Sony shows off an electric SUV and says company may start selling cars

Sony has followed 2020's Vision-S 01 sedan with this, the Vision-S 02. It's an electric SUV, and the company might well put it into production. — Enlarge / Sony has followed 2020’s Vision-S 01 sedan with this, the Vision-S 02. It’s an electric SUV, and the company might well put it into production.

Sony

In 2020, Sony surprised the world by unveiling an electric concept car at CES. Called the Vision-S, it was designed to showcase technology from across the breadth of the Japanese technology firm. January 2021 saw CES go entirely virtual for obvious reasons, but that didn’t stop Sony from showing off the Vision-S again. This time, it was a fleet of them, including footage of on-road testing in Austria.

CES in 2022 is mostly virtual—there might be people on the ground in Las Vegas, but I’m certainly not one of them—and Sony’s EV is back once again. And it has brought a friend: an SUV called the Vision-S 02. (This means the sedan is known as the Vision-S 01.)

The Vision-S 01 (right) was first shown off at CES in 2020. Since then, it's been in development in Germany, Austria, and Japan. — Enlarge / The Vision-S 01 (right) was first shown off at CES in 2020. Since then, it’s been in development in Germany, Austria, and Japan.

Sony

The Vision-S 02 uses the same EV powertrain as the sedan, which should still mean a pair of 200 kW (268 hp) electric motors, one for each axle. Yet again, Sony has made extensive use of its sensor know-how to endow the Vision-S 02 with a mix of lidar and high-resolution, wide-dynamic-range CMOS optical sensors that give the car a 360-degree view of the world around it. The Vision-S uses that fused sensor data to inform drivers about their driving environment, alerting them to the presence of emergency vehicles and so on.

Some of that feedback will be provided by the car’s seat speakers, which Sony says create “a three-dimensional sound field.” It also notes that the Vision-S’s sound system is compatible with streaming “360 Reality Auto”—lest we forget, Sony also owns a music business.

Enlarge / Sony has thrown a lot of its consumer tech at the interior of the Vision-S 02, and you can expect it will be an easy way to consume Sony audio and video content.

Sony

There’s also a digital video streaming service called “Bravia Core for Vision-S,” which can stream content to any of the infotainment displays in the car. Elsewhere in the cabin, time-of-flight sensors monitor the driver and passengers and allow for gesture control.

As you might expect, the whole thing is 5G-enabled, which has allowed Sony to remotely drive Vision-S prototypes on a test track in Germany from Japan.

Last year, we noted the presence of Magna-Steyr in Sony’s presentation. The company builds cars for other OEMs under contract, and it’s probably not the sort of partner you’d showcase if you had absolutely no intention of putting a concept car into production.

This year, less reading of tea leaves is required. Later in 2022, Sony will stand up a new company called Sony Mobility, which it says will explore entry into the EV market.