CES 2026 Day 2: Mirrors and AI and Robots, Oh, My!

Today was the longest day with the House of Journalists, starting at 6 am and going until 9 pm--but, given the "drink from a firehose" nature of this event, I wasn't too surprised to see the schedule.

We started with Gentex--and if you've got an auto-dimming rearview mirror in your car (and it's currently offered on over 650 nameplates around the world), you can thank them. The focus of the discussion was "glare"-an evergreen issue and the #1 complaint among drivers according to a variety of surveys; there's even a subreddit called "F**k Your Headlights" with almost 50,000 members. There are numerous reasons why we are where we are with this problem, including: modern headlamp technology, higher-mounted lamps on trucks and SUVs, more nighttime driving, an aging population, aftermarket LED kits, dirty and/or misaligned headlamps, and automakers removing auto-dimming mirrors as standard equipment on their cars. Fortunately, Gentex is working on several solutions, including dimmable sun visors (which replace your standard sun visors with an electrochromic screen) and next-generation rear camera mirrors, which digitally tilt the view to improve depth perception.

Bosch covered a wide variety of products across the consumer product spectrum. Their Origify software will let your smartphone detect counterfeit products via surface pattern recognition--whether it's sneakers, car parts, or even paintings. In the kitchen, Bosch Cook AI (which is still in the testing phase) is powered by generative AI and proprietary technologies to make you the best cook you can be. The example they showed was a system that scanned a quartet of raw steaks; the aspiring chef wanted one rare, two medium, and one well-done, and the system controls the stove and instructs you when to flip the steaks, aided by a Bluetooth-enabled probe. Yes, I know--a really smart stove would tell you, "Don't ever cook a steak to well-done, but as a foodie, I was intrigued by the concept of an AI assistant.

But we are here to talk automotive, and Bosch is a very active player in that industry. Their S-CORE initiative is intended to establish an open-source platform for automotive middleware--essentially the central nervous center of a software-defined vehicle. They do acknowledge that there will likely be a few other similar solutions out there, but they hope to be out front. They also offered a forecast on electrification, noting that it's still coming to market, but not quite as expected; by 2035, they believe the North American market will be 30% EV, 20% hybrid, and 50% conventional internal combustion--a rather bullish prediction for ICE enthusiasts. We'll be seeing a demo of some of their other technologies tomorrow, so there will be more on Bosch a bit later.

Hyundai's focus was not on EVs, or vehicle AI, or connectivity, but on robots. They walked out (with an impressive amount of swagger) with their Atlas prototype, a competitor to similar efforts from Tesla and others (including several Chinese automakers). They noted that, while most competitors are doing demos or trying to sell a robotic platform to clients, Hyundai has a pathway to commercialization and an ecosystem. The plan is to put these into Hyundai's next-generation software-driven factories in 2028, and they claim that this will not result in job losses, as Hyundai will need personnel for supervision, maintenance, etc. When asked about home deployment, Hyundai cited concerns about cost, safety, and the complexity of a home environment—but suggested it might be possible by the middle of the next decade, starting with elder care. They also noted they sold about 600 Spot robots this year, generating a little over $100M in revenue; if they can scale this up to tens of thousands per year, that could generate (at 20,000 units) over $3B in annual revenue—so there is definitely a potential business upside.

China's Geely (whose empire includes Geely, Zeekr, Lynk&Co, Radar, Volvo, and Lotus, among others) chose CES to unveil its Full Domain AI 2.0 and World Action Model. With global sales up 90% in 2025, they have a considerable amount of forward momentum and are looking to capitalize on it, with a goal to lead in intelligent mobility. This new AI technology will enable features like driverless summoning and unmanned factory delivery this year, as well as their next-generation automated driving (dubbed G-ASD, or Geely Afari Smart Driving), which will also leverage 55 years of Volvo crash data. Their onboard digital assistant, Eva, will reportedly become "ultra humanlike", with the need for a wake word and with improved "emotional intelligence". Geely's long-term goal to evolve cars into "super intelligent beings" may sound a bit frightening but reflects the aggressive goals of many Chinese automakers as they seek a leadership position in the global auto industry.

Finally, many of you may associate ZF with transmissions, but they have a much broader business that is adding a wave of new technologies. Their new AI Road Sense combines new camera signals with existing acceleration sensors to control their semi-active dampers more accurately and also analyzes how the driver is using the car to make additional adjustments. ZF’s Active Noise Reduction doesn’t actually add any new hardware but leverages the existing CDC damper hardware to reduce tire cavity noise by 3 decibels (and possibly 10 decibels in the future). TempAI can optimize and extend the range of an electrified vehicle; a 15% improvement in temperature prediction allows more power to be extracted from the electric motor and could reduce energy consumption by up to 18%. And their new AxTrax2 electric axle is being used by Range Energy’s eTrailer platform; retrofitted to an existing heavy-duty trailer, it can generate significant reductions in fuel economy and emissions and increase acceleration, especially on an incline.

At the end of this long day, it’s pretty clear that, despite the challenges facing the auto industry at the moment, there is a considerable amount of innovation that’s making it to market, and that’s good news for consumers.