CES 2026: Sony's Keynote This Year Was All About Electric Cars

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

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At last year's CES, Sony's press conference showed off products from all over its portfolio, including a first look at The Last of Us season 2. This year, it was all about the Afeela, an electric car Sony's making in collaboration with Honda that it's been teasing for years, but is now finally getting ready to release.

Sony has big plans for Afeela. Previews have been less about hard specs like mileage or speed and more about the company's plans to change how we look at cars. Previously, that's included demo'ing integrations with other Sony services like Crunchyroll and themes for the car's interior based on Sony brands. Just last month, the company confirmed it would support PlayStation Remote Play in the Afeela, after teasing it at CES 2024. And the first time I saw the Afeela at CES, it was driven onto stage using a PS5 controller.

Now, Sony's ready to talk more than aesthetics and cute integrations, but that unique voice didn't go anywhere. Headlining the show was the promise that the company's currently working on something called Afeela Intelligent Drive. Currently, it's sitting at level 2+ driver assistance, which means it can handle tasks like merging or lane changes, but Sony's planning to take it to level 4+ "in the future," meaning full self-driving within certain areas. It probably won't be ready for launch, but it does show the company's getting serious about usability.

On that note, it also showed concepts for a future where Afeela users will basically just chill while the car drives itself. Those kind of promises aren't rare at CES, but Sony specifically called out its brand of entertainment products as what riders would occupy themselves with on their rides. Combined with the Intelligent Drive news, apparently that's what all those ecosystem cross-promotions were leading towards.

But until that future arrives, Sony still isn't afraid to use Afeela to push its products, although it isn't stopping there. The company brought PlayStation on stage to quickly reaffirm Remote Play will be baked into the Afeela (while also dropping the surprising stat that apparently half of all PlayStation Remote Play sessions now happen on the PlayStation Portal streaming handheld). It also said that the Afeela will have themes for its touchscreens based on Sony properties like Astro Bot and Gran Turismo. None of that is too far off from what the company's shown before, but the idea of turning your car into a media ecosystem doesn't stop there. Sony also announced the Afeela co-creation program, which will let developers and content creators make their own custom apps or media for the car.

These include things like themes and even special Android apps, but apparently, drivers can even customize the Afeela's "motor" sound, and put visuals on a small "media bar" on the front of the car. As an example, Sony brought out Japanese music producer Tomoko Ida, who demonstrated a motor sound she created that sounded more like a THX commercial than anything else.

It's honestly a pretty clever move for a car that's been all about the ecosystem as opposed to the hard specs so far. But it does have one oddity that maybe speaks to how long this thing's been teased. Apparently, developers for the Co-Creation program will be able to get paid in crypto, which Sony says will "accelerate open co-creation," although it also says the Co-Creation program will be "open to other automakers and service providers." I'm not sure Toyota will want to get paid on the blockchain, but whatever.

Drivers will be able to access utilities and apps made for their Afeela using an app, but that raises the question: When will you finally be able to drive this thing?

The Afeela has been teased since CES 2023, but finally Sony says the car is in production and will begin delivering to customers in California sometime this year. In fact, all the photos you've seen of the Afeela throughout this article have been of an actual pre-production model for the initial Afeela car, now called Afeela 1.

That's huge for Afeela, but there is a catch. Those deliveries might take a while to reach the rest of the country. Sony says Arizona is next on its radar, but that sales won't make it there until 2027. Japanese deliveries are also slated for 2027, but living in New York, I'll just have to keep pretending this thing doesn't exist.

That's a bit of a blow for a car that started off this press conference promising a new future for how we drive, since even once it gets on the streets, it'll probably take even longer for that to come true. Still, Sony says it will allow people who have already registered to buy a car to start doing test drives of the car sometime before deliveries begin.

I'll be honest, I don't cover cars much, and that this year's Sony press conference was all about one maybe points to a quiet year across the rest of the brand. That said, for people who are into driving, I can see the Afeela's appeal. It definitely feels more like a gadget than a gas guzzler, and I'm wondering if this is what the Apple Car might have looked like if it ever came out.

Probably not—despite the fancy mock-ups, I did sit inside an Afeela last year, and it was fancy but still familiar. But that's also not where Afeela is stopping. Sony ended its keynote by driving the "Afeela Prototype 2026" onto the stage. It didn't look that different from the outside, but the company says it will offer "greater spatial flexibility and accessibility." To me, that implies a step closer towards that future where the car is essentially a hangout zone that moves you while you play PlayStation, but only time will tell. I'll see you when I actually get behind the wheel of one of these things, probably sometimes in 2040.