It’s happening—Sony’s electric vehicle will finally make its debut on January 5 at CES 2023. Developed in conjunction with Honda under the Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) banner, the car will be the first fruit of a collaboration that was only finalised in October.
Not much can be gleaned from the announcement, but it was previously announced that the company’s first model—which will be built at one of Honda’s North American plants—will only be open for pre-orders in 2025. As such, the car that will be shown at CES will almost certainly be a concept rather than the actual production car.
The car will also offer limited Level 3 autonomous driving (meaning you’ll be able to take your hands off the wheel and eyes off the road) and urban Level 2+ (likely hands off) semi-autonomous driving. The high-performance chip set to offer this capability is planned to have computing power exceeding 800 tera operations per second (TOPS). A new UI will also be developed for this car.
Sony has used the past three editions of CES to showcase electric vehicle concepts, gradually revealing its plan to enter the automotive space. Back in 2020, the company revealed the Vision-S, an unusually well-thought-out electric sedan that featured its key technologies, such as cameras, displays, 360 Reality Audio and even PlayStation Remote Play—melded to a seemingly production-ready exterior and interior, a 536hp two-motor all-wheel-drive powertrain and air suspension.
All the while, Sony categorically denied any intention to build the Vision-S, insisting that it was merely preparing its technologies to be ready for autonomous driving. This continued despite announcing exactly a year later that it had been testing a camouflaged prototype on public roads—something usually only reserved for cars entering production.
But this year, the jig was up. Sony not only revealed a second car at CES 2022, the Vision-S 02 SUV, but it also finally confirmed its worst-kept secret—its intention to enter the EV space. Two months later, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Honda, then entered a joint venture to form SHM in June.
