CES 2026 Day 1: More Autonomy, Partner-Driven Announcements

Autonomous Momentum Continues to Surge

While not formally exhibiting at CES 2026, Mercedes-Benz announced MB.DRIVE ASSIST PRO for U.S. cities. The system helps drivers navigate through city streets, from parking lots to destinations, managing traffic lights, junctions and obstacles without driver input, using advanced SAE Level 2+ assistance. Leveraging 30 sensors, including 10 cameras, 5 radar sensors, and 12 ultrasonic sensors, MB.DRIVE ASSIST PRO has been available in China since the end of 2025 and will come to the U.S. market later this year.

Qualcomm Steps Up to Challenge NVIDIA

While NVIDIA President & CEO Jensen Huang grabbed global headlines on Media Day, Qualcomm’s continued focus on automotive and mobility reinforced several critical shifts:

• Working with multiple partners to go beyond AI-enabled features toward agentic experience systems that anticipate, adapt, and personalize in real time

• Deeper alignment with Google across Snapdragon platforms

• Continued momentum with Chinese partners, including Leapmotor’s disruptive central compute architecture powered by Snapdragon

• Supporting ZF and Tier 1 orchestration layers for compute and software, providing flexibility across L1–L3 without locking OEMs into rigid architectures

• Broader and denser ecosystem adoption (OEMs, Tier 1s, platform partners) around common compute foundations

While Qualcomm is clearly positioning itself at the intersection of silicon, software, cloud and AI, OEM organizational readiness and complexity will remain the real tests.

Software Turns Up the Volume on Premium Audio

Premium audio has long been a reliable source of revenue for automotive OEMs and suppliers at the point of sale. More recently, software has enabled OEMs to enhance the customer experience while establishing new revenue streams. Mercedes-Benz has gone all in on this strategy with full implementation of DTS Auto Stage, as well as Dolby Atmos for Apple Music. BMW already has DTS Auto Stage and showcased service improvements at CES 2026.

In parallel, Dirac announced a partnership with Pioneer to deliver software-enabled premium audio experiences, while Pioneer also announced a partnership with Dolby Atmos to bring spatial audio features to vehicles. QNX has also entered the space with QNX Sound integration alongside QNX Cabin, providing a holistic, premium, software-based audio solution.

Combined with OTA update capabilities, OEMs can continue to deliver new experiences that continuously improve the in-vehicle environment. Over time, this may also translate into new revenue streams, especially as in-vehicle video streaming, already part of DTS Auto Stage solutions, becomes more common.

Expanding Partnership Ecosystem

CES 2026 highlighted an acceleration in partner-driven announcements, particularly across automotive suppliers.

AT&T and iM Media Labs unveiled a new AT&T Connected Car solution integrating iM Media Labs’ media platform with AT&T’s 5G connectivity. The platform is designed to help automotive manufacturers explore new business models and revenue opportunities while enabling more bespoke user experiences. The collaboration aims to simplify access and improve usability by introducing a single native interface for popular music, podcasts, and audio entertainment platforms.

iM Media Labs also partnered with SBD Automotive to launch the CES SBD Automotive Beat, the first fully AI-produced in-car audio newscast for the automotive industry.

HERE Technologies announced that its navigation SDK is now integrated into Lucid vehicles, supporting in-vehicle navigation for the Lucid Gravity and Air models, as well as the Lucid mobile application and web-based trip planning. Lucid also uses HERE data for intelligent speed assistance and ADAS features, including adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, lane departure warning, and highway assist.

Specific HERE partnerships announced at CES 2026 included Hyundai AutoEver to deliver intelligent digital cockpit experiences, with Amazon to showcase next-generation AI navigation via branded, conversational AI navigation for automakers, and Qualcomm to help scale map data collection through Snapdragon Ride.

Intrado & SBD Automotive: At CES 2026, Intrado, a leader in emergency communications technology, and SBD Automotive announced the publication of a new industry whitepaper, Making Seconds Count With Advanced Automatic Collision Notification. Based on a national consumer survey of more than 5,000 U.S. drivers, the study highlights how next-generation crash notification technology—Advanced Automatic Collision Notification (AACN)—could prevent more than 2,129 deaths annually, representing a 13.2% reduction in U.S. roadway fatalities.

The full whitepaper, Making Seconds Count With Advanced Automatic Collision Notification, is available for free download from Intrado.

Amazon showcased a vibrant ecosystem of new partnerships and capabilities in its booth at CES 2026. AUMOVIO and AWS are leveraging AI and cloud infrastructure to enable faster, safer autonomous vehicle development at scale. BMW is integrating Amazon Alexa+ technology into its intelligent assistant debuting in the new BMW iX3, and showed 3M’s Ask 3M, an AI-powered assistant alongside an expanded Digital Materials Hub.

In addition to demonstrating AI tools for faster vehicle development with Nissan Technical Centre Europe (NTCE), Sonatus highlighted multiple collaborations focused on AI-powered, software-defined vehicles. These included Michelin for predictive tire health using Tire Digital Twin solutions running on NXP processors, Bosch for enabling personalized features-on-demand, a demonstration of MOTER’s advanced driving analysis on Renesas processors, and new capabilities across vehicle subsystems including COMPREDICT (virtual sensors for drivetrain and component stress), Qnovo (battery health management), and VicOne (cybersecurity threat protection).

Sonatus also demonstrated enhance fleet operations with Kenworth truck and a livestreamed production Hyundai Kona SUV showing Generative AI to create and deploy a data collection policy in real time.

Continue to follow SBD Automotive’s coverage of CES 2026 throughout the week.