Although the share price of global consumer electronics giant Sony has suffered a bearish fall in recent days, the setback does not affect the company's vision of betting on electric cars and turning them into entertainment space. Sony is now looking for technology partners around the world, according to interviews published in the media on Friday.
At CES in early January, Sony President Kenichiro Yoshida announced the formation of a new electric vehicle division, transforming the experimental project, which was launched two years ago, into a business division. Sony Executive Vice President Izumi Kawanishi, who is in charge of the project, also has a wealth of experience in the frontier field, leading Sony's AI robotics division and launching the Aibo pet robot.
Sony car "moments"
In fact, the Vision concept car that Sony shows off is highly completed, but it is not built by the company itself.
At present, Sony's car project is based in Europe, and the prototype car comes from the plant of Magna, a well-known auto parts manufacturer, in Austria. Magna is also a supplier to well-known automakers such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota.
In addition to Magna, German auto parts maker Bosch, French technology company Valeo and Hungarian self-driving start-up AImotive are already in the Sony car project. Asked by the media whether it would expand its "circle of friends", especially to absorb companies from China, Kawanishi said Sony chose partners on the basis of what kind of technology these companies can bring to electric car projects, regardless of which country they come from.
It is not difficult to get started with electric cars.
In the process of electrification transformation of the automobile industry, many new players are able to enter the venue because they have bypassed the technical threshold of the internal combustion engine. With self-driving, 5G and other technologies, cars are changing from transportation to mobile information platforms, which is also the prospect of cross-border companies such as Sony, Apple and Foxconn.
Kawanishi says there are challenges in building cars, but ignoring the risks of electric car vents is particularly serious. Today's vehicles are facing changes just as information technology turned telephones into smartphones.
For Sony, building its own electric car alone requires huge investment in factories and equipment. After listing, the products will also face competition with traditional car manufacturers such as Toyota, General Motors and Volkswagen, which have invested tens of billions of dollars to seize the market share of electric vehicles.
