Sony and Honda are two storied Japanese brands with the same passion or ‘kando’ for the products they create, but there was a definite clash of cultures when the two came together to form the Afeela car brand, Sony-Honda Mobility CEO Yasuhide Mizuno has revealed.
“Sony is mainly a software company, which means they don’t spend five years planning to launch a new product,” Mizuno, a former Honda executive, told journalists in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in early January. “They quickly launch and then update, update, update.”
Following the agreement of the joint venture last year, room was found in Sony’s Tokyo office and 100 staff – mostly engineers – from each company were thrust together to create that tricky beast: a modern, software-defined car company.
“The Sony people were very surprised at the first meeting,” Mizuno recalled.