Sony's PlayStation EV Afeela will sport Tesla NACS charging port in the US

Sony's joint venture with Honda will put its first electric car - the Afeela sedan - on sale in the US and other regions in 2025.

The Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) partnership just announced that its first EV in the Afeela brand will be shipping with Tesla's NACS connector from the factory, so that it can take advantage of the Supercharger networks in the US and Japan where the car will be initially sold.

Tesla's Director of Charging Max de Zegher welcomed the news, informing that 90% of the 150 kW and above chargers in Japan are Superchargers, so SHM becoming the first automaker to use NACS ports there makes perfect sense.

In the US, on the other hand, there are more Japanese brands that have announced a switch to NACS from next year at the latest. They include Toyota, Nissan, or Lexus, as well as Honda as a standalone EV maker.

Sony's Afeela sedan will be available for preorder in H1, and sales will start later in 2025, while the first deliveries in the US will be in early 2026.

At the CES 2024 expo in January, the SHM COO used a PS5 DualSense controller to bring the car on stage, hinting at the deep PlayStation 5 universe integration that awaits those who buy the performance electric sedan.

"Sony has content, services and entertainment technologies that move people. We are adapting these assets to mobility, and this is our strength against Tesla [as] Tesla is not providing any content services," said Sony's Izumi Kawanishi.

Besides the PlayStation ecosystem integration, Sony has struck a partnership with Fortnite's Epic Games over its Unreal Engine that will be used for mixed reality rendering of the surroundings when the car is in AI-assisted autonomous driving mode. The Afeela EV is leveraging Sony's camera sensor prowess and  will sport no less than 45 cameras and sensors all around, including interior and Time-of-Flight (ToF) depth sensing units, as well as a LiDAR kit.

Besides the rich entertainment ecosystem inside, Sony's car will have a so-called Media Bar at the edge of the hood that "allows intelligent mobility to express itself to surrounding people using light, enabling interactive communication between mobility and people."

Sony is yet to announce the final specs and pricing of the Afeela sedan that it developed in partnership with Honda.