Boy! Sony has also announced its entry into the ranks of car manufacturers! On January 5, Sony's official website unveiled a new concept SUV called VISION-S 02.
At the 2022CES conference, Sony Chairman, President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida announced that sony mobility inc. will be the sony group's new division, Sony Mobility Inc., which is expected to be established in the spring of this year and will focus on the commercialization of electric vehicles after its establishment. Kenichiro Yoshida said: "We are exploring the commercialization of Sony electric vehicles. "It also means that Sony has officially decided to build a car."
Affected by the news, Sony's pre-market share price rose more than 5%.
According to reports, Sony Vision-S 02 is built by Sony's artificial intelligence team and robot team, and it is expected that the car will become an SUV model of Sony's Vision series.
In terms of appearance, the front face of the new car adopts a closed flat shape and is matched with through-LED daytime running lights. Judging from the published pictures, Sony's LOGO is cleverly set in the daytime lights to improve the recognition of the vehicle. The rear part of the car uses a penetrating LED tail light set, and the rear part uses the roof slip back and the tail upturned ducktail shape. In terms of body size, Sony has not officially announced detailed parameters, and the new car is based on a new pure electric platform, which is expected to be positioned as a mid-size SUV.
In terms of interior, the overall design of the new car is relatively simple, the central control adopts a through-channel triple screen design, and the new car is equipped with large wheels, hidden door handles and electronic exterior mirrors in the configuration.
In addition, Sony emphasizes that safety has always been its first priority, and the SUV has a total of 40 sensors installed inside and outside the car, mainly used to monitor the safety situation. As a result, the unveiled model deploys a number of safety-related vehicle sensors, with a maximum of 40 units, which can wrap around the body in 360 degrees.
According to public information, Sony is a world-renowned large-scale comprehensive multinational conglomerate in Japan, headquartered in 1-7-1 Minami, Minato District, Tokyo, Japan, the main business involves audio-visual, video games, communication products and information technology and other fields, is the world's earliest pioneer of portable digital products, is also one of the world's largest electronic product manufacturers, one of the world's three giants of the video game industry, one of the six major Hollywood film companies in the United States.
In fact, in January 2020, Sony officially released its first pure electric concept model VISION-S. It is worth noting that this concept car is not built by Sony alone, but is jointly built by a number of companies, including NVIDIA, Qualcomm, ZF, Bosch, BlackBerry, QNX, Mapai, Benteler, Magna, etc., and the electric vehicle platform is jointly designed by Sony and Magna. In July 2020, Sony China's official Weibo said, "Come on, try to take your driver's license!" And attached a picture of the VISION-S pure electric concept car.
Sony China's Weibo has caused a lot of speculation, and many netizens believe that Sony intends to enter the automobile manufacturing industry and become a member of cross-border car manufacturing. However, sony group responded at that time: the company is committed to the development of autonomous driving technology, and plans to test the technology in 2020. Vision-S is only to show off the technology, Sony has no intention of building a car. Vision-S project leader Izumi Kawanishi said in an interview with foreign media that Sony will not become an automobile manufacturer, but is committed to becoming a driving force for change in the automobile industry.
In terms of appearance, VISION-S adopts a slip-back design, the tail light group also adopts the design of through-line light strips, and the interior of the new car is equipped with a full LCD instrument and two multimedia displays. In terms of power, the car has two 200KW motors, which accelerate by 4.8 seconds per 100 km/h and have an extreme speed of about 238 km/h. In December of the same year, Sony Vision-S began public pavement testing in Austria to evaluate vision-S safety and Sony technology. By April last year, Sony Group and Vodafone began 5G driving tests of the VISION-S Prototype in Oldenhofen, Germany.
Although Sony previously denied making cars, but as more and more companies, including Apple, Foxconn, Xiaomi, Baidu, etc. have announced the layout of the automobile market, now more than a year has passed, Sony officially announced the layout of the automotive field may have been prepared, and this action is actually expected.
But unlike other companies that have entered the car market, from the past two years and Sony's quiet layout, Sony has accumulated in the electric vehicle industry, obviously sony announced the entry into the automotive industry is also well thought-out, but the general car manufacturing cycle is at least 3 years, which also means that if Sony wants to launch a commercial vehicle that can be mass-produced, according to time calculations, Sony's first model will not be listed until 2023 at the earliest, of course, this is only speculation. Up to now, Sony officials have not disclosed whether Vision-S 02 is its first commercial product, and the specific car production and delivery schedule has not been announced.
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