Afeela, a Japanese joint venture company established by Honda Motor Co Ltd ADR (NYSE:HMC) and Sony (NYSE:SONY), is still a ways away from releasing its first electric vehicle. However, we do know that the company is working with Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) Technologies to include outfit Afeela’s first production model with its Snapdragon Digital Chassis, capable of doing 800 trillion operations per second.
The EV is also expected to have no less than 45 sensors, including eight cameras and one LiDAR. All of which will help to power the autonomous driving functions.
The 5G cellular and WiFi connectivity in the vehicle will be facilitated by the Snapdragon connectivity chips. Additionally, the Snapdragon cockpit will empower the array of interior screens located in the cabin, including the one on the front fascia.
Once all is said and done, the collaborative all-electric product resulting from Sony and Honda's joint venture is expected to possess Level 3 self-driving capabilities. Meaning that a person is not driving the car when the driving assistance systems are engaged, but that the driver needs to take over control when the feature requests this.
Bill Pinnell, the vice president of product management for Qualcomm, stated that the company is shifting its focus from being solely smartphone-oriented. He emphasized that the Afeela EV will represent one of the initial products to integrate all of Qualcomm's technologies into a single platform.
“We see the importance of diversity and moving away from a mobile-centric company, or purely mobile centric to have adjacent businesses that can use all the bits and pieces we already did with communications,” he said. “AI is super important, as are all the display graphics multimedia technologies that we’ve developed over the years, so the automotive part is a superset of nearly everything we do.”
Scheduled for production in 2025, the EV will be built at a Honda factory in Ohio and will feature Honda's new e:Architecture platform. Sony will play a key role by incorporating various digital technologies and media content from its movie, music, and video game divisions into the vehicle.
Shares of HMC and SONY are up 1.20% and 0.39% respectively in afternoon trading on Monday.