Nine days after Sony Honda Mobility opened its AFEELA Studio and Delivery Hub in Torrance, California, the joint venture announced it was cancelling both cars the showroom was built to sell.
The AFEELA 1 sedan, which had reached the pre-production stage at Honda's East Liberty Auto Plant in Ohio and was weeks from its first California deliveries, will not reach customers. Neither will the unnamed electric SUV that had been shown as a prototype at CES 2026 and was targeted for a 2028 launch. Reservation holders will receive full refunds of their $200 deposits.
The announcement follows Honda's much larger strategic reversal, disclosed on 12 March, in which Japan's second-largest automaker cancelled three US-market electric vehicles, the Honda 0 Saloon, the Honda 0 SUV, and the Acura RSX, and flagged a restructuring charge of up to 2.5 trillion yen, equivalent to approximately $15.7 billion, to be spread across the current and next fiscal year.
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That decision will push Honda to its first annual loss since it listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1957. AFEELA was the direct casualty: the joint venture's vehicles were designed around Honda's proprietary EV platforms and technology, and when Honda withdrew those assets, SHM determined it “does not have a viable path forward to bring the models to market as originally planned.”
Sony Honda Mobility was established in September 2022, a joint venture combining Honda's engineering and manufacturing with Sony's software and entertainment ecosystem.
The premise was that the next frontier in EVs was the in-car experience, not just the drivetrain, and that Sony's decades of consumer electronics expertise, its PlayStation platform, and its entertainment content library could differentiate a vehicle in ways that pure automotive manufacturers could not.
The AFEELA 1 was priced from $89,900 for the base Origin trim, with the Signature trim at $102,900, and came equipped with a 40-sensor suite including cameras, lidar, and radar, aiming toward hands-off autonomous driving capability. It had a 300-mile EPA-estimated range and a 150-kilowatt charge rate.
The economics were always difficult. At $89,900, the AFEELA 1 was competing not only against Tesla but against an EV market that has been moving downmarket, not up. Chinese manufacturers have been pushing aggressively into the premium segment globally, while US EV tax credits have been eliminated under the Trump administration and demand in Europe has underperformed.
Honda cited “recent changes in the business environment”, including tariffs and competitive pressure from Chinese manufacturers, as factors behind its broader EV retreat. The industry's collective writedown on EV ambitions now stands at approximately $67 billion: General Motors has warned of a $7.6 billion hit, Stellantis has flagged $25 billion, and Ford $19 billion, alongside Honda's $15.7 billion.
Sony and Honda stated that the AFEELA cancellation will not affect their updated full-year consolidated financial forecasts for the fiscal year ending this month. Both companies say they will continue to evaluate the future of the SHM joint venture, with a new mid- to long-term direction to be announced “at the earliest possible opportunity.”