TOKYO — When Afeela, the brand new electrical car model created by Honda Motor Co. and Sony Corp., begins delivering vehicles in 2026, it will not simply contemplate Honda and Acura sellers to service them.
Within the U.S., the brand new EV enterprise may additionally look to manufacturers exterior the Honda and Acura seller networks — together with retailers from rival automakers.
“Not solely Honda sellers. There could also be a number of alternatives,” Yasuhide Mizuno, CEO of Sony Honda Mobility Inc., stated about plans for Afeela’s essential after-sales community.
“It may be that’s one of the simplest ways for the shopper,” he stated.
Rethinking retail, even when it means disrupting relations with franchised sellers, exemplifies the nothing-is-sacred mindset of Sony Honda Mobility in its quest to reinvent the auto enterprise.
Tremendous-powerful laptop chips, extra-long leases, exporting from the U.S. to Japan, online game tie-ups — to not point out, the temerity to staff two of Japan’s most iconic manufacturers from vastly totally different industries — all underscore the daring, experimental nature of the 50-50 three way partnership.
Even the oddly avant-garde model title Afeela appears to check new sensibilities.
In Jan. 31 interviews with Automotive Information, the brand new partnership’s high executives described their mission as combining the most effective of each corporations to ship a brand new type of EV. Whereas acknowledging that the primary car — an all-wheel-drive sedan — continues to be a piece in progress, Mizuno and COO Izumi Kawanishi talked product specs, advertising, gross sales methods and extra.
“It is a new problem,” stated Mizuno, dispatched to the startup from Honda, the place he served as international head of vehicle operations. “There isn’t any earlier expertise to check it with.”
However their plans are certain to rankle Honda and Acura’s U.S. franchised sellers, with a lot of them already leery of the enterprise’s intention to promote its autos on-line as a substitute of by their dealerships.
Many Honda and Acura sellers assumed they might no less than function the official customer-facing a part of the equation, delivering the Sony-Honda EVs, servicing them and speaking with house owners about Honda’s different merchandise.
Invoice Feinstein, chairman of the Honda Nationwide Supplier Advisory Board, was stunned to be taught in any other case.
He informed Automotive Information sellers had not been suggested that the Sony enterprise will work by different networks. However he had beforehand voiced fear the brand new model may probably compete with current Honda dealerships.
“Sadly, there was a variety of hypothesis and rumor concerning the Afeela product,” Feinstein stated. “What I do know is that Honda sellers strongly consider that merchandise designed and/or produced by Honda ought to be bought by Honda sellers.”
However Afeela is seeking to upend conference.
Retailing will probably be by on-line gross sales and leases. Leases are anticipated to be 5 years or extra, in contrast with the business’s typical turnover of three years as we speak, Mizuno stated.
Lengthy leases will probably be potential as a result of Afeela will probably be “software program outlined,” the executives stated. The most recent capabilities and options — from autonomous driving to infotainment — will merely be downloaded from the cloud into the onboard laptop, giving the automotive an extended life.
Designers from Sony and Honda strove for clear, technical, timeless exterior styling, with rounded edges and minimal creasing, for simply this cause. The look has to last as long as a decade.
“We now have to keep up attractiveness for 10 years,” Mizuno stated. “That is our idea.”
The executives stated the design of the primary automotive will probably be finalized this 12 months.
Additionally they made it clear their enterprise will not be beholden to Honda. Sony-Honda, they insist, is an unbiased three way partnership.
Mizuno, who resigned from Honda in December to take up his new put up, stated his precedence is to make the Afeela model successful, even when meaning ruffling feathers.
“The shopper would possibly really feel that is Honda’s firm or possibly that is Sony’s firm,” he stated. “However mainly, Honda Motor is totally segregated from Sony-Honda.”
Wanting exterior Honda’s seller community for after-sales may grow to be a kind of flashpoints. Mizuno stated Afeela will adjust to franchise legal guidelines and that Honda and Acura sellers are “candidates” for the servicing work. These retailers could also be enticing companions as a result of they are going to be accustomed to servicing the e:Structure platform coming quickly from Honda.
However different sellers may additionally be thought-about, he stated, including that service store location and market penetration is one consideration. Sony-Honda will speak with sellers after the corporate decides.
“We now have to seek the advice of after we resolve our path,” Mizuno stated. “At this level, we’re serious about what’s the useful level to the shopper.”
That argument may be arduous for U.S. sellers to swallow.
The Afeela will probably be engineered by Honda, constructed at a Honda meeting plant in Ohio and exported from there to Japan and Europe. Will probably be primarily based on Honda’s e:Structure platform, a devoted in-house EV platform.
Many technical particulars are nonetheless underneath wraps. However Mizuno stated the automotive ought to obtain a driving vary of no less than 300 miles and have a mixed motor output of no less than 160 kilowatts.
Battery sourcing continues to be up within the air. They could use Ultium batteries, the ability packs additionally getting used within the EVs Honda is collectively growing with Common Motors. Or the batteries might come from LG Power Options. Honda and LG introduced final month they are going to collectively manufacture lithium ion battery cells from 2025 at a brand new plant in Jefferson, Ohio, with manufacturing capability of fifty gigawatt-hours.
Mizuno stated Afeela manufacturing will probably be a small-batch, quality-over-quantity operation. Although he declined to present a quantity, he stated quantity will fall beneath 100,000 items.
The executives stated the auto business is on the verge of change.
Sony, inventor of the Walkman, and Honda, purveyor of the breakthrough CVCC engine used within the first-generation Civic, are pioneering a brand new cross-sector strategy that marries client electronics with passenger vehicles, as vehicles grow to be software-centric computer systems on wheels.
American tech large Apple, for instance, has contemplated a plunge into automotive and was even rumored to be contemplating a tie-up with Hyundai.
Chinese language gamers are additionally more and more bold. Baidu, that nation’s counterpart to Google, is collaborating with BAIC Motor Co. to construct and deploy a fleet of full-electric crossovers and robotaxis. Telecom community juggernaut Huawei Applied sciences Co. plans to speculate $1 billion in EV growth, whereas smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. has stated it needs to plow $10 billion into making pure-electric autos over the subsequent decade.
For automakers, such tie-ups assist slash growth time and produce new companies for purchasers, stated Zhou Lei, a accomplice at Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting in Tokyo. For tech corporations, the brand new partnerships enable them to faucet a wholly new income stream within the mobility discipline.
“They wish to create a brand new enterprise mannequin,” Zhou stated. “In Japan, industries are historically very vertical, however it is a horizontal strategy and a brand new case worldwide. Japan’s auto business wants this type of enterprise to usher in new concepts and power.”
Sony stated it’s bringing a brand new twist to the automotive combine with a toolbox of digital applied sciences and its library of media content material, courtesy of the corporate’s film, music and video gaming items. Afeela has additionally signed a partnership with Epic Video games, creator of such hits as Fortnite, to develop an on-the-go leisure house that “seamlessly” integrates the “actual and digital worlds.”
The Afeela idea automotive was unveiled in January at CES in Las Vegas, bristling with 45 cameras and different sensors. Sony will present optical sensors for automated driving capabilities and time-of-flight sensors for the driving force monitoring system. It’s even growing its first in-house lidar sensors to make use of on the automotive, stated Kawanishi, who got here from Sony.
The Afeela will probably be able to Degree 3 autonomous driving from the beginning, the companions promised.
To energy all this digital gadgetry, Afeela’s midsize sedan will get a high-spec microprocessor set from accomplice Qualcomm that’s able to rifling off 800 trillion operations per second. The chip units in as we speak’s vehicles, against this, usually vary from 10 to 50 trillion operations per second.
“That may be very aggressive, very superior expertise within the mobility world,” Kawanishi stated.
Mizuno stated that leaning on Sony’s expertise would possibly slash the new-car growth timeline by 20 to 30 %, in contrast with Honda’s conventional cycle.
— Carly Schaffner in Los Angeles contributed to this report.