AFEELA Shows How Sony and Honda Want Cars to Feel in the AI Era

As CES 2026 prepares to open its doors in Las Vegas, Sony Honda Mobility set the tone early. On January 5, the joint venture hosted a press conference outlining how it sees the future of mobility taking shape, and more importantly, why that future may feel very different from the cars people know today. The headline message was clear: the vehicle is no longer just a means of transportation. It is becoming a space for creativity, connection, and entertainment.

Framed around the theme “Mobility as a Creative Entertainment Space,” the event marked several key milestones for the AFEELA brand. Sony Honda Mobility presented AFEELA 1 as a pre production model, confirming it as the company’s first production vehicle and one that is now firmly on the path toward real customers. Deliveries in the United States are expected to begin toward the end of this year. Alongside it, the company also unveiled a new concept, the AFEELA Prototype 2026, signaling what the next phase of its lineup could look like, with a production version targeted for the U.S. market as early as 2028.

What Sony Honda Mobility is proposing goes beyond a single vehicle launch. The company is positioning AFEELA as a long term platform shaped by collaboration across technology, entertainment, and creative industries. At the conference, executives emphasized that these partnerships are not add ons, but foundational to how the vehicles are designed, built, and experienced.

Among the concrete announcements, Sony Honda Mobility confirmed that AFEELA 1 deliveries in California are scheduled to begin in 2026, with Arizona following in 2027. The debut of AFEELA Prototype 2026 offered a first look at a more flexible and accessible design direction, aimed at reaching a broader audience. On the technology side, the company announced plans to adopt Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon Digital Chassis as part of its next generation electrical and electronic architecture, reinforcing its commitment to high performance, software driven systems. It also introduced the AFEELA Co Creation Program for developers and creators, and revealed early plans for an open, on chain mobility service platform built around token based incentives.

At the center of all this is Sony Honda Mobility’s core idea that mobility itself is evolving. The company describes its vision as transforming the vehicle into a Creative Entertainment Space. In practical terms, this means shifting away from cars that are purely driver focused and toward vehicles that act more like intelligent partners. Powered by vehicle AI, these systems are designed to recognize user preferences and emotional cues, using that insight to make better use of time and space while traveling. The goal is not technology for its own sake, but a more human centered experience that adapts to the people inside the car.

One of the pillars supporting this vision is AFEELA Intelligent Drive. Today, the system is built around advanced driver assistance, starting at Level 2 plus, with support for travel from departure to destination. Over time, Sony Honda Mobility plans to evolve this into a more comprehensive, end to end AI model that integrates vision and language understanding. The long term ambition is to reach Level 4 equivalent functionality, enabling situations where driving is no longer the primary task. As that shift happens, the interior of the vehicle becomes less about controls and more about what occupants want to do with their time, whether that is entertainment, communication, or relaxation.

Complementing this is the AFEELA Personal Agent, an in car conversational AI designed to feel less like a command interface and more like a natural interaction. Built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, the personal agent focuses on personalized dialogue that reflects individual habits and preferences. The idea is to make the relationship between people and their vehicles feel more intuitive and personal, rather than transactional.

All of these experiences rely on a robust technology foundation. Sony Honda Mobility plans to integrate Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis into future AFEELA models, using it as the backbone of its electrical and electronic architecture. This approach allows the company to continuously adopt newer, more capable platforms as they become available, rather than locking itself into a fixed hardware model. The emphasis is on keeping the vehicle software driven, AI centered, and adaptable over time.

Creativity and openness are recurring themes in the company’s strategy. Through the AFEELA Co Creation Program, Sony Honda Mobility is inviting developers and creators to help shape the in vehicle experience. By providing access to development documentation, cloud based APIs, and an Android application environment for in vehicle infotainment, the company is making it easier to build new types of in car content, from themes to entirely new applications. The expectation is that this ecosystem will lead to experiences that go beyond what a single manufacturer could design on its own.

Looking further ahead, Sony Honda Mobility is also exploring a new on chain mobility service platform built around a token based incentive model. Described under the concept of X to Earn, the platform is intended to support the full lifecycle of mobility services, from idea generation and development to real world use and evaluation. Importantly, the company envisions this as an open ecosystem that could include other automakers and service providers, not a closed system limited to AFEELA vehicles.

AFEELA 1 is where these ideas begin to take physical form. Reservations opened in California in January 2025, and since then, the company has focused on building awareness and gathering real world feedback. AFEELA Studio showrooms and exhibition events have drawn more than 100,000 visitors, with over 24,000 in vehicle demonstrations conducted within the first year. These interactions have played a role in refining both the product and the overall ownership experience.

On the manufacturing side, Sony Honda Mobility completed trial production runs of AFEELA 1 in the fall of 2025 at Honda’s East Liberty Auto Plant in Ohio. These runs were part of the transition toward mass production, and the resulting pre production vehicles were showcased at CES 2026.

The retail and delivery experience is also being rethought. This spring, the company plans to open AFEELA Studio and Delivery Hubs in Torrance and Fremont, California. These locations will combine showroom, delivery, and brand experience into a single space. Early reservation holders will be invited to participate in AFEELA Advanced Access, a phased program that includes demonstration drives planned for later this year. Beyond California, sales are expected to expand to Arizona in 2027, with deliveries in Japan beginning in the first half of that year.

The AFEELA Prototype 2026 offers a glimpse of what comes next. While it builds on the core design and technology concepts of AFEELA 1, it introduces greater spatial flexibility and improved accessibility. The aim is to broaden the appeal of the platform while staying true to the idea of mobility as a space for enjoyment and creativity. A production model based on this prototype is currently planned for a U.S. launch as early as 2028.

The press conference brought together voices from across Sony Honda Mobility and its partners. Company leadership, including Chairperson and CEO Yasuhide Mizuno and President and COO Izumi Kawanishi, outlined the strategic direction, while representatives from Qualcomm Technologies and Sony Interactive Entertainment offered perspectives on how automotive technology, entertainment, and creative culture are increasingly converging. Together, the presentations reinforced a consistent message: the future car is not just smarter or more automated, but more attuned to how people actually want to live, move, and spend their time.