HeadlinesBriefing favicon HeadlinesBriefing.com

Sony and Honda officially cancel the Afeela 1 EV

Engadget •
×

The Sony-Honda Afeela 1 electric sedan is dead, canceled after a protracted six-year development cycle. Revealed as the Sony Vision S in 2020, the production model aimed to fuse PlayStation entertainment with mobility but arrived with a $100,000 price tag and about 300 miles of range, specs already eclipsed by competitors like the Lucid Air. Its long tease and outdated technical targets severely undermined its market viability from the start.

Its demise was sealed by a perfect storm of external factors. The 2020 EV boom, fueled by generous incentives and anticipated regulations, collapsed in the US amid political backlash, terminated federal rebates, and tariff chaos. Simultaneously, the promised era of hands-off autonomy failed to materialize, gutting the car's core value proposition of selling Sony's media ecosystem as a transformative in-car experience.

Beyond market timing, the Afeela 1 suffered from bland design and uncompetitive luxury features for its price. The final blow came from partner Honda, which scrapped its own affordable 0 Series EV platform that would have underpinned the Afeela. With that production foundation gone, the project became untenable. The cancellation ends a high-profile experiment in merging consumer electronics and automotive manufacturing.