Hands on with Sony’s AFEELA prototype – a car you can play PS5 in?!
Sony Honda Mobility is touring around with its AFEELA prototype, and we got a chance to have a look at it up close in LA.
AFEELA is the official name of Sony’s fledgling electric car brand, which Sony first showed off as the “VISION-S” at CES in 2020, and has evolved bit by bit every year since then, now with an eventual release date of 2026. Since then, it has formed a joint venture with Honda, called Sony Honda Mobility (SHM), to bring the car to market.
The AFEELA booth was set up in Westfield Topanga, north of LA, where the car will be on display until April 1. We got a chance to have a sit in it and get a technology demo of some of the interior and UI features, though it was still quite limited and in prototype form.
To recap, Sony’s concept was originally stated to have 400kW (536hp) dual-motor all-wheel-drive, 0-100km/h (0-62mph) in 4.8 seconds, and a top speed of 240km/h (149mph). That said, we don’t know if those are still the specs they’re aiming for. And we still have no information on price or battery size (though they have said they want to offer ten-year leases), but we do have two more years until this project bears fruit after all.
And things could change a lot before then. While the original VISION-S concept was pitched with the specs above, we haven’t heard them mentioned since. Sony did show off the car doing road testing in Europe in 2021, but ever since the joint venture with Honda, Sony’s demonstrations have been characterized more as tech demos of potential in-car experiences for a software-defined vehicle.
So… this was sort of a car demo, but more of a technology demo (as they reminded us many times). Despite being only 2 years away, anything that we saw could and probably will change, so keep all of that in mind.
As I and another journalist arrived for a tour, our tour guide stepped aside for a moment and then brought us around to the front of the car, where we saw the first of the AFEELA’s neat features: a customizable front “media bar” which greeted us for our tour.
This feature is currently controlled by a phone app for demo purposes, and responded quickly as our guide swiped through various display possibilities. These included various themes, a battery display to check your charge level, or messages that could be relevant while driving (e.g. flashing “WARNING” when hazard lights are active).
Heading into the car, the doors are intended to have facial recognition (or perhaps were opened by our tour guide furtively pressing a button on his phone app) and are auto-opening and closing, though there is also a small button at the edge of the door that we could use to open it.
From the driver’s seat, the cockpit view is pretty satisfying. Visibility felt good and the cabin is quite spacious. The yoke steering wheel – which may or may not be standard or an option, SHM hasn’t decided yet – does offer a nice clear view of the instrument cluster. And it may use steer by wire, though that again has not yet been decided.
The giant wraparound screen offers important instruments in front of the driver (along with a HUD, which wasn’t activated for the demo), and a wide screen for nav or entertainment in the center and in front of the passenger.
Various apps can be brought up on the screen, and swiped between middle-screen and passenger-side (whether or how they’ll be active while the car is in motion is still being investigated), and themes are customizable and can affect the car’s ambient lighting, exterior media bar, and even motor sounds (and in my opinion, they better let us turn them off).
The side portions of the screen are for digital side mirrors, though the car is also expected to come with physical side mirrors as US regulators do not allow all-digital mirrors yet. The rear-view mirror is a hybrid optical/digital mirror, but wasn’t active in the prototype.
Many of the apps were not active in the tech demo, but we got a general sense of the snappiness and design of this (albeit restricted) version of the UI. And, like we’ve seen from many of the “EV startup” companies, it worked a lot better than what you generally expect out of traditional automaker UIs. Chalk one up to Sony’s software expertise here, they are clearly taking the lead on the in-car experience parts of this joint venture (and plan to offer over-the-air updates, something that is very popular among Tesla/Rivian owners, that traditional automakers are slowly getting around to implementing).
We got a short chance to demo playing Horizon Zero Dawn: Forbidden West in the car, but given how wide and short the screen is, the window was quite small. Maybe it would look better on the back seat screens.
And, it doesn’t actually run on the in-car system – we were using the PlayStation 5’s “remote play” feature, which lets you stream gameplay over the internet from a PS5 connected somewhere off-site. This adds latency depending on your distance from servers and your connection type (i.e., mobile data, from a car), so it’s not great for games with quick action or reaction times, but could work for e.g. story and puzzle games (there also seemed to be some additional latency/bluetooth interference when holding the controller in a lower position, but again, prototype).
That said, one weird thing about the in-car experience is that it was really hot in there. As soon as we closed the doors, it felt like the heater was on, and the touchscreen was also quite warm to the touch. It’s clear that Sony has packed some serious computing power in the vehicle, and that computer seems to have been really pumping out the processor cycles to ensure the best UI demo. Heat management is still on the to-do list.
Moving to the back seat, each seat has a large screen for the rear passengers, which will eventually offer various features, but as-is only showed us a static image of a map (very useful for backseat drivers) and a button to bring up an app-switcher with several inactive apps. You’ll eventually be able to use it for games, music, movies, climate control functions and so on.
Back seat space was quite good, with exceptional legroom and just-about adequate headroom. With the front seat set to a comfortable position for a 6′ driver, I still had a good ~5 inches of knee room, suggesting that legroom won’t be a problem in the vehicle. Headroom isn’t quite as expansive, but was still fine for someone like myself who is prone to slouching. And our tour guide was about ~6’3″ and seemed to fit alright, as you can see in this video.
We didn’t get to see in the trunk, or under the hood (frunk?), or in the charge ports – which are on both sides of the vehicle, but we don’t know if they’ll use NACS or not (but they had better, considering literally everyone else will soon).
The AFEELA will have a full suite of sensing abilities for safety and driver assistance, with the goal of achieving “level 2+ or level 3” autonomy, according to the reps we talked to (though previously SHM has said level 3/4). The difference between levels 2 and 3 is quite significant, though – the only level 3 system on (some) US roads currently is Mercedes DRIVE PILOT, and the big jump here is that level 3 systems can take responsibility for the driving task in certain situations, whereas level 2 cars are always the responsibility of a human driver.
So not only is there a big step between those two, but there’s a lot of variation within level 2 systems. SHM says that it will utilize machine learning to develop its autonomous software – which is a bit of a nod to that AI buzzword it dropped a lot at CES this year, but which is indeed an effective way to develop autonomous software.
That said, currently, even with the newest “mind-blowing” version of FSD, Teslas are still level 2 vehicles that require human drivers. And Tesla has a lot more driving data to comb through with its machine learning algorithms (which it only recently started doing with FSD v12) than SHM (or anyone) has. So we think it’s ambitious to suggest the AFEELA will be level 3 capable anywhere near its 2026 release target.
But – SHM does have more sensors than Tesla does. Tesla has waffled between using vision-only, vision-plus-radar, and vision/radar/ultrasonics systems, but AFEELA uses all of those plus LiDAR – complete with a LiDAR “taxi bump” above the windshield.
And SHM does have Honda behind it, which means that all of these in-car experiences that Sony showed off will be paired with Honda’s global-scale manufacturing and distribution network. The plan is to build the car in Ohio (which means potential US tax credit availability, though SHM hasn’t announced a battery supplier yet – though Honda is co-invested in an Ohio facility with LG), though Sony would like to establish direct customer relationships rather than going through dealers. That decision is still somewhat up in the air, though – either option has its positives and negatives.
Now – as I’ve mentioned many times, and as SHM told me many times, this was more of a tech demo than anything. We asked SHM a lot of questions about what will happen with this car, and they couldn’t really answer many of them (including no comment on the SUV variant). There are a lot of decisions still to be made – or at least, that have not yet been publicized – in the next 2 years before this car hits the road. As you’ve probably noticed throughout the above text.
The sheer scale of the decisions that still need to be made does make us question whether 2026 is still in the cards. Sony has been working on this car for a long time now – since before 2020 – so 2026 isn’t an unreasonable timeline in that respect. And I’ve long been impressed by the gradual nature of Sony’s, and now SHM’s, reveals about this vehicle. They’re not promising the world or anything too unrealistic (well, until this last CES – it got too buzzwordy, with AI and AR and what-have-you), now they just have to execute on what have mostly been realistic goals.
But there’s still a whole lot to do, or at least a whole lot to announce, before we get there. And they’ve said they plan to take preorders in the US starting first half of 2025, so that’s only a year away.
It feels like a daunting task – but unlike other “EV startups,” this one is funded by two of the largest companies in Japan who have tons of experience both in software/UX and auto manufacturing (though perhaps not much in EV manufacturing, yet). So it’s a little different than evaluating a prototype of a starting-from-scratch EV startup. They’ve certainly got the resources to bring this over the line, and we’re excited to see what it looks like when they do.
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Lee Zeldin, titular head of the Environmental “Protection” Agency, officially announced several efforts to harm Americans’ health, increase their fuel costs by tens of billions of dollars per year, and to ensure that US manufacturing be less competitive into the future.
Zeldin called his actions today, mostly in the form of press releases declaring rollbacks of money-saving and pollution reducing measures, “the greatest day of deregulation in US history.”
Between the Obama and Biden administrations, the US saw significant progress on the environmental front, with federal rules cleaning up air and water pollution from power plants and vehicles, encouraging the onshoring of clean manufacturing, and increasing efficiency thus saving Americans money on energy costs.
All in all, the Biden-Harris administration’s policy improvements would save over $250 billion per year and 200k lives, all while making US industry more prepared for the global green transition that is happening now whether you like it or not.
However, that’s all bad news for the enemies of America, and so today, one of them started efforts to reverse all of those positive moves.
Unfortunately for America and the world, the current occupier of the White House is convicted felon Donald Trump, who finally received more votes than his opponent on his third attempt (despite committing treason in 2021, for which there is a clear legal remedy).
And, in what is a common trend, his appointee to the position of Chief Saboteur at the Environmental Destruction Agency is one of the worst people possible for the job: Lee Zeldin, a man who has taken $269,608 in lifetime political bribes from the oil industry and, in return for those bribes, says he wants to protect clean air by making the air dirtier.
Today Zeldin put that claim into action… er, well, into more talk… by releasing a swath of unspecific press releases declaring his intent to increase harm and costs for Americans in all sorts of realms.
Most of these press releases focus on the same platitudes and Orwellian doublespeak that we have come to expect from a bought-and-paid oil stooge, claiming that the efforts will reduce costs when they in fact will raise costs, and that they will somehow clean up the environment while they dirty it.
A few specific efforts are pointed out, such as trying to reverse an electric vehicle mandate that doesn’t exist, showing that Zeldin is not just hostile to Americans, but also ignorant of the policy that he’s supposed to be administering. And, flying in the face of science, an effort to remove the EPA’s endangerment finding – a scientific finding which correctly acknowledges the danger of greenhouse gas emissions.
Zeldin also uses some questionable language, such as acknowledging that he’s putting a “dagger straight into the heart” of efforts to lower your costs and rid your life of the poisons that he has been paid to spread.
However, the true effects of these initiatives has not yet been seen, and is even hard to predict given the unspecific nature of the claims made and the long timelines for US rulemaking.
US rulemaking is a long and deliberate process that requires consensus and for rulemaking to have a scientific basis. Rules cannot be “arbitrary and capricious” – which makes it hard for a group of people who embody those terms more than almost anyone on Earth to push anything through.
This is also why Biden’s EPA rules took years to implement and went through many rounds of modification and hundreds of pages of well-considered scientific backing (I read it, and doing so gave me a lot of faith in the way government thinks through things. You should try the same, in a field you have expertise in). And why some rules didn’t make it in under the deadline before the saboteurs took over. In the same way, you can’t just blow everything up overnight – there’s a process involved here.
Further compounding Zeldin’s attempted sabotage of American interests is a recent court opinion overturning the Chevron rule. The effect of this would be that administrative agencies like the EPA have less authority to make changes on their own without going to courts or Congress first, which means that any changes made by Zeldin can potentially be challenged even moreso by the actual environmental protectors of this country – nonprofits like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund and others.
These groups had significant success in challenging moves made by corrupt oil stooge Scott Pruitt and ignorant coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to sabotage American health during Mr. Trump’s first occupation of the White House. The NRDC, for example, won over 90% of the cases they brought during that time frame.
And the groups are all lining up to oppose these harmful actions today.
“The Trump administration’s plans, as announced by executive order, would gut the bedrock national and state clean air standards that have been reducing air pollution and protecting communities across the country. They would also undermine investments, jobs and affordability for clean vehicles. The public has a right to know what the Trump administration is doing and why they are pursuing this harmful agenda. We are going to court to ensure they do.”
-Alice Henderson, Director and Lead Counsel for Transportation and Clean Air, Environmental Defense Fund
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin today announced plans for the greatest increase in pollution in decades. The result will be more toxic chemicals, more cancers, more asthma attacks, and more dangers for pregnant women and their children. Rather than helping our economy, it will create chaos.
-Amanda Leland, Executive Director, Environmental Defense Fund
Donald Trump’s actions will cause thousands of Americans to die each year. It will send thousands of children to the hospital and force even more to miss school. It will pollute the air and water in communities across the country. And it will cause our energy bills to go up even more than they already are because of his disastrous policies. But as they put all of us at risk, Trump and his administration are celebrating because it will help corporate polluters pad their profit margin.
The American people should be furious. The EPA exists to protect us from serious pollution that endangers our lives and wellbeing, but Trump and Lee Zeldin are attempting to turn it into corporate polluters’ best friend.
Make no mistake about it: we will fight these outrageous rollbacks tooth and nail, and we will use all resources at our disposal to continue protecting the health and safety of all Americans.
-Ben Jealous, Executive Director, Sierra Club
Breaking faith with the American people and breaking 50 years of laws of the land, the Environmental Protection Agency today abandoned protecting human health and the environment. Repealing or weakening these important safeguards on pollution from cars, power plants, and oil producers would mean higher energy bills, more asthma and heart attacks, more toxins in drinking water, and more extreme weather.
At a time when millions of Americans are trying to rebuild after horrific wildfires and climate-fueled hurricanes, it’s nonsensical to try to deny that climate change harms our health and welfare.
Still, today’s announcement is only the start of the process – not the end. Before finalizing any of these actions, the law says EPA must propose its changes, justify them with science and the law, and listen to the public and respond to its concerns. NRDC’s scientists and lawyers will be there to fight back at every step of the way.
Jackie Wong, senior vice president for climate and energy, Natural Resources Defense Council
Finally, it should be noted that, while the US is attempting policy suicide by saddling it’s people with more harm and higher costs, the rest of the world is not doing the same. While the US is actively backing away from clean manufacturing, China and Europe aren’t.
China is producing more clean vehicles, and increasing exports of them every year, and Europe recently saw an opening to “declare independence from the United States” while investing over $100 billion into onshoring clean manufacturing.
Other countries are making the transition and ready to lead the world into the present, while American republicans kick and scream the country into obscurity. This is what a slim plurality of voters wanted, and it’s what you’re getting.
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![BMW gives a sneak peek at the new i3 and iX3 during final stages of testing [Video]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/03/BMW-i3-iX3.jpeg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
BMW is preparing to launch its next-gen EVs, promising to deliver significantly more range, faster charging, and advanced new tech. With their debut just around the corner, BMW is giving us a closer look at the upcoming i3 and iX3 as it wraps up testing.
BMW’s new i3 and iX3 EVs are coming soon
The first Neue Klasse model, the iX3, will go into series production later this year, followed shortly after by the i3.
Although we will learn full specs later this year, BMW said its advanced new 800V platform is a “quantum leap forward” delivering 30% faster charging while boosting range by up to 30%. Even better, it will enable lower prices.
The platform will house BMW’s next-gen electric motors (up to four) and batteries. BMW confirmed the new NMC batteries feature its new Gen6 cylindrical cells, which are 20% more energy dense than the previous prismatic cells.
For the first time, BMW’s “Heart of Joy” ECU combines the drivetrain and driving dynamics into one single unit to maximize efficiency.
The ECU was developed 100% in-house, featuring four “super brains” that provide “more than 20 times the computing power” compared to BMW’s current vehicles. In other words, BMW’s next-gen iX3 and i3 will be smarter, more powerful, and more efficient than ever.
With testing nearly complete, we are getting a closer look at BMW’s upcoming Neue Klasse. BMW previewed the new i3 and iX3 testing under extreme conditions.
BMW’s electric SUV was shown ripping across South Africa’s desert during “final preparations” for hot-land testing as it gears up for its big debut later this year.
The gas-powered X3 is one of BMW’s top-selling vehicles and will still be sold alongside the upcoming EV version.
Meanwhile, the i3 sedan will follow the iX3 as the second electric vehicle based on BMW’s new platform. It was shown during cold weather testing in Sweden, skating across the icy tundra. The i3 will also make an official appearance later this year before launching in early 2026.
As you can see, BMW updated the new generation with a refined face and sportier overall feel. The signature kidney grille remains, but cameras and radars power new ADAS features.
We will find out more later, but to give you an idea, the 2024 i4 has an EPA-estimated range of up to 301 miles and fast charging (10% to 80%) in 31 minutes. A 30% improvement would suggest a range of around 390 miles and fast charging in less than 22 minutes.
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Environment
Tesla (TSLA) Q1 delivery estimate on Wall Street is still at 418,000 EVs, but they are dreaming
Tesla (TSLA) delivery consensus from Wall Street is still at 418,000 electric vehicles in Q1 2025, but they are dreaming.
Deliveries are currently tracking about 40,000 units lower.
Tesla delivered just short of 387,000 vehicles in Q1 2024 and 1.8 million vehicles in 2024—the automaker’s first year of deliveries being down since it achieved high-volume production.
Now, analysts are wondering if deliveries are going down for Tesla in 2025.
Wall Street has been quite optimistic so far. The Wall Street delivery consensus for Tesla’s Q1 2025 started the year at 464,000 deliveries, which is slightly down from Q4 2024, but it is up a massive 20% year-over-year.
However, analysts have been gradually updating their estimates, and the consensus is now it sits at 418,000 deliveries, which would still be up 8% over Q1 2024.
That’s surprisingly high for anyone who has been watching Tesla closely this quarter since deliveries have been tracking below Q1 2024.
As of the end of February, Tesla is down roughly 43% in Europe – or about 20,000 units behind Q1 2024. In China, Tesla is trailing about 7,000 units behind where it was last year.
The data is more opaque in the US, but S&P data just released some data based on vehicle registration for January in the US, and Tesla is down 11% or about 4,000 units.
If you have been doing the math, it means that available data shows that Tesla is about 31,000 units behind where it was last quarter in its 3 main markets – with a few weeks left to report in China, a month in Europe, and two months in the US, to be fair.
31,000 units lower than 387,000 would mean 356,000 deliveries in Q1 2025, but there’s obviously still time for Tesla to either catch up or fall further behind.
Wall Street analysts are notoriously slower to update their numbers, but some have been catching up this week.
Guggenheim updated its delivery estimate from 405,000 deliveries to 358,000 units in Q1 2025 today.
JP Morgan also updated its delivery estimate from 444,000 to 355,000 in an update shared with clients today.
Both these firms have bearish outlooks on Tesla’s stock.
Morgan Stanley is one of the most bullish firms on Tesla, and they also came out with a new note today reiterating an overweight rating on Tesla’ stock. Analyst Adam Jonas says that he still sees Tesla’s volume growing 7%, which would put deliveries at 414,000 units this quarter.
As for prediction market Kalshi, which creates estimates based on people betting on Tesla’s delivery results, the estimate currently sits at 324,000 deliveries:
It’s fair to say that delivery predictions for Tesla’s Q1 2025 are currently quite all over the place.
Electrek’s Take
I am sure that the Wall Street consensus will come down by the end of the month because it is incredibly inflated right now.
It should at least be under Q1 2024.
On the other hand, I think the prediction market on Kalshi is probably overly pessimistic, but it’s also not impossible.
Tesla’s US sales this month are a bit of a mystery and they probably didn’t look good if Elon resorted to giving Trump another $100 million and having him do an informercial for the company at the White House.
We have more data coming from insurance registration in China in the coming weeks that should give us a pretty good idea.
Tesla certainly needs to ramp up deliveries of the new Model Y in China in the coming weeks. Otherwise, the Kalshi prediction could become accurate.
What do you think? What’s your prediction for Tesla in Q1 2025? For now, I think it is undoubtedly below 380,000 units and no less than 350,000 units.
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