When people are paying attention to the transformation of the two digital companies of Xiaomi and Apple, Sony has also brought more points of view to this track.
On January 5, at the 2022 CES American Consumer Electronics Exhibition, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida revealed that they had established an electric vehicle company, Sony Mobility, and officially entered the car industry.
At the CES 2020 show, Sony unveiled an electric vehicle, the Vision-S EV, which will be on display at CES in 2021. At that time, Sony had repeatedly denied entering the car industry, and they released a concept model just to show the application of their own technology in the automotive industry. However, since then, the Vision-S EV has also undergone road tests, and its acceleration from 100 kilometers only takes 4.9 seconds.
This year's CES show is the third time that Sony has talked about things related to car building, and now they have decided to fully embrace the electric vehicle market. This year Sony not only brought the already released Vision-S EV electric sedan, but also launched a new concept SUV called The Vision-S 02, which is about 192.7 inches long, 76.0 inches wide and 65.0 inches high, and it resembles Tesla's Model Y. The Vision-S 02 is powered by a pair of motors, each producing 200 kilowatts (about 268 hp).
A total of 40 sensors are installed inside and outside the Vision-S 02 to monitor the safety of the vehicle and can also help the car improve the level of autonomous driving.
In addition, it supports 5G transmission, enabling high-speed, high-capacity and low-latency connectivity between in-vehicle systems and clouds.
Obviously, Sony announced that the car was built this time. But Sony did not disclose whether the Vision-S 02 was Sony's first commercial product, nor did it disclose the specific car production and delivery timelines.
After Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida announced the establishment of a car-making company, his company's stock price rose, which also shows that the outside world is relatively optimistic about Sony's transformation of car manufacturing.
At present, many digital technology companies such as Xiaomi and Apple have opened the road of transformation and car manufacturing.
Lei Jun announced the construction of cars
Lei Jun announced the construction of cars at the end of March 2021, the most recent talk about car building was on December 24, 2021, he revealed that Xiaomi Auto is expected to produce cars in the first half of 2024, and the price is likely to be between 100,000 yuan and 300,000 yuan.
Coincidentally, Apple's car has also been exposed to be listed in 2024, but Apple's progress in car manufacturing is not very smooth, they launched a car-making project called "Titan Project" as early as 2014, but the development of the project was blocked in 2016, and in 2017, Apple cooperated with Didi to set up an autonomous driving laboratory. In 2019, Apple acquired Drive.ai, a self-driving car startup. At present, Apple's electric vehicles are still only heard and have not seen their cars.
The general car manufacturing cycle takes at least 3 years, and Sony has accumulated in the electric vehicle industry in the past 2 years, so if they want to launch a commercial vehicle that can be mass-produced, it may be launched as early as 2023. Of course, this is just a guess.