A new company called Sony Honda Mobility plans to use music, movies and the PlayStation 5 to ramp up competition with Tesla by developing an electric car built around an immersive entertainment experience.
The heads of the company which was launched in September, are yet to choose a cool brand name, reported the Financial Times but they have plans to gain an edge over competitors by leveraging Sony’s powerful position in the global entertainment industry.
“Sony has content, services and entertainment technologies that move people. We are adapting these assets to mobility, and this is our strength against Tesla,” said president Izumi Kawanishi, who has headed Sony’s AI robotics business.
“Tesla is not providing any content services,” he said, adding that integrating the PlayStation 5 platform into their cars was “technologically possible”.
Yasuhide Mizuno, chair of the joint venture and who was in charge of Honda’s cars division, said instead of inserting entertainment software after a car is produced, “we will develop a car as hardware that will cater to the entertainment and network we would like to offer”, said Mizuno. He said the company planned to roll out its first electric vehicle model in North America by 2025.
The comments by the joint venture heads show how companies are working to adapt to shifting consumer preferences in cars.
Both Google and Apple have attempted to make similar cars in the past but up to now there has not been any mass productions.
The race is also on according to Kawanishi to perfect a fully self-driving car — another thing that Uber and Google, have either slowed down on as expenses have mounted.
Argo AI, a self-driving vehicle group jointly backed by Ford and Volkswagen, announced last month it would shut down operations, saying profitability was “a long way out” according to the Financial Times.
“To enjoy the space in your car, you have to make it a space where you don’t need to drive. The solution for this is autonomous driving,” said Kawanishi, an engineer who has developed PlayStation 3 and robot dog Aibo at Sony.
“Autonomous driving will have to evolve considerably from the current level to get to that point, and it will take time for that to happen,” he added.
What Sony Honda mobility is trying to innovate as far an entertainment In cars is similar to the discontinued MTV show Pimp My Ride hosted by rapper Xzibit.
Pimp My Ride would take junk cars and repairing, remodeling and furnishing them with outlandish entertainment packages ranging from nightclubs, speakers, and PlayStation 2 depending on the taste of the car owner.
Some analysts also believe that their real intention is to showcase new technologies and software platforms so other car makers will add to their cars.
“A part of the goal is to sell more components, including sensors, to establish a foothold for the consumer electronics industry in the auto industry,” said Christopher Richter, analyst at CLSA to the Financial Times.
“Tesla hasn’t been able to completely achieve this, and the JV has done it much faster than Apple’s [EV] Project Titan, which is still languishing somewhere.”
The electronics group wants to show what it is capable of by developing a small-scale premium brand with Honda, Richter added
Sony Honda Mobility will start accepting orders for its first electric vehicle in 2025 and deliver to customers in the United States and Japan the following year.
At the company’s first news conference, on October 13, President and COO Kawanishi Izumi told reporters: “We want to fill the new car with the latest technology so we can offer customers a new experience. We’re aiming to achieve high quality mobility.”
