Sony Demos New Afeela EV in CES Style by Driving It With a PS5 Controller
The Sony and Honda joint venture got an extra-special presentation at CES 2024.
In Sony's keynote address at CES 2024 on Sunday, the electronics giant focused on 3D creation and developing synergy between its media, gaming and entertainment products. Nothing demonstrated that last point better than when Izumi Kawanishi, president of Sony Honda Mobility, reintroduced the company's new Afeela electric car by driving it onstage using a PlayStation 5 DualSense controller.
You probably won't be able to park your Sony EV with a game controller when the brand eventually starts building the Afeela. Kawanishi was quick to point out that this was merely a tech demo. This is the third CES appearance of the electric car and it pretty much looks the same as last we saw it, so it makes sense that a flashy introduction was necessary to grab our attention.
However, Sony and Honda executives went on to share even more details about the Afeela's development and we now know more about what unique entertainment and safety technologies the joint venture between the Japanese companies will bring to the road.
It turns out that the Afeela has more in common with your PS5 than just the controller. For starters, it uses Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5.3 to power the 3D graphics and visuals that fill its massive, ultrawide dashboard display. Drivers and passengers will be treated to detailed 3D maps, virtual spaces and augmented reality views of the world around the Afeela, which can have internet-sourced metadata overlaid. Media from Sony's various TV, movie and gaming catalogs are also able to be tapped to keep passengers entertained on the road, and when parked and charging.
The electric sedan makes use of Unreal Engine 5.3 to power its dashboard infotainment graphics.
Unreal Engine is also being used to render the simulated environments used to train the Afeela's multicamera driver assistance systems. UE5's highly realistic graphics are also being used to improve safety. The game engine's highly realistic simulated environments allow for improved accuracy when training the visual models and neural network processing that power the EV's driver aid functions. And because it wouldn't be a CES 2024 debut without a dash of AI tech, Sony Honda Mobility also announced a new partnership with Microsoft to bring the software giant's Azure AI cloud-scale computing tech to bear in the Afeela's development.
UE5 is also used to generate the detailed simulations used to train Afeela's camera-based driver safety tech.
Sony rounded out the Afeela presentation with a hint that it's partnering with Sony's in-house game studio Polyphony Digital, developer of the Gran Turismo racing simulator and now film franchise. The fledgling automaker was vague about what we could expect from this union, stating only that it's working on a way to "bring together virtual and real-world experiences."
Footage of the Afeela racing along what I'm sure is Grand Valley Highway One -- a fantasy track from the GT series -- seems to indicate that our first behind-the-wheel experience with the upcoming EV may be in Gran Turismo 7 sometime soon.
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