Sony reveals that the AFEELA car can be driven via the PlayStation controller

Do you know what a spectacularly terrible idea is? Being able to control a real car with a PlayStation DualSense controller. Yes, this is a real thing now. During Sony’s CES 2024 press conference, the Japanese tech giant took a big leap into the worrisome realms of “Whether they could do it?” by demonstrating the ability to drive a car with a PS5 peripheral.

Sony and Honda have teamed up behind the garage and produced something called AFEELA, the hot name for a new-fangled AV car that narrowly transforms into a killer robot. Its amazing ultra-mega-widescreen dashboard makes the interior of a Tesla look like an ’80s Apple IIe, while the exterior appears to be based on it Knight rider

‘s KITT was a family salon. It is website reads like the projectile vomit of thousands of business leaders saying things like (and I promise this is true): “AFEELA enables unprecedented intelligence, remembers, communicates, protects and inspires people.”

Just in case this didn’t already sound like the introduction to a dystopian sci-fi movie about cars taking over the world, Sony and Honda extraordinarily declare that they are “in collaboration with Microsoft” licensing Azure OpenAI as “Conversational.” “personal agent” for all those moments when you need your car to invent something based on the things it scraped off Reddit.

To reiterate, this is a (prototype) car that boasts the ability to use Unreal Engine-driven AR on its giant dashboard screens to make it look like, as if real colossal monsters were standing on the road in front of you while you were driving. I’m not making this up.

Anyway, this car – it certainly will be ultimate subscription-based features– can apparently also be controlled with your DualSense controller, because there was room for another terrible idea. Honda’s president Izumi Kawanishi took the stage at CES and drove the car onto the stage with the controller, although he thankfully emphasized that at this point

It was just a tech demo. Don’t let your fears be allayed, however, as Sony added that it is partnering with Polyphony Digital – the in-house developers making this Big tourism Games – to “bring virtual and real experiences together.”

Yes, I admit it, if someone gave me the opportunity to sit high on a mountain and use a PS5 controller to remotely control an empty car on a huge track in a race against my friends, I would definitely do it. I would crash on purpose So a lot, but I would be there. But dear God, I shouldn’t be allowed to do that.