Sony took the stage today for its CES 2022 keynote, which was fine and completely normal. Except for the part where Sony hid its latest Vision-S concept SUV electric vehicle for the majority of its presentation. Oh, and just one small thing: a Sony car may be hitting the market very soon.
The presentation started out as you’d assume. Well, maybe not, considering Tom Holland came on to talk about Uncharted and we basically got to see the entire movie with a “short clip” that Sony dropped while he was on stage (carrying the presentation, mind you).
Then Sony talked PlayStation and VR (Kotaku has you covered for this stuff over here) which was also fine (great, actually, they didn’t say ‘metaverse’ or ‘NFT’ once).
But then came out Sony’s 2021 EV darling, the Vision-S sedan, which, although I was watching from my makeshift office at home and not from the audience, was pretty cool to see a car drive out on stage. Until, that is, a second car came out.
Meet the Vision-S SUV prototype.
According to Sony, the company has the goal of “contributing to the evolution of mobility”. So with that, Sony chairman, president and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida announced Sony Group was starting a new division. Sony Mobility Inc is wasting no time, it will start EV commercialisation efforts. Well, the exact words were: “exploring the commercial launch of Sony’s EV”. But still, this is massive. Sony Mobility Inc could be bringing a car to us super soon.
As Yoshida said on stage, “the human need for mobility will continue and there is an opportunity to satisfy both people’s desire to move safely and to be entertained”.
“The excitement we received after we showed off the Vision-S really encouraged us to further consider how we can bring creativity and technology to change the experience of moving from one place to another,” he said.
“Vision-S has been developed on a foundation of safety, adaptability and entertainment. Safety has been our number one priority in creating a comfortable mobility experience.”
He said that vision has not changed when building the SUV.
The prototype, while we don’t know much about it yet, has 40 sensors all in the name of safety.
It is equipped with bad ass network connectivity (he didn’t say that in so many words), rather: “With 5G, it enables high-speed, high-capacity and low-latency connectivity between the in-vehicle system and the cloud using 5G”. The Vision-S SUV can also be fully-customised (well, the cabin, anyway). You can game in it, too, apparently.
Your move car people, Sony has set the presentation bar high.