CES 2020 Shocker: Sony’s Concept Car Showcases Sony (Of Course) Tech

LAS VEGAS – Nobody saw this coming. Sony, the company that used to define the old Consumer Electronics Show, this year at CES rolled out affordable 8K TVs, immersive audio, PS5 (logo only, gaming console to follow) … and an electric concept car. This is the Sony Vision-S.

Vision-S was created, quietly and with zero publicity, as a testbed for the various sensors and infotainment systems from Sony that can be used in passenger cars. Sony is looking for more sales, and more respect, for the automotive technology it has. Sony (and Bose and the rest of the car audio industry) has been brushed aside by the Samsung-Harman juggernaut that sells multiple suites of safety and advanced driver-assistance systems, infotainment systems, and flat panel displays.

The concept car, which is roadworthy, uses the now-common skateboard concept with the heavy batteries as a slice at the bottom of the vehicle, improving stability. The car has 33 sensors total embedded in the car, including CMOS and Time-of-Flight sensors, the latter to detect and recognize passengers in the cabin and their location relative to the nearest Sony screen. Other sensors track vehicles and pedestrians outside the car.

The front seats gaze out on a Byton-like, width-of-the-cabin flat panel LCD screen in the dashboard. (It pretty much is the dashboard.) We assume Sony will deal with distracted-driver rules the same way Byton does: Not allow video to play when the car is in motion. Or it could use the Sharp-developed technology that orients alternating pixels on the screen in front of the passenger so either the driver view is blacked out when the car is under way, or the driver sees a non-video image.

Sony says it builds a set of speakers into the headrest of each seating position (four in this vehicle). Sony calls it 360 Reality Audio that provides a “deep and immersive experience … to encapsulate passengers in sound.” It also means the driver could get navigation or safety prompts that only the driver hears.

Headrest speakers dating back a generation were installed in Recaro aftermarket sport seats. More recently, the Nissan Kicks subcompact SUV places Bose UltraNearfield speakers in the driver headrest so he or she gets different audio and audio shaping from the rest of the passengers, or the headrest speakers can be switched to be part of the entire cabin experience.

The car looks good. The skateboard design shows serious work by Sony and partners. For now, though, it appears to be more of a way for a handful of those road-worthy EVs to test and showcase Sony electronics, displays, sensors and head unit/speaker technology so Sony can regain traction as a technology supplier to the auto industry.

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