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January 7, 2026
Jay RameySony and Honda's EV venture previews a crossover follow-up to the Afeela sedan, but a lot of things have to go right before 2028.
The Afeela 1 sedan has only entered trial production in Ohio days ago, but Sony Honda Mobility Inc. is already giving the CES audience a preview of what could come next.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s a crossover concept, featuring much of the same design language the company’s debut model first shown in 2023. Dubbed the Afeela Prototype 2026, the crossover features a coupe-shaped profile and a minimalist exterior with a contrasting black roof and pillars.
“We aim to deliver a new model based on this prototype to American customers as early as 2028,” said SHM CEO Yasuhide Mizuno in very brief remarks.
The CEO stayed mum on the concept’s specs, though if it directly adopts the sedan’s powertrain it could feature the same 91-kWh battery and dual-motor layout good for 400 hp and about 300 miles of range. The sedan itself will go on sale later this year with a starting price of $89,900.
If $89,900 sounds like a lot of money for these numbers, especially in a sedan in 2026, that’s because it will be. These numbers, especially the price, would have certainly made a bit more sense in 2016.
Needless to say, quite a few things have to go right with the Afeela sedan before anyone sees a production version of the crossover in 2028.
Sales of the sedan will launch solely in California at the end of this year, before expanding to Arizona in 2027. So it will hardly be a nationwide launch, with Sony Honda Mobility Inc. (SHM) planning to rely on a network of Studio and Delivery Hubs in a number of cities in California to offer demo drives.
As such, SHM will be focusing a very narrow slice of the EV market and won’t be chasing volume from the start, with the two companies intent on getting everything right on a smaller scale before going wider.
SHM is betting that the Afeela sedan’s electronics suite, including 12.3-inch screen for the driver and a 28.5-inch display for the passenger, as well as two additional 12.9-inch screens for rear-seat passengers will set it apart from the competition, while also offering a Level 2+ ADAS system with hand-free driving capability. The latter will use no fewer than 18 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, 9 radars and a lidar sensor to provide eyes-on driving on highways, with the potential for Level 3 capabilities down the road.
Of course, since Afeela will be stuffed with Sony tech inside, the Playstation will be part of the experience as well, at least for those not doing the driving.
“As we’ve recently confirmed, we’re bringing Remote Play to cars for the first time. Right on to the Afeela’s entertainment system,” Eric Lempel, SVP Business and Product, Sony Interactive Entertainment said during the crossover concept’s reveal at CES 2026. “With a dual sense controller and a good network connection, Afeela becomes another way you can pick up and play the games you love.”
“It’s for those moments when you have some downtime in your car, like when you’re waiting to pick someone up, or if you want to keep passengers entertained on a very long road trip.”
Sony’s vast catalog of game franchises will make its way into Afeela cars in other modes as well, including wallpapers and e-motor sounds from Gran Turismo and Astro Bot.
“Together, we are crafting a unique audio-visual interactive experience that will appeal to gaming fans,” Lempel summed up the effort.
It would be interesting to see SHM’s customer research, perhaps in the form of a Venn diagram of buyers of six-figure EVs, and those who feel like they can’t leave the house without a Playstation controller. (Of course, most of these will be parents trying to keep their kids quiet at all costs on the commute to school or between endless scheduled activities).
But whether these will be parents or deep-pocketed Playstation fanatics, they won’t be buying Afeela EVs from Honda dealerships.
This direct-to-consumer model, which at first glance might be trying to replicate Tesla’s sales and service approach from scratch, will impose its own costs and challenges on SHM.
But the automaker isn’t putting all of its EV eggs into one basket.
Honda will be launching its own parallel EV effort at the same time, with the far more adventurously styled Honda 0 Series sedan due this year as well. That particular sedan will be a volume effort, by contrast, albeit it will face distinctly different competitors in a segment still dominated by the Tesla Model 3.
In all, Honda will be taking no shortage of risks in 2026 when it comes to EVs, but its two main efforts will face very different paths and challenges.
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