Sony released multiple videos showing off their Sony VISION-S electric car concept, which they first unveiled in a surprise move one year ago at CES.
The videos provide new insights on the design and engineering of the car, comments from partners Sony is working with, and reveal that Sony has started testing their vehicle on public roads near their engineering center in Graz, Austria.
We haven’t heard much about Sony’s EV project since last year’s CES debut, but Sony took the occasion of this year’s online-only CES to pull back the curtain a little more.
Last year’s launch was fairly low on information, so we don’t have a lot to build on. Announced specs included a variety of sensors for autonomous driving, an “immersive audio experience,” a “software-oriented design,” 400kW (536hp) dual-motor all-wheel-drive, 0-100km/h (0-62mph) in 4.8 seconds and a top speed of 240km/h (149mph).
We still have no information on availability, price or battery size. In fact, even though there are some portions of this video which show the car’s driver and range display, both the battery percentage and remaining range units are zeroed out, so we can’t even sneak any insight from that. And Sony hasn’t said a word about production or dealership plans, which means there’s still a lot to be done before getting the VISION-S into the hands of customers.
But the new video offers some interesting insights nonetheless. It switches between Japanese and English, but you can use YouTube’s Closed Captions for a translation:
Sony states that they have increased the number of sensors for autonomous driving to 40, from the previously announced 33. This doesn’t mean a whole lot on its own (cars have a large variety of number and types of sensors), but apparently Sony felt they needed more than the originally planned for.
Sony’s “software-oriented design” is the focus of much of the video, showing off how Sony can leverage their expertise in entertainment devices to make better software for a car.
The most eye-catching feature of the original VISION-S concept was a large widescreen which encompassed the whole dash, and Sony seems to be sticking with it as they continue to develop the vehicle. At one point a PlayStation controller is shown connected to the screen playing Little Big Planet, a PlayStation game.
Sony’s partners spoke on the importance of communications and the cloud in today’s vehicles, and a representative from Bosch praised Sony’s human-machine interface features (side note: Bosch recently took a dumb stance against EVs, despite being a large supplier of EV equipment).
That human-machine interface seems to include facial, speech and gesture recognition. A portion of the video shows thermal imaging of the cockpit while the driver does a gesture with one hand, and also shows a facial and speech recognition system being trained
While Sony didn’t say when the VISION-S would come out, Horst Schaffer from Continental did state that he “has the feeling that all involved parties want to bring this vehicle as soon as possible to the street.”
See more in another short “road testing” video, which has no voiceover but shows the Sony VISION-S driving through some snowy Austrian public and private roads. The car is camouflaged, but it doesn’t seem to hide much – particularly considering we’ve already seen it without camouflage at CES last year.
