CES 2026: How automotive CX will drive the future of cars
Some people come for the robots. Some are on the lookout for the latest smart appliances and toys. There’s one category, however, that is only talked about as a ‘consumer device’ when prototypes and new models make their debut at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and that’s cars.
This week, for instance, Uber used CES to show off its self-driving Robotaxi concept, while rising OEMs such as Tensor and Neolix unveiled their own autonomous vehicles. According to panel of automotive industry experts at CES, though, the real innovations will come in how the industry learns from other consumer device categories to develop better driver and passenger experiences.
“The expectations are getting higher and higher for the experience inside the car to be very consumer-like,” said Mark Granger, vice-president of Snapdragon Digital Cockpit product management at Qualcomm in a session that was livestreamed amid CES. “It’s very familiar. You feel comfortable with it. It’s second nature, and it knows a bit about you. At the same time, it still needs to play by the rules of safety, security and whatnot that you want in your automobile. It’s really blending the two worlds together.”
Compared with a smartphone or a tablet, of course, cars tend to run multiple operating systems and microprocessors, said Stefano Marzani, an emerging tech strategy leader at Amazon. Vehicles also tend to include software called hypervisors that separate the mission-critical safety features from infotainment systems a driver or passenger might use. That makes delivering on consumer expectations more complex.
Why vehicle lifecycles are catching up with smartphones
Sharmishta Roy, director of software and data engineering at Ford Motor Company, said 15 years ago, buying a car was all about the hardware, such as the engine’s performance and the durability of its brakes. As software-defined vehicle design evolves, OEMs need to recognize that customers want to see the same ease and convenience from a car that they get from mobile devices they carry in their pockets.
Ford Motor Co.
“It is much like a phone: we want the software updates to come quickly, we want them to come in a secure way, and that is exactly how we envision our car of the future to be,” she said. “The life cycle is getting decoupled from a 15-year hardware device to a one-year smaller life cycle of getting the OTA updates very seamlessly. You don’t want to drive your car to car to a dealership. You want (updates) to come to you and see the changes live.”
Given it’s now possible to not only listen to music but order products and more, cars are becoming more than a vehicle can more like a ‘third space,’ said Jason Low, a research director at market analysis firm Omdia.
“We do see automakers trying to reimagine how cars will be like when they are driving and when they are stationary,” he said. “Car makers trying to build different user scenarios to cater to consumers when they have different needs.”
Thanks in part to electric vehicle (EV) development, for instance, Low noted more OEMs are creating larger screens that serve as digital cockpits within a car. This, along with smartphone mirror, will mean consumers could be just as active once they park a car as when they’re on the road.
“I take conference calls in the car while I’m driving,” he said, “but imagine if my car is able to facilitate a call very well in the car. I will definitely do that rather than finding a coffee place.”
How AI can enhance the automotive experience
Cars may also be a more conducive environment for engaging with agentic AI tools that respond to voice commands, Granger said.
“Consumers are usually a bit frustrated when they have to go three menus down (in a vehicle’s display),” he said. “but given that we don’t have this legacy in automotive for the user interface with the computer, it just opens it up for the digital assistants and to truly be interacting with your vehicle in a very natural way, being your friend and your assistant.”
Marzani agreed, pointing to a Amazon demo at CES of an Alexa assistant that can be embedded within a car’s digital cockpit to field requests and provide real-time safety recommendations.
“The navigation maps are all integrated with an agent that is able to explain how the vehicle is performing,” he explained. “For example, let’s say the car has a tire with an issue. You can ask, ‘What should we do? Should I stop? And believe me, the experience is exciting.”
Consumers will also be bringing their other devices into the car with them, Low added, which means cross-platform integration will be a key consideration of the automotive customer experience (CX) going forward.
Data and integration challenges in automotive CX
These CX enhancements will require a lot of data, of course, but Roy said OEMs will need to demonstrate they can handle it in a secure and private manner based on zero trust architecture and industry-standard cybersecurity principles. This could involve processing data about a customer’s preferred routes at the edge, rather than moving it to the cloud, for instance. For urgent requests, through, data will need to be processed in milliseconds.
“The hardest challenge with the data as such, becomes the latency,” she said. “How quickly can you get your data, and how securely Can you do that? The biggest problem to solve is data segregation and data segmentation.”
This becomes more complex within the automotive sector than in other consumer device categories because of the “Frankenstein architecture” within many vehicles due to the industry’s diverse supply chain. Marzani said. These players have operated in a more siloed fashion in the past that won’t work as cars become experience hubs.
“All these different vendors — how do you bring them together?” he said. “We can’t rely on the old mindset in automotive that each of them needs to have a component in the car. We need to work in a different way to integrate all of that.”
CES continues through Friday.
