Sony Will Explore Building Electric Cars (techcrunch.com) 51
At CES in Las Vegas this evening, Sony's Chairman, President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida showed off a brand new prototype of its Vision S concept electric car, and announced that the Sony Group is starting a new division -- the Sony Mobility Inc -- which will start commercializing its electric vehicles. TechCrunch reports: On the CES stage during the Sony press conference, the company showed off its existing Sony Vision-S sedan, which was revealed at CES last year. This year, it also flexed a new model in the lineup, the Sony Vision-S SUV prototype. "The excitement we received after we showed off the Vision-S really encouraged us to further consider how we can bring creativity and technology to change the experience of moving from one place to another," said Yoshida, before revealing the new Vision-S SUV prototype. "This is our new Vision-S SUV. Vision-S has been developed on a foundation of safety, adaptability and entertainment. Safety has been our No. 1 priority in creating a comfortable mobility experience. That has not changed when building this SUV. A total of 40 sensors are installed inside and outside of the vehicle to monitor safety.
"In terms of adaptability, we have connectivity that enables us to build a vehicle that continuously evolves. It also makes it possible to personalize the cabin for each user. With 5G, it enables high speed, high capacity and low-latency connectivity between the in-vehicle system and the cloud. The Vision-S also evolves mobility as an entertainment space," said Yoshida. "The Vision-S also evolves mobility as an entertainment space, including gaming experience and audio. We have learned more about mobility through our exploration of Vision-S and through our partners who have supported this effort." There's been a lot of EV announcements today. Not only did GM reveal an electric version of the Chevy Silverado, but Chrysler announced plans to go all-electric by 2028, starting with the Airflow, "a concept crossover that appears to be close to ready for production," reports Ars Technica.
BMW also unveiled color-changing paint for its vehicles that relies on the E-ink electronic paper technology found in e-readers like the Kindle.
"In terms of adaptability, we have connectivity that enables us to build a vehicle that continuously evolves. It also makes it possible to personalize the cabin for each user. With 5G, it enables high speed, high capacity and low-latency connectivity between the in-vehicle system and the cloud. The Vision-S also evolves mobility as an entertainment space," said Yoshida. "The Vision-S also evolves mobility as an entertainment space, including gaming experience and audio. We have learned more about mobility through our exploration of Vision-S and through our partners who have supported this effort." There's been a lot of EV announcements today. Not only did GM reveal an electric version of the Chevy Silverado, but Chrysler announced plans to go all-electric by 2028, starting with the Airflow, "a concept crossover that appears to be close to ready for production," reports Ars Technica.
BMW also unveiled color-changing paint for its vehicles that relies on the E-ink electronic paper technology found in e-readers like the Kindle.
Warning (Score:5, Funny)
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Came here to make a rootkit joke. Was not disappointed that someone had already done so.
5/5 would read comment again.
OK boomer (Re:Warning) (Score:2)
Stay away from the CD player.
What's a CD player?
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If you plug the car in to your house, it'll rootkit your smart-speakers to make sure you're not playing any unauthorized music.
Damn... (Score:2)
Sony with explode building electric cars
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I gotta ask: do you really feel that this comment was necessary? Maybe next time just keep scrolling; you can't build yourself up by tearing others down, what you said was not clever, and it makes you look childish. I believe you're a better person than this in IRL, so why not let more of the real you be online too?
I was expecting this 20+ years ago really (Score:2)
I always figured it would be a merger (or at least cooperation) between Sony and Toyota. The two companies have a lot of consumer overlap and a lot of similarly devout fans. Both make quality products that carry a lot of prestige for the name. Both make products
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Magna Steyr manufactures cars for Mercedes-Benz, Jagua, BMW and others already - the 2019 BMW Z4/Toyota Supra is manufactured by Magna Steyr. Thereâ(TM)s a list of models they've made here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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What would Toyota get out of working with Sony? Seems like it would be a completely one sided relationship.
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I was expecting having Electric Cars as a viable driving option 20 years ago, but for Sony getting into the Car market, where Japan has Toyota and Honda. Sony will not get much support from Japan, as well Cars in 2002 in general were not hot items, just kinda practical things people needed.
It would be like if Toyota decided to start making Cell phones today. That technology missed it opportunity to be cool and offer a competitive advantage.
However the Electric Car, is more computer than car. And Toyota a
Sony wants to build a car? Fine. (Score:5, Funny)
Fine. Let Sony build a car. Oh, need to recharge it? Fee.
Oh, need to open the hood? Fee.
Oh, want to air up a tire? Fee.
And in 3 years, no more support.
And in 5 years, bricked.
Yeah, just like their consoles. Pass.
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I'll use an insult on you now which is far better and... Rather than making you come off as a knuckle dragger, is a good, clean insult.
You aren't the sharpest spoon in the drawer... are you?
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You're a moron.
I've been called worse. What I'm rarely called is "wrong".
Although, 20 years ago, I was complaining about that annoying nylon thread in multi conductor wire and cursing it. Then a 17 year old lady pointed out it's use. So even then, when someone (no matter age, sexual preference, perceived intelligence or political affiliation) points out I'm wrong using facts, I have one response:
"Oh. You're right!"
So, I'm wondering, given Sony's reputation for charging fees and doing evil things with consumers of their pr
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Sony, like many corporations, is schizophrenic. Part of it wants to do the right thing, like when they introduced "Other OS" so you could run Linux, or when they implemented backwards compatibility at a time when it was rare.
Another part wants to screw the consumer as much as possible, with proprietary memory cards, batteries, chargers, cables and anything else they can think of. They were Apple before Apple started doing it.
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Corporations only want to make money. There is no "want to do the right thing". They are psychopaths, not schizophrenics.
Anything that they have done is only in the pursuit of money. "Other OS" and "backwards compatibility" were just attempts to get people to give them more money.
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Nah.
But do expect a proprietary charger plug.
Given the history of Sony ... (Score:2)
I used to joke, if Sony ever made cars, it will try to create a proprietary formulation of gasoline. Well the day has come, and let us see if it tries to create a SONY brand electrons to power its BEV ...
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They're using Betacam SP, to the extent that anyone is still using it, not ordinary Betamax.
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Mass-digitization happen when HDCAM-SR reared its ugly head with a price tag which excluded anyone from owning more than two decks.
They still keep the tapes in a dark basement, but SD video.. stored as lossless from a DigiBeta deck (some read SP) was 270Mb/s
Stored as lossy studio formats, it's more like 10GB per hour. And for str
Serious Risk to Reputation (Score:3)
If they don't produce a top quality product out of the gate it could damage their core business. I am thinking about Samsung's shoddy appliances.
Thjink of all the cool tie-in names (Score:2)
CarStation
CarBetaMax
Me too (Score:4, Insightful)
The tech industry seems to have a severe lack of originality. Someone decides to make a phone, they've all gotta do it. Chat program, yeah, we've got one too. Ad network? Of course. Building cars? Oh, us too.
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I remember when everyone wanted to make a desktop computer. As I recall it was just a matter of buying all the parts off the shelf and assembling them into a working computer. What likely killed that was the people that made all the parts got the same idea and decided to make computers themselves. So instead of hundreds of people making computers it went back to dozens. I expect a repeat. Companies with the manufacturing and consumer base to offer an electric car will buy up parts and assemble them int
Regulation (Score:2)
I remember when everyone wanted to make a desktop computer. As I recall it was just a matter of buying all the parts off the shelf and assembling them into a working computer.
There's a big difference.
Building computers, since IBM introduced its PC has mostly been about slapping together a bunch of off-the-shelf parts (the whole idea behind IBM's project).
Anyone can literary do it, only difference is the quality of the final output.
Even an idiot could do it, and worse that could happen is you release the magic blue smoke.
Or in case of peculiarly creative idiot, they might burn their own house down (or someone else's office. See laptop batteries manufactured by Sony in the early 0
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It sounds like they're short circuiting the process this time.
Sony isn't going to build a car. They're "partnering" with an automaker who will actually build a car. Sony will put their logo on it. Apple is doing the same thing.
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You can't really accuse Sony of not innovating with its phones. They have stuff like full size camera sensors and a full manual mode. They aren't actually that great, but they are definitely trying new things.
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I didn't say innovation, I said originality. Sticking a different sensor in a phone may or may not be innovative, depending on your standards, but building a mobile phone hasn't been original for decades.
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That's probably because coming up with truly original ideas is incredibly hard, especially profitable ones. Meanwhile building on some one else's idea sometimes works.
Take Google or Facebook. Neither of these company's core product concepts were even close to being original but now they're absolute behemoths because of them.
What's the problem to be solved? (Score:2)
Has anyone stopped to ask why we need electric cars?
I'll see people make a big deal out of electric cars because they bring lower emissions, greater performance, or whatever. But really what problem does the electric car solve that can't be solved any other way. We know how to get hydrocarbons from carbon neutral sources. We know how to burn hydrocarbons so they provide power to lights, computers, and motors. Why all this hype over electric cars?
We see the hype because nobody offered an alternative yet.
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Efficiency [Re:What's the problem to be solved?] (Score:2)
Well, while the battery recharging might be a problem, the issue with ICE cars is the energy efficiency is much lower than an electric car. Fine if you dig the fuel up out of the ground, but if you're going to the trouble of making the fuel using electrical energy you want the whole thing to be as efficient as possible.
Tricky to calculate this.
Internal combustion engines take fossil fuel, burn it to convert to thermal energy and convert the thermal energy into mechanical motion, and send the motion through the transmission to the wheels.
Electric cars take fossil fuel, burn it (in a power plant) to convert it to convert to thermal energy and convert the thermal energy into mechanical motion, convert the mechanical motion to electrical power, send the electrical power across transmission lines, convert the transmission line
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Or you have solar panels, which the Photons create an electrical charge, which we can send to your car.
But still with Grid Electricity you have economies of scale, on your side. Steam Turbine power when scaled up to a larger scale is rather cheap and less of an environmental impact for the amount of benefit it provides.
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Efficiency. An internal combustion engine will never have the same efficiency, especially as the prime mover of a car. Really a better question would be what problem does an ICE solve; the answer is density of energy storage.
ICE or turbine [Re:What's the problem...] (Score:2)
Efficiency. An internal combustion engine will never have the same efficiency,
as noted above, electric cars also burn fossil fuels, they just burn the fuel in a power plant, not an ICE. The huge turbines in power plants are, yes, more efficient (about twice as efficient as a car engine), but there are a lot more steps between burning the fossil fuel and moving the car.
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Right now the electric car market is a land rush. Be it BEV or some other *EV solution its pretty clear that there are going to be performance and maintenance advantages that are going to mean even when truly mass market affordable models emerge consumes are likely to prefer electrics. Yes there will always be enthusiasts that love ICE cars, but I suspect for grocery getting even most of them will use a EV most of the time ultimately. Autos are big market but they have been a very hard to penetrate market
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Has anyone stopped to ask why we need electric cars?
Because people won't embrace PRT on elevated rail even though it is superior.
I'll see people make a big deal out of electric cars because they bring lower emissions, greater performance, or whatever. But really what problem does the electric car solve that can't be solved any other way. We know how to get hydrocarbons from carbon neutral sources.
It solves the problem of pollution from hydrocarbons, and also the abysmal efficiency of small ICEs (anything smaller than what's in a container ship, and even they only hit about 51% peak efficiency.) Even if you are making the fuel and all that you are still going to be emitting soot. Even propane engines emit soot because they burn some of their lubricant during combustion. You cannot reasonably trap all of the soot. Because of
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It's not much that we need them, but that you'll want them, once you try. Or maybe not you, but next generation who starts discovering cars and gets option to test both, will likely go for electric. EV improve on comfort, performance, safety, and total cost of ownership*.
The range is improving. If you have lived your life used to gas cars and these new EV have a lower range, you think of it as downside. For new generations who live in cities, it might not be a compelling argument.
The issue with charging is
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Your two item list of the downsides to electric cars is pretty out of date. Modern battery densities (which get batter every year) and at home, over night charging means the vast majority of owners will not need to use public chargers for 99% of their usage and even then they only take 15 minutes and if you've been driving long enough to completely drain your batteries it's probably time to stop for lunch anyways. After that, Tesla and Ford with its new F-150 Lightning are all you need to know about to know
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1. The cost of getting carbon neutral hydrocarbons is expensive, as well would probably still require new engine designs, might as well build an EV which offers a lower total cost of ownership, if you have to reengineer everything from start again.
2. EV have less moving parts, and moving parts are the ones the break more often and needs maintenance. So this would bring down the total number of expensive recalls, where parts need to be replaced, and push the issues to easy and cheap software updates.
3. The
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1. The cost of getting carbon neutral hydrocarbons is expensive, as well would probably still require new engine designs, might as well build an EV which offers a lower total cost of ownership, if you have to reengineer everything from start again.
The entire point of using synthesized hydrocarbon fuels is to avoid redesigning any engines. Indeed it is expensive now to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels but the expectation is the costs will come down with technology developments and economy of scale, kind of like how we brought the costs of batteries down to where they would be practical for EVs.
2. EV have less moving parts, and moving parts are the ones the break more often and needs maintenance. So this would bring down the total number of expensive recalls, where parts need to be replaced, and push the issues to easy and cheap software updates.
How often do cars break down any more? This is a non-issue.
3. The battery isn't as much as a problem as people think it is. You charge at home every night, so you have a full charge every morning.
You can keep screaming all you like but it is still going to be an issue. If there is no issue on havi
Blinkers anyone? (Score:2)
It's the Sony Driveman! (Score:2)
Please call it a Driveman! (Score:1)
Pretty please.
They will make a fine car (Score:2)
I am sure Sony will make a fine car. But almost certainly the on-board entertainment system will be total garbage.