Sony and Honda just announced their new electric car brand, Afeela | Hacker News Reader

Sony and Honda just announced their new electric car brand, Afeela

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21 pointsjiwidi28 comments

This name is so bad, I want to submit a formal complaint to make sure I don't need to see it plastered in every fifth Honda or Sony ad. Where does this go?

I'd love to hear some flavour on how this name got chosen and approved, but it's stuff like this that shows the Pepsi logo thing is probably disturbingly not a hoax [0].

[0] https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...

Here is their official response: “Afeela your pain.”

> I'd love to hear some flavour on how this name got chosen and approved

I think they hired the Raw Therapee guy as branding consultant.

'Sony sees cars — and EVs in particular — as a crucial platform for the future of its tech and entertainment products.'

The whole thing feels very gimmicky. Historically base level cars were always dependable basic transportation with a few luxury models with bells and whistles.

This thing feels as though it's overloaded with cruft, will probably have terrible basic range and reliability. It's like the pre iphone mobile phone ui's where people just wanted to text and call but they had all kinds of weird icons, silly names and shovel ware baked in and the basic functionality was weak.

amazing how this plays out over and over again.

Are they putting in these Formula 1 type of steering-wheels just because Tesla is doing it and it looks cool, or is there an actual reason why these steering-things are better than the ones we have for ages and are actually usable. Are the manufacturers leaning on the fact that the cars will drive themselves and park themselves so you will never actually have to steer the car with something that you can actually grab and turn no matter the orientation of it?

I am taking a guess that it has strongly variable steering, if the steering is fully electric. That is, if the car is going slowly, it will let you turn the wheels a lot with little movement, to U-turn, parallel park, etc. Those things are in the "correct" steering position, so you shouldn't really need the fully wheel, but you often do in practice during those maneuvers because you need to go more than 90 degrees. I am also aware that a lot of people don't like the "ideal" racing / safety position for their hands. So I do think the answer is "because it looks cool" at the end of the day despite the above "reasoning" applying to a small group.

Tesla is doing it because it looks cool, now kind of admitting it:

https://insideevs.com/news/629859/tesla-models-x-and-plaid-r...

I hate this name. Don't know how to pronounce it, but every way sounds bad.

I got afeela of her, she got afeela of me...we were hooked

Ditto. It sounds like the name of some type of kebab

Afeelu

It reminds me of those drop ship brands that are cramming up Amazon.

Second base.

Okay Honda, you have one job. 2025 electric Honda Fit/Civic with 300+ mile range. I don't care if you name it Afeela or Seborrhea. Just help me with an electric car that doesn't drive like an Apple product.

Get into one front end collision and your trick new charging display has to be replaced with a part you can barely order through a dealership at 500% markup yayyyyy

Why are people complaining about the name of the brand and the look of a concept vehicle (which will certainly change for production)

"Sony has said it expects its software to offer subscription services, so vehicle owners will likely have to pay a monthly fee in order to access certain features."

This is the real problem, if it's anything besides XM radio. If the hardware is in the car it should be included in the price. Heated seats on a rolling basis helps no one in the world except greedy stock owners. Safety updates for software driven features actively harms the world. Saas in consumer hardware should be heavily regulated and maybe even illegal.

I guess an edge-case benefit is that when these cars come on to the used market (after the 2-3 year lease ends), the next owner can spec the car as they wish by enabling certain features.

The car looks like an orthopedic shoe and the name is embarrassing.

Name sucks, but I don't mind the look. Afeela bit like re-watching Minority Report after seeing it.

What with the "if you can do it we can do it better" vibe from Apple about Sony over the last 30 years, the clock on Apple launching theirs is ticking...

The word that comes to mind with this name is - “Engrish”. Maybe it’s being unfair just because they are Japanese. Who knows what played out behind the scenes in getting this awkward name approved.

Another recent non-Japanese name I felt was cringeworthy was Marriott’s rebranding of their loyalty program to “Bonvoy” - apparently the shortening and combining of the word “Bon Voyage”. I would describe that as “Engrishy” as anything else too.

I’m particularly annoyed that Kia changed its logo and thus name to KN but pretends it didn’t

I am honestly impressed that Kia managed to create a logo that looks even cheaper than the previous one and yes it doesn't even look like it says KIA. Why??

Long ago, a friend live to the east of Fitzsimmons military hospital near Denver. Visits generally took me past the Joie De Vie apartments.

“Afeela” is a great brand name for companies in the Sybian space. Reminiscent of “a fella”, but all feel, no fella. “Katana” would be miles better for a car.

Ridiculous but "Panasonic", "Lexus", "Sony", "Pentax" and so on are made-up names intended to sound meaningful in western ears.

Maybe they should "lean into" Japanese words like like how Denso (car electronics) and densha (train) are derived from denki (~electricity~). Basically, any good sounding name would be accepted worldwide and the story behind it would allow nerds to look smart when they explained it.

Maybe it sticks internationally? I'm not sure I Afeela.

Afeela good.

Not.

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