Sometimes manufacturers love to surprise people with weird products. Of all the brands that were present at CES 2020, the one the surprised us the most was Sony with its Vision S electric vehicle.
Yes, you’ve read that right. Sony, a brand well known for making consoles, smartphones, TVs and even wireless headphones, has just made a car. Unlike most of the leaked/teased tech, no one saw this coming and it certainly has stirred everyone in the automotive world. As mentioned earlier, the car is called the Vision S and it is fully electric.
Now, the biggest name in the electric car market is Tesla with its vehicles selling more than any other electric vehicle. Why is that? Well, because they give people the best bang for their buck. There have been many competitors for other brands like the Jaguar I-Pace and Nissan Leaf but all of them failed to sell.
The closest competitor to the Vision S from Tesla’s lineup is the Model S. Apart from both having S in their names the two cars share some common features. The most obvious similarity is the design language. The Vision S seems to be a hybrid between the Tesla Model S and the Porsche Taycan. Ironically both these cars seem to be the direct competitors of the Vision S.
Speaking of competition, the first thing we usually compare between two competing cars is the performance. However, the Vision S is just a concept and therefore we don’t know much about its performance yet. The only figures given by the Sony representatives at CES were:
- The car will have 4 motors, one powering each wheel.
- 0-60mph will happen in 4.6 seconds.
- It will have a top speed of 149mph.
That’s about it and, to be honest, this will be enough to do some comparison. The first one being the number of motors used. Now, the base models of the Model S use a single motor for the rear axle only while the high-end variants use two motors for both the front and rear axles. In comparison, the Vision S has 4 of them, one for each individual wheel. At this point, I don’t know how that’ll be beneficial for the Vision S but it might help more in torque vectoring, resulting in better handling.
However, as far as acceleration and top speeds are concerned, the Model S takes the cake. The most basic Model S that you can buy new can do 0-60mph in 3.7 seconds and has a top speed of 155mph. Compared to this, the Vision S stands nowhere near Tesla in terms of performance. However, since it is just a concept, the final production figures might be different. If Sony actually produces it, that is.
Similar to performance, price comparison is also impossible since we haven’t been given any figures on the pricing. What we do know, however, is that if the Vision S is to be successful, it should have a price lower than the Model S. Otherwise the already established Model S will prevail.