Sony drives its Afeela EV onto stage with PS5 controller

The Afeela is a concept car, but it's getting closer to reality.

sony afeela ev ps5 controller ces 2024 featured

The Afeela is expected to hit the road in 2026. (Image: Express image/Sony)

At CES 2024, Izumi Kawanishi, President and COO of Sony Honda Mobility, pulled a PS5 DualSense controller like a gun out of its holster and used it to drive the Afeela electric car on stage, stunning the audience with the unconventional stunt.

The Afeela is a concept car, but it’s getting closer to reality. Developed jointly by Sony and Honda, the concept was originally stated to have 400kW (536hp) dual-motor all-wheel-drive, 0-100km/h in 4.8 seconds, and a top speed of 240km/h. As far as we know, those are still the specs Sony is aiming for. Sony has shown off the Afeela at previous CES events too revealing further details about the car’s development each time – and this time was no different.

While impressive, summoning the Afeela with a PlayStation controller isn’t a real feature. Kawanishi explained that this was just a tech demo.

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That said, the Afeela does have a real feature spurred on by gaming. The car uses Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5.3 to power the 3-D graphics and visuals that fill its massive, ultrawide dashboard display. This means that drivers and passengers can enjoy detailed 3D maps, virtual spaces and augmented reality views of the world around the Afeela, with internet-sourced metadata overlaid.

UE5 is also used to render the simulated environments used to train its multi-camera driver assistance systems. The game engine’s highly realistic graphics allow for improved accuracy when training the visual models and neural network processing that power the EV’s driver-aid functions.

We still don’t know how much the Afeela will cost but we do know that it will hit the road in 2026.

They controlled Sony's and Honda's Afeela Car with a Dualsense Controller.

It's just a tech demo. pic.twitter.com/U5FF02Hmcx

— Knoebel (@Knoebelbroet) January 9, 2024

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