As the Financial Times reports, the two Japanese companies have established a joint venture known as Sony Honda Mobility earlier in September. They’ve yet to decide on a brand name, but the two have already decided that they want to take on the other names in the EV market in making an EV “built around a premium entertainment experience”. With Sony in the mix, the premium entertainment part of the equation is probably sound. Izumi Kawanishi, president of the joint venture and head of Sony’s AI robotics business, claims that the company “has content, services and entertainment technologies that move people” which are being adapted to mobility. He also says that integrating the PS5 platform into cars was “technologically possible”. Not to mention previous endeavours in this space, including the VISION-S concept. Yasuhide Mizuno, chair of the joint venture and previously chief of Honda’s Automotive Operations, also says that the joint venture will “develop a car as hardware that will cater to the entertainment”. Which is a pretty wild departure of just simply shoehorning gaming into existing EVs like the two aforementioned brands. [Photo: Sony]All that being said, it will be awhile before the public gets to see a product by this Sony and Honda joint venture in action. The report quotes Mizuno as saying that the company plans to roll out its first EV in the US market by 2025. The joint venture also working on “perfecting a fully self-driving car”, which makes sense since you’ll need that to make full use of the entertainment suite that the company is aiming for. And that will most likely come further down the line. (Source: Financial Times)
