Gran Turismo’s Creators Are Helping Develop A Real Car

It seems like Sony and Honda’s plan to start a new car manufacturer is ticking along nicely. Having unveiled the Afeela Prototype at last year’s Consumer Electronic Show (CES), the two companies have taken the 2024 iteration of the tech conference to unveil an updated version. Oh, and now they’ve roped the brains behind Gran Turismo in to help make it a reality.

Polyphony Digital, creators of the iconic PlayStation franchise, has been brought into the Afeela project, which is on course to make production in 2026. What exactly its input to development will be remains to be seen, though Sony Honda Mobility (SMH) has said combines the games studio’s “simulation technology with the actual development of actual vehicles by SMH”.

Vague, but interesting. More exciting for the near future though is that the Afeela will be arriving in Gran Turismo 7 as a free update later in the year. Amusingly, the real car was brought onto the CES stage with a PlayStation 5 DualSense controller - which sadly will not be possible when the real production car comes.

It’s not the first time that Polyphony has had a hand in a real car, mind you. Infamously, it developed the infotainment and telemetry software for the R35 Nissan GT-R and more recently helped with the instrument displays for the manufacturer’s Hyper Force concept.

Despite that, SHM won’t be handing the reigns of the software over to the Gran Turismo creators. Rather, it’s working with Epic Games - you know, the Fortnite people - using its Unreal Engine 5 as a base.

As you may expect, your passengers will be able to take advantage of some pretty powerful gaming hardware, albeit sadly it stops short of going full Pimp My Ride without a built-in PS5.

Oh, and of course, the Afeela will utilise built-in AI. Rather than going the ChatGPT route though, SMH is working with Microsoft to integrate its Azure OpenAI service to develop “a conversational personal agent”.