Sony And Honda Joins Hands.

According to Sony and Honda’s separate electric car business, pre-orders for the company’s first model will start taking place in the first half of 2025. Sony Honda Mobility Inc. (SHM) anticipates delivery to the United States in the spring of 2026, but local Japanese deliveries are planned for the second half of the year. Although there are still no firm plans, a launch in Europe is still being considered.

The two partners each held an equal share of the Tokyo-based corporation, which had an original capital of 10 billion yen (about 70 million euros). Despite SHM’s Japanese headquarters, the items will be produced in the USA, where Honda is expanding its electric vehicle and battery manufacturing facilities. The first electric automobile is expected to go on sale before the end of 2025, with pre-orders beginning in the first half of that year. Deliveries are already planned to begin in the US in the spring of 2026 and in Japan in the second half of the same year.

The “high value-added EV idea” of the joint venture—presumably an electric vehicle or SUV—will also produce what it refers to as “mobility services.” The joint venture claims that the SHM 3As for Autonomy, Augmentation, and Affinity characterize both, which appear to be one multidimensional product, i.e., an electric car and linked or surrounding products and services.

This appears to be based on the same idea as Nio, which is now launching in Europe and portraying the vehicle as a mobile lounge with a variety of entertainment options, including augmented reality glasses for the passengers. This seems to be the sort of “Augmentation” that SHM is referring to.

SHM concept of fostering client feedback loops and involving them and others in a “community” to continuously improve the company’s goods. This would encompass what seems to be the SHM concept with “Affinity”: a variety of services and related products made to maintain client interest, feedback, and sense of belonging beyond the relatively simple product of a vehicle to move from point A to point..

Level 3 Automatic

The new joint venture SHM wants to develop Level 3 automatic drive “under constrained conditions”—such driving on a highway—and make Level 2+ driver assistance available in even more “situations like city driving.”

Given that Sony and Honda are both involved in the automotive and consumer electronics industries, their partnership would seem to be ideal for the cars of the future. Sony has been developing sensor technologies that will be more advanced than the human eye. These technologies are crucial for different safety purposes, including autonomous driving.

Sony has accumulated significant experience in camera sensors, which are currently mostly utilized in smartphones. The global leader in consumer electronics has been developing its own electric car prototypes. The VISION-S 02, unveiled at CES in the United States this year, is an SUV offshoot of its first prototype, an electric sedan called the VISION-S 01, which was unveiled at CES 2020.