Seven things I learned about a Sony car while playing Gran Turismo inside one

Do you know how Sony will make an electric car with Honda coming in 2026? Sony Honda Mobility is now letting journalists seriously touch the Afeela prototype – and play with it Gran Turismo A video game version of a car while sitting inside the actual device.

That’s why I drove to PlayStation’s North American headquarters last week, to experience Afeela inside Afeela and touch things we couldn’t touch before. But I got a little more than I bargained for!

Here’s a quick 50-second video of the experience, and a short list of new things I learned.

No, before you ask, they wouldn’t let me drive a real Sony Honda. I grabbed the steering wheel and pressed the pedals, but they did nothing – in-game or otherwise. “We will provide journalists with the opportunity to test drive as soon as possible in line with the vehicle development timeline,” said a statement from Sony Honda Mobility via third-party spokesman Glenn Mandel.

I heard that driving tests won’t come this year – next year is possible – but it might be 2026 before a journalist gets behind the wheel of a working car.

There were two ways to open the prototype door from the outside. You can press a button in Afeela’s smartphone app, or let the camera system open it for you after it recognizes your face. However, the latest prototype has a third method: a physical button mounted at the bottom of the window that can send the same signal. I pressed it, and it worked great. Sony Honda is still deciding how to verify your identity, though — reps couldn’t say whether it will use a car key or some type of digital car key like UWB to find out who you are nearby.

The Afeela’s ultra-wide screen is one of its most eye-catching features, but Sony Honda doesn’t plan to let the driver see everything while in motion. Instead, it will use some sort of privacy filter to isolate the passenger’s screen section so they can continue watching without distracting the driver.

“The specifications for mass production have not yet been determined, but we plan to install a mechanism that cannot be seen from the driver’s side while driving so that the driver can drive safely,” SHM tells us.

I played Gran Turismo 7 On the Afeela display, streaming is done wirelessly from a nearby PS5 using Sony’s PS Remote Play app. There’s no physical PS5 controller in the car, and there’s currently no plan to change that. In January, Sony Honda Mobility president and COO Izumi Kawanishi told me that it had not yet been decided whether a real PS5 console would appear, but SHM is now “assuming Remote Play instead of installing a PS5 controller.”

It’s also not clear whether you’ll be able to use the Afeela’s steering wheels and pedals to play anything.

Sony Honda signed a deal with Microsoft last year To create a “personal conversational agent” for the car, and while there are no confirmed details yet on what that actually means, I hear the goal is for in-car AI prompts you With questions after trying to anticipate your needs.

“We are studying the possibility of two-way communication between people and cars, and are also developing an interactive personal agent using the Microsoft Azure OpenAI service in cooperation with Microsoft,” SHM wrote when I asked him. “We believe that since it will grow based on the user, we will be able to communicate according to user preferences.”

I explained this in the video, but many parts of the prototype are currently just mockups, and have not yet been commissioned. This includes fancy stuff like digital side mirrors and rearview mirrors, but also mundane bits like turn signal stalks, sun visors, gloves, storage compartments, and most touchscreen user experience bits.

I could scroll around the map of Las Vegas, but I couldn’t click on any of the pins; I could browse a playing video and place it on the driver or passenger side of the screen with a gesture, but I couldn’t operate many other features on the touchscreen or in the companion smartphone app. I don’t bother SHM, though; Sony Honda has been completely transparent that this is a prototype, and they have a few more years to figure it all out.

Yes, the current prototype has a silly digital billboard across the front bumper displaying Sony-like features Spider Man And The horizon is forbidden west, and lets you fine-tune the car’s digital engine sound with sounds inspired by Sony properties including the anime streaming service Crunchyroll. But a spokesperson told me that Sony Honda is looking to partner with non-Sony entities as well — and I was able to display any text I liked on the bumper’s screen simply by typing it into the phone app.

I chose “The Verge,” of course.