It’s been just over a year since Sony and Honda unveiled their joint electric car project Afeela, and just a few months since an updated version of the car was shown at CES. Neither company has elaborated automobile Parts of the electric vehicle and instead focuses on the interior and the potential for infotainment. So when we saw the car being added to Gran Turismo 7, we saw an opportunity to potentially learn more about the innards of the sedan and maybe even a little about how the car drives.
Now apparently, you can’t take this little virtual drive too seriously. For example, we can’t get a feel for the steering feel using the DualSense controller on a Playstation 5. And as realistic as the Gran Turismo games are, they are still adapted to be accessible to many people and playable with a controller. There are many, many reasons why this isn’t a particularly serious road test, and we completely understand that. But we thought it would be fun and could still reveal one few something about this somewhat mysterious car. Now that we’ve cleared up all of the caveats listed, let’s get to the car.
When I started the game I was hoping that we might find some actual numbers listed. After all, the developers at Polyphony Digital would need to know the specifications in order to deliver a reasonably accurate driving experience. And while Polyphony probably knows the numbers, they’re apparently complying with a request from Sony and Honda not to share those numbers with the player. HP, torque and weight remain empty. Even if you buy the power limiter and experiment with it in the settings menu, it only shows the power percentage, plus a big empty box where a power curve would normally be.
But there are some areas that reveal something about the car’s performance. On the one hand, we have a weight distribution that is 53% at the front and 47% at the back. There’s even an estimated quarter-mile time of 12.65 seconds. And then there’s the GT7’s vehicle rating system: performance points. The Afeela has a score of 546.75. Obviously, this number is meaningless without some reference points. So here are a few: There are two Teslas in the GT7, the 2012 Model S Signature Performance (single-engine) and the 2023 Model 3 Performance (dual-engine). The Afeela sits between the two, with the 410-hp, 4,449-pound Model S at 536.56 and the 531-hp, 4,038-pound Model 3 at 582.67.
That’s pretty much all we can glean from the menus, so it’s time to give Afeela a try. I mainly drove a few laps around the Nürburgring with the Afeela, and also with the Teslas for comparison. We knew the Afeela had dual-motor all-wheel drive and felt a lot like a traditional four-wheel drive car. Many electric vehicles have chosen to use a larger rear engine than the front engine, resulting in a greater focus on rear-wheel drive. This doesn’t feel like what the Afeela has. It doesn’t feel like it wants to extend its rear end much, either when accelerating or off the throttle. And if you add more power, it just stays on track, perhaps with a little understeer. The slight forward weight distribution probably also contributes somewhat to this feeling.
On the long main straight of the “Ring” the Afeela reached a speed of 145 miles per hour, and that was it. Bringing the Teslas back into the picture, that’s 10 mph ahead of the Model S and 10 mph behind the Model 3. It’s also worth noting that performance seemed to drop off much more at higher speeds than the Model S. That is definitely the case of power outage. Where the Afeela seems like it could make up for this could be in the weight. You can feel that the Teslas are quite heavy and the shift from left to right can be quite rough. The Afeela doesn’t seem to have such a violent weight shift and is a little easier to slow down.
Again, these are impressions of a car from a video game, played with a controller and for a vehicle without full specification information and not yet fully ready for series production. Obviously the real car might feel different in real life. But this is the best we can do and we were curious. So far it seems pretty intriguing, and we’re excited to see a twist if and when it becomes a reality.
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