Watch Sony's Airpeak drone chase around its S-Vision EV on a test drive

At this year's virtual-only CES, Sony announced it is finally jumping into the drone business, by showing off its new Airpeak drone as it chased around the company's S-Vision concept car on public Austrian roads.

Sony is previewing the quadcopter for the first time at CES 2021, where it said it's the smallest drone capable of carrying a Sony Alpha camera for professional videography or photography. Sony also said it's been testing the Airpeak when filming various landscape and urban shots.

The company even showcased footage of its S-Vision - which was helped captured by the Airpeak. Sony’s Vision-S electric vehicle debuted at CES last year, but so far, it's been a prototype. Sony claimed last summer it wanted the vehicle on public roads - in testing, anyway - by the end of 2020. Now, Sony has confirmed it started testing the EV in Europe in December and shared a video of it.

Sony's Airpeak drone, of course, makes an appearance in the promotional video, which you can see above. A video of just the drone is below.

The new drone features two landing gear extensions that retract upward during flight so you can record and get a clear shot. Other than that, details were light, but this is CES 2021 after all, where products get introduced but are perhaps months away from actually releasing. 

Sony, which first announced the Airpeak brand in late 2020, said it is currently targeting a “spring 2021” release timeframe for the Airpeak drone.

As for the S-Vision, Sony's prototype from last year featured two 200kW engines and had the ability to accelerate to 62 miles per hour in 4.8 seconds. It also had Level 2 autonomous driving capabilities. Little else is known at this point, but we'll let you know when we learn more. 

For more CES 2021 announcements, see Pocket-lint's roundup.

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