For New Car Brands, the Path to Success Is Littered With Flops

In March, with hundreds of millions of dollars sunk into the project, trial production completed and showrooms already opened, Honda and Sony pulled the plug on their joint electric-vehicle brand, Afeela, pinning the blame on weakening demand for E.V.s.

Add Afeela to the pile of subbrands from major automakers that experienced some success, until they didn’t. These famous flameouts and flops include Think from Ford, Scion from Toyota and Saturn from General Motors.

With an out-the-door price above $100,000 and a sedan body style competing in an S.U.V.-dominant market, Afeela was starting out with several strikes against it. “A car with a 300-mile range is not mind-blowing,” said Randy Barone, vice president of ACV Auctions, a wholesale automotive auction company. “And at prices up to $120,000, you’re not listening to the consumer.”

Jim Johnson, a vice president at VDX.TV, a provider of online advertising, said, “The name Afeela sounds like a tech company, and it turned some people off. Consumers asked, ‘Would the company be around in five years? Am I willing to invest in this?’ They would have needed a long-term branding push.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/20/business/afeela-automakers-spinoffs-brands.html