Sony Goes Electric

If you think that nothing can surprise you anymore, then Sony will come and present its electric car at the CES. Nothing better describes the upheaval the automotive industry is currently undergoing than newcomers from industries that have had little to do with it until now. Software and Internet companies like Baidu, Apple or Waymo, and vacuum cleaner companies like Dyson have all been toying with the idea or are actually involved.

Sony itself is keeping a low profile as to whether they really want to build an electric car. Rather, it is emphasizing that the company is already building a great many electronic components that are either already used in cars, or new components will be added with the switch to electric, connected and autonomous vehicles.

I think that Sony has realized that they are already doing a lot more in the automotive industry, and that this will develop even more in the future than they were previously aware of. But as soon as Sony realized this, there seemed to be no stopping them. Instead of showing the components on the CES detached or in a plexiglass model, like ZF or Aisin did, Sony probably thought something like “Fuck it! We’ll build a whole car!”

Aisin and ZF present their automotive components in Plexiglas and cutaway models

There’s not really much to say about the Sony Vision-S itself except that it’s silver-grey and resembles other electric car concepts like the Lucid Air. In my opinion, it’s not a beauty, but that was probably not really the goal. Rather, the aim was to showcase more than 30 components that Sony is already supplying today and sees in future vehicle technologies. Significantly, Sony is also not exhibiting in the automotive hall, but in the entertainment systems hall.

The vehicle itself has, like every new electric car, retractable door handles, light strips around the car, panoramic roof, and an LED screen that extends across the entire width of the car. A total of 33 different sensors inside and outside, several screens and 360 audio were presented.

The car seems to be based on an electric car platform built by Magna. So far, Sony has not given a statement on whether it wants to build an electric car itself.