Yahoo Autos Sony Vision-S electric sedan: Is Sony going to build a car, or what?
Sony surprised us all when it unveiled a concept car named Vision-S at CES 2020. The electric sedan runs and drives, and it looks nearly ready for production, but the Japanese firm still hasn't decided what to do with it.
"We don't have a concrete plan at this time because our current phase is a research and development phase. We have to investigate what is our purpose in contributing to mobility service. That is our basic idea, and we have to continue the R&D phase," Sony executive vice president Izumi Kawanishi explained to Automotive News.
Sony's position is a little enigmatic and not all that regular. Rewind to January 2021: it said that it had "no plans to mass-produce or sell [the Vision-S]," though it didn't rule out moving into the automotive sector later on. And yet, for a company that publicly plans to steer clear of the car industry, it has spent what sounds like a substantial amount of money to build and test its first prototype. It enlisted the help of contract manufacturer Magna-Steyr to make the car a reality, the project began in 2018, and it is putting the prototype through its paces on European roads, so it even went through the trouble of getting it registered. On paper, it sounds like Sony is much further along than Apple.
