Greetings again from Las Vegas! Our team took to the expo halls today to canvas all things automotive and mobility at CES 2025 where compute has taken center stage (FLOPS is a common measurement of CPU performance and stands for “floating point operations per second”).
We also had some exciting news of our own today, announced in front of a group of over 150 senior automotive industry leaders – more on that later.
Our top 3 non-AI automotive themes at CES
Artificial intelligence (AI) unquestionably ruled the narrative of media days and many of the higher-profile keynotes. The amount of capital pouring into AI development – both in automotive and outside of it – demands that AI wear the crown of CES 2025.
Before we get to that, we want to first spotlight the key non-AI automotive themes our field team sensed throughout the day.
Theme 1: Prototype EVs Get Real
While some pundits focus on the slowing growth of the EV market, one important truth remains: EVs (and PHEV/EREVs) represent the key growing market for automakers and demand investment. As vehicle volumes plateau globally, automakers must move quickly to earn their right to win as EV technology matures and consumers make the switch. This is why, despite some doom & gloom headlines around electrification in 2024, automakers continue to invest in and announce new EVs to market. This year’s CES returns to form with multiple automakers talking about the EV portfolio:
Honda announced that its 0-series Saloon and SUV EV models will start mass production in the first half of 2026, both with a starkly unique and futuristic design. Honda was light on specification and pricing details, but we expect to see these in the coming months given the 2026 timeline.
Scout Motors, a subsidiary of Volkswagen Group, showed prototypes of the Traveler SUV and Terra pickup truck – to be equipped with satellite connectivity - which were previously announced in October. These are set to launch in North America in 2027.
Sony Honda Mobility announced that its AFEELA 1 Origin EV will start at $89,900 in the United States and start deliveries for reservation holders in California in mid-2026. Reservations can be made for $200 and will expand beyond California soon.
Zeekr and Great Wall Motor, two Chinese EV companies, showcased their export EV portfolio, including an extensive technical keynote from Zeekr on Media Day
While CES 2025 didn’t boast a ton of new EV announcements or concepts, it’s refreshing to see follow-through from the concepts these companies introduced in previous years. Perhaps at CES 2026, and with the uncertainty of 2024 behind us, we’ll see a more diverse array of new product announcements from a wider selection of automakers.
Theme 2: SDVs (You Can’t Kill an Idea)
The software-defined vehicle (SDV) term of art rose to prominence in 2021 as automakers sought a new way to develop vehicle software based on innovations in processing architecture and system-on-chip (SoC) products. The hype level hockey-sticked since then (as well as misrepresentations of the term), but over the course of 2024, a growing contingent of industry voices began to imply that we’ve entered the trough of disillusionment for the software-defined vehicle. CES 2025 puts to bed this notion as both automakers and suppliers continue to bang on the SDV drum, indicating that architectural consolidation and in-house control of software development remains a top priority.
Honda, Toyota, and Zeekr all spotlighted their vehicle software development ambitions and SoC strategies
BMW announced Operating System X (ten) which extends the updateability and upgradability of its digital cockpits, inclusive of both central displays and HUD
BlackBerry, Vector, and TTechAuto (more on them later) announced a collaborative software development platform intended to act as a turn-key, all-in-one toolchain for in-vehicle software development, inclusive of safety-critical functions
AWS announced a slew of new SDV-centered partnerships, most notably with HERE Technologies, Qualcomm, and Valeo
Red Hat, alongside a partnership with Intel Automotive, announced ISO 26262 ASIL-B certification for mixed criticality for its in-vehicle Linux-based OS, with full certification expected later in 2025
Some may tire of the SDV moniker, but the truth is that SDVs are not a product or even an architecture – it’s a change in how automakers make products, and it’s a set of principles that’s carried forward throughout every decision and supplier. No – SDVs aren’t going anywhere for the simple reason that you can’t kill an idea. The key for automakers is applying that technology wisely to create consumer gains.
Theme 3: The Silicon & Semiconductor Automotive Turf War
The race for a piece of the in-vehicle compute pie continued to accelerate at CES, with essentially every major silicon and electronics supplier talking about their automotive value proposition and product updates.
Intel, leaning into its x86 architecture, announced a slew of new processing units across vehicle domains, representing a full-throated competitive portfolio to current incumbents like Qualcomm and NXP
Speaking of which, NXP announced its acquisition of TTechAuto for $625M, a major vehicle software and middleware vendor
Qualcomm announced multiple new design wins and partnerships with automakers and suppliers
Nvidia announced new wins with Toyota and Uber while debuting its DRIVE Hyperion AV platform
Texas Instruments spotlighted how its SoCs can be used for safety and audio domains
As many automakers take on a direct role in designing and sourcing the computing architecture for their vehicles, the semiconductor industry has aggressively ramped up its messaging and tailored its product development to the specific cost, feature, modularity, and reliability requirements of the OEMs. Intel’s push into automotive and NXP’s acquisition of TTech Auto firmly signal new emerging fronts in the war for not just in-vehicle compute – but the software tools too.
OK, Let’s Talk About AI
Yes, AI is everywhere at CES 2025. And this time, the AI hype in automotive is all about autonomy.
In Jensen Huang’s (Nvidia CEO) keynote on Monday evening, he claimed that the “ChatGPT moment” for robotics was just around the corner – and the innovation Nvidia is spearheading could pave the way for a much more reliable and scalable autonomous driving experience.
Enter Cosmos, Nvidia’s platform of “world foundation models” (WFM) and tools that accelerate development of “physical AI” systems. The magic to Cosmos comes down to how it’s trained on real-world physics, including 20 million hours of robotics data, including videos and photos of the “physical” world.
At launch, Cosmos also supports both on-device (Nano) and larger-scale (Super/Ultra) versions of Cosmos foundation models, enabling rapid scalability of perception and path-planning software that leverages the models. Nvidia also announced that Uber would be providing data from the millions of trips on its platform to support the training of Cosmos models for other companies’ AV purposes. While Nvidia stole the show, AI found its way into almost every automotive announcement – from automakers to suppliers, and further weaved across other themes like SDVs.
We’ll recap everything AI at CES in our complimentary Flash Report that will publish on January 17th – subscribe to our newsletter and follow our LinkedIn page to make sure you get it when it publishes.
And that's not all!
While augmented reality heads-up display (AR-HUD) technology, modular vehicle cabins, nostalgia tech, and EV routing seem to be emerging as important design and technology trends from CES 2025, SBD Automotive hosted the 2nd Annual Automotive OEM CES Breakfast Tuesday morning with over 150 senior leaders from the automotive industry.
At the breakfast, we officially launched 4S Mobility, a collaborative, non-for-profit platform with the goal of putting consumers, rather than technology, at the forefront of automotive innovation and decision-making. Within the group, we hope to work with automakers from around the world to establish a common, open set of metrics that help measure the impact of vehicles – and mobility products more broadly. These metrics are oriented around four core principles of safety, security, seamlessness, and sustainability.
If you’d like to learn more, please visit 4smobility.com and check out our announcement below.
We’ll be back tomorrow for our final edition of the daily wrap-up where we’ll spotlight some hidden gems, hand out some superlatives, and talk about what’s different from past editions of CES. See you then!