3 road mobility trends to remember from CES 2025
Every January in Las Vegas, CES sets the pace for the year’s technological trends. This is true in a wide range of fields, which today go well beyond the initial focus on consumer electronics. The mobility and automotive sectors are no exception.
AI is becoming essential to road mobility, across the entire value chain
At Las Vegas, artificial intelligence once again confirmed its central position in technological innovation. Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly pervasive in all sectors, and is beginning to generate significant productivity gains, but it is not the only one.
In the automotive and mobility sectors, AI applications range from vehicle design to the sales experience in dealerships, via personalisation of the passenger compartment – for example with Forvia’s Appning platform – and battery management throughout the vehicle’s life – as with Electra Vehicles and Qnovo. This list is obviously not exhaustive.
At the same time, given the ever-increasing limitations on the data available to train models, generative AI is now making it possible to create so-called ‘synthetic’ data sets to feed traditional machine learning algorithms. This solution opens up new prospects for the development of AI applications. Generative AI is thus at the service… of AI itself.
For example, platforms such as Cosmos, presented by NVIDIA, or the Helm.ai solution, can generate photorealistic videos from controlled 3D models, which are particularly useful for simulating specific driving conditions such as driving on snow-covered roads… and thus training autonomous driving models. This approach is also being adopted by Bosch.
Autonomous vehicles enter the commercial deployment phase
The traditional car manufacturers had little presence at CES this year, mainly because of the economic climate, but the leaders in robot taxis such as Waymo and Zoox made their mark with imposing stands, testifying to the maturity reached by this technology.
Indeed, 2025 marks a major turning point for autonomous vehicles, which are finally moving from the experimentation phase to that of commercial deployment, particularly in the United States and China, even though players such as Cruise and Argo have recently ceased their activities – as has Apple, which has thrown in the towel on the subject.
Waymo presented two versions of its sixth-generation hardware: one on the Zeekr minivan platform and the other on the Ioniq 5 platform, the latter being intended to replace the Chinese version because of new tariffs on vehicles imported from China.
Another player in the sector, May Mobility, stood out by presenting autonomous shuttles that are already operational without a safety driver in limited environments in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company limits itself to predefined routes with limited stops: a more cautious approach, but one that makes deployment easier for a smaller company.
Image credit : IGphotography, Getty Images Signature
Towards Software Defined Vehicles (SDV)
The third major trend in mobility at CES 2025 is the acceleration of the transformation of vehicles into Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs). This development is a response to the growing number of functions being embedded in vehicles, whether for connectivity, driving aids, management of the new components in electric powertrains, or information and entertainment services.
In practical terms, the electrical and electronic architectures are evolving to ensure that computing power requirements are rationalised in a few central computers, supervised by a dedicated operating system. Another major advantage is that functionalities can be upgraded throughout the life of the vehicle via remote updates (known as ‘Over The Air’ or OTA).
This represents a major paradigm shift: the added value of the vehicle is increasingly determined by its software capabilities rather than its hardware components. The carmakers and equipment manufacturers present at CES were keen to highlight this transformation, including Texas Instruments, which is now offering a ‘zonal’ architecture, and Qualcomm, with its ‘Snapdragon Digital Chassis’ solution.
The new entrants to the market, starting from scratch, seem for the moment to be more agile in this transformation. Nevertheless, all manufacturers are investing massively in this direction, aware that software is becoming the main differentiator in tomorrow’s automotive market.
