CES 2025: Hands-on with Sony-Hondas AFEELA 1 Signature
Sony and Honda are betting big on the AFEELA 1, the sleek new electric vehicle five years in the making that's turning heads at CES 2025. Not only did Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) spill the tea on pre-order details — and its jaw-dropping price tag— on Monday but the company's also letting attendees get a first taste of life inside this futuristic ride.
We scored a seat inside the AFEELA 1 Signature, the top-tier trim of the lineup that clocks in a massive $102,000. But don't let the sticker shock scare you off just yet — this EV is loaded with bells, whistles, and cutting-edge tech designed to make that price feel (almost) reasonable.
One of the first things you’ll notice about the AFEELA? No door handles. It's a flex we've been seeing a lot in the EV world over the last few years, and SHM is fully on board. Instead of traditional handles, you're supposed to unlock the car through the AFEELA app on your phone. However, because the Las Vegas Convention Center WiFi was a mess, our guide had to go old-school — pressing a tiny button in the top corner to pop the door open manually. You can also just tap your phone to the door to open it as well.
Hilariously, someone at the briefing pointed out that the LiDAR cameras perched on top of the AFEELA are styled like cat ears. Yes, cat ears. It's oddly charming, and honestly? It kind of works.
Step inside, though, and the vibe shifts from playful to premium. The interior is where SHM really flexes its vision for the AFEELA brand. The joint company's big mission has been to "redefine the relationship between humans and mobility," and it's doubled down on creating an interior that feels more like an immersive sanctuary than a car. It's all about the experience —and SHM's not holding back.
We're talking a full-panoramic touchscreen display that stretches across the entire dashboard, ambient lighting along the door trims, OLED screens mounted on the back of every seat, and —wait for it — a Sony PlayStation 5 controller, which you can use with PlayStation Remote Play to play video games in the car. (Yes, according to one of the PR reps, the controller does come with the car.) The touchscreen itself can switch between themes (like one inspired by Sucker Punch's Sony game Ghost of Tsushima), and nestled on the corners of the driver and passenger seats are displays showing real-time camera views from the rearview mirror.
The whole setup is undeniably extra, and it only gets wilder. The car boasts a sound system so loud it might actually qualify as a health hazard, which the rep used to blast music and — get this — screen an episode of Solo Leveling on Crunchyroll. I wish I was making that up. As if that weren't enough, the AFEELA is loaded with apps no one asked for but somehow make sense in modern EV universes. Zoom for your next web chat? Sure, why not — Teslas have it too. TikTok and YouTube? Of course. It's becoming standard, we guess. Because if you're already succumbing to brain rot, you might as well do it in style.
The car boasts a sound system so loud it might actually qualify as a health hazard...
There's also an AI assistant that SHM says it wants to function as a friend to drivers, which is why is called an "AI Agent" and not an assistant. Unfortunately, AFEELA’s "friendliness" wasn’t on full display during our demo, thanks to its shy streak (read: the convention center WiFi was seemingly on strike by this point). So, for now, we’ll have to take SHM’s word for it.
We didn't get to see the AFEELA in motion — which, fair enough, given the general chaos of CES — but SHM wasn't shy about hyping up its Full Self-Driving capabilities. The car is currently rated at Level 2+ (out of 6) on SAE International's levels of driving automation, which means semi-automated driving with some driver intervention is still required. Ambitious as ever, SHM says it's aiming for Level 4 — High Driving Automation — where the car would basically drive itself without human help. But let's be real, that dream is still stuck in development purgatory and not ready for prime time — Mercedes-Benz beat Tesla to become the first to sell Level 3 autonomous cars in the U.S. in April 2024; Level 4 is still the horizon.
All things considered, the first look at the AFEELA 1 Signature was thrilling, even for someone who neither drives nor has a snowball's chance of affording one. For now, pre-orders are only open to California drivers, with SHM citing the state's superior EV infrastructure as the reason.
On the CES floor, SHM showed off the AFEELA 1 Signature, retailing for a cool $102,900, while its slightly less bougie sibling, the AFEELA 1 Origin, will go for $89,900. The Signature is slated to ship in mid-2026, while the Origin lags behind with a 2027 release.