Sony and Honda’s first Afeela EV is finally edging out of concept-land and into the real world, with customer deliveries now penciled in for late 2026 in the US and early 2027 in Japan, and an SUV waiting in the wings for 2028. What started as a wild CES concept in 2020 is now a $90,000 electric sedan that leans as hard into screens, sensing and PlayStation as it does into kilowatts and range.

If you’ve been casually following the Afeela story, the timeline has been almost comically slow by tech-world standards. Sony first rolled out the Vision-S concept at CES 2020 to prove it could build a car packed with cameras, displays and entertainment tech, then spent a few years insistently showing prototypes without ever letting anyone really drive them. Hooking up with Honda under the Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) banner changed the tone: in late 2025, they quietly started trial production at Honda’s East Liberty Auto Plant in Ohio, a very real factory that normally turns out CR-Vs and Acura SUVs. Those trial runs, plus a dedicated “Quality Gate” inspection line nearby, are the dry, unsexy signal that Afeela is no longer just a CES stage prop.

The car that’s actually going into customers’ hands is Afeela 1, a sleek electric sedan starting around 90 grand and stretching higher for the fully loaded Signature trim. On the hardware side, it’s built on a long wheelbase with short overhangs, giving it that low, planted “expensive EV” stance that’ll look very at home next to a Mercedes EQE or a BMW i5 in a Silicon Valley driveway. SHM isn’t obsessing over 0–100 figures in public yet, but it is loudly advertising an all-wheel-drive setup and a stacked sensor array that would make some autonomous test mules jealous.

Where Afeela really leans into the “Sony car” fantasy is inside the cabin. The dash is essentially one giant horizontal screen that stretches from pillar to pillar, turning the interior into a rolling ultrawide monitor. Under the skin, SHM plans to pack in around 40 sensors on the sedan alone, including 18 cameras, LiDAR, radars and ultrasonic units, feeding a real-time “sensing view” and powering advanced driver-assist features. This isn’t full self-driving hype so much as an attempt to make the driving assistance, awareness and cabin experience feel more like an AI-powered device than a traditional dashboard.

Sony’s influence really comes alive when you’re parked. Afeela is effectively a PlayStation accessory on wheels: Sony has confirmed that PS5 owners will be able to stream games in the car via Remote Play, with an integrated display and audio setup designed around its console ecosystem. Some demos have shown seatback-style displays and a 360 Reality Audio sound system, turning rest stops and charging sessions into impromptu gaming sessions or mini movie theaters. It’s an aggressive bet that in a world where most EVs can handle highway cruising just fine, people will remember the one that lets them comfortably jump into a PS5 session while waiting for electrons.

The roadmap from here is surprisingly specific for a car that still hasn’t had proper media test drives. SHM says US customer deliveries of Afeela 1 will begin in late 2026, starting in California, with Arizona added in 2027 as production ramps up. In Japan, early customers are promised deliveries in the first half of 2027, signaling that Afeela will be a genuinely global product rather than a quirky US-only halo car. Ahead of that, early reservation holders will be brought in for phased demo drives, which is both a marketing play and a way for SHM to quietly gather real-world feedback before the floodgates open.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a modern EV launch without an SUV, and Sony Honda Mobility is already teasing what comes next. On stage at CES 2026, SHM revealed the Afeela Prototype 2026, a fastback-style electric SUV that looks like the sedan’s taller, bulkier sibling. Details are deliberately thin, but the company has been clear on one point: this SUV concept is intended to become a production model for the US as early as 2028, giving Afeela a more mainstream body style after the niche-y, pricey sedan. In other words, Afeela is following the same pattern as Tesla, Rivian and others—start with a lower-volume, tech-forward flagship, then move into the family-friendly SUV segment once the platform is proven.

There’s a bit of tension in the timing, though. When Afeela finally ships, it will land squarely in a brutally competitive corner of the market: EVs north of $90,000. That segment has cooled, squeezed by high interest rates, saturated demand and a flood of premium options from Tesla, Mercedes, Audi, BMW and a growing crowd of upstart luxury brands. At the same time, the global industry is pivoting hard toward slightly cheaper models to fend off aggressively priced Chinese EVs that are reshaping expectations around what “affordable” electric cars can offer.

That makes Afeela a fascinating test of a simple question: is there still space, at the top of the EV market, for a car that sells more on its software and culture than its badge and horsepower? SHM is clearly betting yes, trying to fuse Honda’s manufacturing discipline with Sony’s instincts for media, gaming and everyday gadget polish. If the company can actually hit its late-2026 delivery window, keep quality high through that new Ohio inspection facility, and make the in-car PlayStation and “creative entertainment space” pitch feel like more than a gimmick, Afeela could carve out a small but loud niche of buyers who want their EV to double as a living-room console on wheels.

For now, Afeela lives in that strange in-between phase familiar to anyone who watches CES closely: more real than a concept, less real than a car you can go test-drive this weekend. The prototypes keep getting closer to production, the factory lines are spinning up, and the timelines are on the record. Late 2026 might still feel far away, but in car years, that’s right around the corner—just enough time for Sony and Honda to prove whether this ambitious crossover between console culture and car culture can actually survive outside the Las Vegas convention center.