The best automotive technology at CES 2026

We’ve already dubbed the Sony-Honda EV collaboration’s massive front screen the best dashboard at the show, but it bears repeating. Front dashboards are the way we all interact with our cars, and the Afeela 1 understands this mission. The massive panoramic screen that extends to the passenger door is made up of two screens, one 12.3 inches and the other 28.5 inches. With Sony behind connected car technology, it’s no surprise that the widescreen display is designed for gaming (and wireless remote play on PlayStation) and media viewing, with themes based on popular Sony games like Astro Bot. Honda will have its moment when the Afeela 1 can actually be driven. The electric vehicle is expected to arrive in California by the end of the year for just over $100,000 initially.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis car will never be a production vehicle, but that’s not the point. The showcase car was built for CES to bring to life the infotainment, AI assistant, and automated driving and safety features that work simultaneously behind the scenes of a car. The concept car, equipped with 13 cameras and 20 speakers, was capable of providing driving assistance to a passed-out driver and calling safety operators when the driver was unresponsive. He proactively took a photo of the cabin to describe the scene to a human operator and checked the driver’s smart watch to monitor vital signs. While an impressive example of what an AI agent could one day do in the car, the concept car’s ability to drive to the first appointment on the driver’s calendar and select a restaurant for dinner was more realistic.

Waymo’s fleet of driverless robotaxis has become synonymous with the Jaguar I-Pace electric vehicles it uses in cities across the country. But at CES 2026, the autonomous vehicle company showed off its latest vehicle: the Ojai. This is the name that Waymo gave to the Zeekr electric minivans manufactured by the Chinese company Geely Auto, now dressed in a new Waymo color. Most of the 13 cameras, six radars and four LiDAR sensors will be installed atop the new Waymo Ojai, similar to the I-Pace design, so there’s no way to mistake this for anything other than an autonomous vehicle. The new Waymos are expected to arrive in San Francisco later this year.

Speaking of robotaxis, Uber is back in the game with a big collaboration. The company powers a fleet of Lucid Gravity electric vehicles with Level 4 autonomous driving capabilities using Nuro and Nvidia computing power. The driverless taxis were unveiled at CES 2026 as prototypes that will be rolled out in the San Francisco Bay Area later this year, pending certification.

Taxis take advantage of the Lucid Gravity’s three-row SUV, large cargo hold, and screens built into the back seat that control things like heated seats and air conditioning, important for a driverless taxi ride. Without destroying the sleek look of the electric SUV, the repurposed version resembles an autonomous vehicle with high-resolution cameras, LiDAR sensors and radar on the roof and throughout the car. Ultimately, Uber plans to operate robotaxis wherever it operates in the world.

Agentic AI is a big deal for cars, where voice control makes the driving experience more interactive than ever. Geely Auto, the Chinese automaker that owns Volvo, announced at CES 2026 that it has selected Cerence AI’s agentic AI platform for cars, called xUI. In a demo showing the voice-controlled agent at work, it was immediately evident that the Cerence system seamlessly (and naturally) connects navigation, climate control, car controls, media and even productivity tools via a Microsoft 365 integration. On the fly, drivers can configure “voice shortcuts” to control a set of functions, for example using a phrase to open all windows. Although it was only a demonstration, the system didn’t falter when things went off-script, and the driver could speak casually and familiarly without issue. Cerence AI has long shown how to use voice control in the car, so I wasn’t surprised that its latest version could impressively handle complex situations like multitasking from different seats in the car.

That’s what CES is all about: absolutely useless proofs of concepts, but which make you rethink the experience of car passengers. I couldn’t help but think about Garmin’s new use of Meta’s Neural Band in the car. While wearing the bracelet, you can use your thumb, index and middle fingers to control a touchscreen, without touching the screen. The bracelet reads electrical signals from your wrist and converts in-flight gestures into on-screen swipes and clicks. The Neural Strip is by no means an essential tool, but it opens up a new way for passengers (and perhaps even drivers once the car is parked, charging, or in a not-so-future fully autonomous mode) to interact with the car’s infotainment features.