Sony's press conference on the eve of CES 2024 was all about flexing the synergistic muscles between its various media, gaming and entertainment brands. Nowhere was that better illustrated than when Izumi Kawanishi, President and COO of Sony Honda Mobility, reintroduced the Afeela electric car by driving it on stage using a PlayStation 5 DualSense controller.
Of course, you probably won't be able to park your Sony EV with a gaming controller when the brand eventually starts building 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 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.
The electric sedan makes use of Unreal Engine 5.3 to power its dashboard infotainment graphics.
It turns out that Afeela has more in common with your PS5 than just the controller. For starters, it is using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5.3 to power the 3-D 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.
Unreal Engine is also being used to render the simulated environments used to train Afeela's multi-camera 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 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 in-house game studio Polyphony Digital -- the developers 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.