CES 2026 Media Day: Robots, AI Platforms and New Launches

New vehicles, AI, Robots, and software driven development – CES 2026 looks unlikely to disappoint based on Day 0 (media day). SBD Automotive is on the ground to capture the latest and greatest announcements and exhibitions. In the meantime, Monday was dedicated press conferences and other media events, the highlights of which are below.

Hyundai Motor Group

Partnering with Nvidia, Hyundai will start using humanoid robots in its manufacturing facilities from 2028 in its electric vehicle plant in Georgia, with plans to expand their presence in the following years. The Atlas robot on display was remote controlled as it performed some simple tasks, but the real-life deployment is planned to be fully automated.

This should not come as a surprise – back in 2021, Hyundai acquired the infamous Boston Dynamics from Google, and the brand will continue to carry Hyundai’s robots vision going forward.

Sony Honda Mobility

One of the main sponsors of CES 2026, Sony Honda Mobility has taken a “product planning in public” approach by giving updates on its Afeela concept every year since its initial inception since 2020.

Preorders for the Afeela 1 were opened at CES in 2025, and will begin deliveries in California later in 2026, as well as in Japan in 2027. Additionally, residents of Arizona will now be able to place preorders for the vehicle for 2027 deliveries

Additional details on the Afeela 1 were made available:

• Creative Entertainment Space: Onboard AI that learns from driver habits and preferences

  
  

• Afeela Intelligent Drive: subscription-based ADAS suite, starting with L2+ end-to-end autonomous driving, and targeting SAE L4 capabilities in the future

  
  

• Afeela Personal Agent: conversational AI built on the Microsoft Azure OpenAI platform

  
  

• Afeela Co-Creation Program: developer access to vehicle hardware and data to produce in-vehicle apps
  

Sony Honda Mobility also announced the “Afeela Prototype 2026”, which will launch as a production model in the US market in 2028. Additional information is currently limited.

BMW Demonstrates Updates for the Neue Klasse

BMW will be the first OEM to show integration of Amazon Alexa+ which will allow it to expand the capabilities of its Intelligent Personal Assistant with natural language capabilities for both vehicle functions as well as more common personal assistant functions.

BMW is also showing a partnership-driven approach to in-vehicle media, powered by Disney+ and the Video App from TiVo, which enables in-cabin video streaming. BMW also announced that the ConnectedDrive Store will soon allow downloads of YouTube Music, and an updated version of Zoom that allows video calls when stationary

Nvidia announces Alpamayo AI toolset

At his keynote address, the Nvidia CEO announced the Alpmayo open-source AI models and tools for autonomous vehicle development. Alpamayo 1, AlpaSim and Physical AI

Open Datasets are designed to enable OEMs to develop autonomous vehicles with human-comparable perception, reasoning and judgement.

JLR, Lucid, and Uber are included in the announcement as the first adopters of the toolkit, which is targeted at SAE Level 4 deployments, with the following components:

Alpamayo 1: The industry’s first chain-of-thought reasoning VLA model designed for the AV research community, now on Hugging Face.

AlpaSim: A fully open-source, end-to-end simulation framework for high-fidelity AV development.

Physical AI Open Datasets: Open dataset for AV that contains 1,700+ hours of driving data collected across the widest range of geographies and conditions, covering rare and complex real-world edge cases essential for advancing reasoning architectures.

Lucid, Nuro & Uber partner on Robotaxis

The three companies revealed a production-intent robotaxi that is planned to support a service launch in the Bay Area later in 2026, based on the Lucid Gravity SUV. Uber has invested $300m and committed to purchasing 20,000 Lucid vehicles.

Ahead of commercial launch, the vehicles are already being tested on public roads. A halo with built in sensors is attached to the Gravity SUVs at the Lucid factory to enable autonomy, and will be powered by Nvidia Drive AGX Thor.

It feels like coming full circle, as the main discussion points over the past decade of CES have moved through the following topics:

• Connectivity – after a long time, we have finally landed on a clear path to ubiquitous connectivity in the three major markets of US, Europe, and China with other developed markets following quickly.

  
  

• Autonomous driving – a moonshot in the latter parts of the last decade, with revolutionary concepts an prototypes being demonstrated at CES

  
  

• Electrification – this seemed to be the inevitable path forward a few years ago, but logistics and policy have slowed down the roadmap in many regions, especially the US market, with many OEMs left feeling overcommitted and needing to shift their strategies

  
  

• Software-defined vehicles – the SDV was pushed hard over the last few years as the singular target for the automotive industry, an enabler of everything including new revenue streams for the OEMs, and of a car that does not age with great benefits to consumers. This push is still there and will likely continue in the future, but it is not the sexy headline that the industry is looking for

  
  

• Autonomous driving – this is not a typo, we are back to autonomous driving, but with a big difference. Robotaxi services are operational (Waymo’s exploits are well documented, Tesla is catching up in the most Tesla way possible, and if you’re here at CES, you will have seen Zoox vehicles driving up and down The Strip), LiDARs are finally affordable enough to include in vehicles that people can actually afford, and the recent rapid developments in AI have all come together to give new life to autonomous driving capabilities, with two distinct strategies – the first aimed at robotaxi deployment, and the other on improving the personal driving experience; both will be on show at CES 2026

  
  

• One more thing.. Robots! – CES 2026 is shaping up to be ground zero for the normalization of humanoid robots, especially on the factory floor. Automotive companies are making substantial investments in the field of robotics, including in-house development and M&A activities, which is largely aimed at streamlining manufacturing, reducing costs, improving quality, and enhancing product portfolios