Honda and Sony Have Abandonned the Afeela EV and are Reconsidering the Future of their Joint Venture

• The Afeela 1 electric sedan was due to launch this year in California, with pre-production having already begun.

• The SUV that was previewed at the 2026 CES has also been cancelled.

• This is part of Honda’s decision to pull back from EV investments.

When Honda announced it would stop the development of its upcoming electric models earlier this month, little had been said about the Afeela 1, a large electric sedan conceived jointly with Sony.

This morning, the automaker confirmed that like the 0 Series Saloon and SUV, as well as the Acura RSX, the Afeela 1 has also been cancelled.

While the other electric models were still a few years away from their market introduction, the Afeela 1 was expected to reach its first buyers in California before the end of the year.

In fact, a pre-production assembly line had already been set up at Honda’s East Liberty manufacturing facility in Ohio, and test vehicles had begun rolling out.

The Afeela 1 was intended more as a showcase of both Honda and Sony’s technologies rather than a high-volume product, with a base price of $89,900 and $102,900 announced for the two trim levels that were planned in the United States.

The significant drop in EV sales in North America over the last year and the reduction in environmental protection rules in the U.S. have made the business case for electric models less appealing to a few automakers, including Honda.

In addition to the Afeela 1, the Afeela SUV that was unveiled at the 2026 CES in January has also been cancelled. The production version of this model was expected in 2028.

While both known products of the Sony-Honda joint venture will not see full-scale production, the partnership between the two Japanese companies is not over quite yet.

Indeed, Sony and Honda said they are currently reviewing the direction of the joint venture to see if there are other ways in which they could collaborate.

Things aren’t looking great, however, and a dissolution of the partnership in the coming weeks or months would not be surprising.

For the moment, Honda will continue focusing on gasoline-powered and hybrid models instead of fully-electric vehicles.

The Afeela, along with the Acura RSX, would have been the first internally-developed EVs from Honda in North America, where the company’s only current electric model is the Prologue, which was developed and is manufactured by General Motors.