windscreen and a range of cameras and radars, delivering Level 2/2+ driving assistance (up to Level 3 with autonomous driving.

Now let’s look at the bit that sounds like Sony

The Afeela is set to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis—a “set of cloud-connected platforms for telematics and connectivity, the digital cockpit, and driver assistance and autonomy”. It’s the digital brain of the car—processing up to 800 trillion operations a second— providing AI systems, personalisation and a range of intuitive technologies.

From here, it all starts to sound a little bit like a PlayStation.

Sony Honda Mobility has teamed up with Epic Games (the company behind the immensely popular video game Fortnite) to “seamlessly integrate real and virtual worlds” and explore “new entertainment possibilities through digital innovations such as the metaverse”.

What does that look like? According to the website DesignBoom, “this means playful visual additives, such as monsters popping out of buildings or adding under-the-sea effects in the driving screen” in the 3D mapping technology.

It’s widely understood that the next Afeela prototype will even include a Gran Turismo 7 racing simulator.

Sony Honda Mobility has also roped in Microsoft, which is providing its Azure OpenAI to co-develop a “conversational personal agent”.

DesignBoom claims: “The voiceenable set-up with a human-like accent and tone allows the driver to talk to their personal mobility agent as if they were chatting with a real person. Other technologies installed in the cabin include large infotainment screens for everyone, a noise-cancelling interior resembling soundproof cinemas, and Sony’s spatial audio throughout the seats and cabin.”

The interior of the Afeela is quite minimalist, dominated by a yoke steering wheel and large digital driver display. In fact, the whole dashboard is a digital screen, presumably to make the most of the gaming capabilities (and content screening abilities) of all that tech.

There’s no word yet on how much the Afeela will cost but there are some suggestions it’ll be around US$45,000 (around A$70,000 and NZ$75,000).

The Sony Honda Mobility team claim the “minimal decorative lines and form” of the Afeela reference spaceships. Spaceships, presumably, designed by the same bloke who designed your mum’s old hi-fi system.

While it won’t actually play your favourite old cassette for you, the Afeela will let you play just about everything else. After all, it’s not just a Honda, it’s a Sony.