Honda and Sony have officially scrapped their joint venture to develop a new electric vehicle – the project was advanced, with cars already in production in California. 

Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) turns out to have been a short-lived joint venture, and it’s unusual for a car like the SHM Afeela 1 to be dumped so close to going on sale when so much work has already gone into it. A second model was also in the pipeline, which has also been dropped. 

We’d already had a good look at the SHM Afeela 1 saloon in America, and we were impressed by the tech knowhow that Sony brought to the car, as well as the minimalist but premium feel inside.

In a statement, SHM said that it had been forced to make the decision to drop its cars because the platforms and technology that had been promised by Honda were no longer available as a result of the Japanese carmaker dropping its own run of new electric cars. 

Honda announced it was dropping its upcoming new EV family after it was revealed the company had made its first annual loss in over 70 years. It has scrapped all but two of its upcoming electric projects, with no news yet as to what might replace them in the sales lineup. 

The new 0 Series SUV and saloon car models were intended to relaunch Honda’s electric effort after some disappointing flops. A version of the 0 Series called the Alpha, a small SUV, is still slated for the Japanese and Indian markets, while the Honda Super-N electric hatchback is destined to launch in the UK later this year.

Honda doesn’t currently have an electric car on sale in the UK, since it mysteriously took its e:Ny1 SUV off sale earlier this year without saying why.

The decision to cut short the Sony/Honda project is a bit more understandable though. Forecasts for electric vehicle sales in the US – where the Afeela 1 was already available ahead of deliveries later in 2026 – have had to be drastically cut back, with Donald Trump’s government cutting EV incentives and aggressively promoting oil production and combustion engined cars.