The president of Sony Honda is allowed to drive an electric car

Sony’s CES 2024 presentation might not have delivered in the way some might have hoped, with no news of the much-rumoured PS5 Pro, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have its moments of excitement. Enter, Sony Honda Mobility president and COO Izumi Kawanishi, who livened up proceedings by driving a car onstage with a Sony DualSense controller.

Or did he? It’s difficult to imagine that, given that the eyes of the world’s media were watching, and that the presentation space was jam-packed with journalists eager to get a glimpse of Sony’s latest products, the company or indeed the venue would allow one of its senior executives to actually control an electric vehicle with a gaming controller.

I mean, imagine the insurance forms you’d need to fill out, or the claim the company would have to make if it all went wrong. A sizable car accidentally rolling off the stage into the crowd just doesn’t bear thinking about, so surely all involved would have made sure that the demo was as safe as it could possibly be. 

The car in question was Sony and Honda’s new EV concept, the Afeela, and while the car itself has plenty of the expected EV features (via The Verge) like all-wheel drive, two 180kW motors and a substantial 91kWh battery, it was the entertainment features that made it something of a stand out feature of the show.

The front bumper is capable of displaying advertisements created by a button on a dedicated app (how cyberpunk is that), the driver’s seat has a built in movie-theatre like rumble feature, and the narrow yet obscenely wide dashboard screen was shown delivering all sorts of media, although the company has yet to decide on whether it’ll actually integrate a PlayStation into the car itself. 

For safety’s sake, it’s highly likely that what we were watching was instead the car performing a carefully orchestrated pre-programmed movement, and we’d expect that many rehearsals would be carried out to make sure that no-one present was at risk from an accidental slip of the finger and a terrible outcome.

For what it’s worth, Kawanishi did point out that the controller demonstration was purely for the purposes of the showcase and not an expected feature, but if the aim was to catch the media’s attention, it certainly succeeded.

Still, it certainly was entertaining to watch, although a future of cars being controlled on the regular by gaming controllers doesn’t seem likely anytime soon.

Given my penchant for accidentally bumping into barriers in Forza Horizon 5, that’s a fact in which I can take some small comfort.