Carmakers Didn’t Have Much to Talk About at CES 2025

CES overtook Detroit as the first auto show of the year for a number of reasons. One is that, put simply, winter is milder in Nevada than in Michigan. But on a secondary level, CES rose to prominence in an era when the future was marketed as being electric and autonomous, and century-old carmakers were rushing to rebrand themselves as tech start-ups. The 2025 edition of the event shows the forecast has changed.

The electric future we were promised is still lurking somewhere on the horizon, especially in regions like Europe where strict regulations are coercing drivers into EVs, but hybrids are here to stay on the American market. Honda was the only major carmaker that unveiled an electric car at CES. It showed two, actually, which it lumped under the “0 Series” umbrella and pledged to sooner or later bring to production. One is a wedge-shaped sedan called the Saloon; the other is a segment-bending box known as the Space-Hub.

BMW traveled to CES to unveil the new iDrive system, but that’s about it in terms of major news from major carmakers. There were no bold promises about going all-electric by the end of the decade and no pie-in-the-sky announcements related to autonomy. The show’s car section was eerily quiet this year.

Suppliers were out in full force, however, with ideas ranging from pretty cool to pretty far-fetched. Donut Lab, which is owned by Finnish motorcycle manufacturer Verge, unveiled an electric motor that can make 845 horsepower yet weighs only 88 pounds. Gentex again tried to sell the industry on its self-dimming sunvisors, and Garmin unveiled a prototype called Unified Cabin that promises to add lots of screens to your car. However, suppliers are just that: suppliers. Gentex isn’t going to design a car from scratch just to bring its vision of the sunvisor to production. The only way that any of the tech introduced by suppliers at CES 2025 will ever end up on a production line is if a carmaker says “hey, that’s awesome!” and buys it.

Closer to reality, ZF announced that it inked a deal with an automaker to provide a brake-by-wire system for a heavy-duty truck. Which one? We don’t know yet, but it’s a model scheduled to go on sale for 2028.

BMW, Honda, and ZF announcing something new at a trade show is par for the course. That’s what trade shows are for, or at least what they were for until they started a long descent to varying relevance a few years ago. They haven’t found the off-ramp yet, but that’s a different story. What’s more surprising is the number of companies from outside the car industry looking to plant their stake in the automotive world.

This isn’t new: Apple, Google, Amazon, and other big names began making inroads into the car world over the course of the last decade. Many cars now come with internet-connected screens, which is something big tech companies know a thing or two about. Internet-connected screens make money, and big tech companies know a thing or two about that as well. But while some were initially tempted to write off Amazon’s car division as a flash in the pan, CES 2025 proved the outsiders are here to stay. Amazon Web Services notably inked a deal with Valeo, a French supplier, to create tools that make developing software-defined cars easier. It also partnered with HERE to design tech that carmakers will be able to use in their electronic driving aids.

One of the more unexpected newcomers is Sony. The company that brought you the PlayStation and the Walkman want to build your next car. While this project is a couple of years old, Sony announced more details about the Afeela 1, its first car, at CES 2025. Developed jointly with Honda, the electric sedan will offer advanced driver-assistance features, two trim levels, and a base price of approximately $90,000. It’s a long shot, but CES has always been about long shots: I got to drive a Faraday Future FF91 at CES 2020.

Speaking at CES, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicted autonomous driving will become a multi-trillion-dollar industry… and why wouldn’t he? His company specializes in autonomous driving. He’s not going to stand up in front of a crowd and say “yeah, no, this ain’t gonna work, folks.” Making predictions is easy, especially when you’ve got shareholders to keep happy. Don’t forget that, in June 2023, General Motors predicted Cruise could generate $50 billion in annual revenue by 2030. Cruise closed in December 2024.

That’s the lineup of gadgetry from the event that neutered the Detroit show, then. But does a quiet CES mean that Detroit will be huge? Nope. There’s not a lot going on there this year, either. Time will tell if the auto show world as a whole has flatlined, if it’s evolving into more enthusiast-friendly events like Monterey Car Week, or if it’s simply going to be a sluggish year.