Automakers have had a significant presence at CES for many years now, but in 2025 it’s the large automotive suppliers that are most visible in the important ‘West Hall’, with a number of automakers bypassing the show in light of a challenging automotive period. However, this didn’t keep large OEMs, such as BMW, Honda and Hyundai from attending and making new tech announcements this year.
With connected cars making up an ever-increasing proportion of the new car market - now reaching up to 70% in some regions - and in-car services getting ever more sophisticated, the services and products presented at CES are likely to be visible in cars on global roads sooner than expected. Other show debuts outside of automotive, included an AI robot turtle for measuring water quality, a handbag-mounted furry AI creature that turns its head to “recreate people’s joyful experiences” and an electronic spoon for making food taste saltier, but let’s get back to cars…
Parkopedia CES 2025 roundup
With new cars becoming ever more connected, CES is an increasingly important event for Parkopedia, as we continue to play a central role in supporting seamless in-car services and leading conversations globally around the future of mobility.
Parkopedia once again featured heavily across CES 2025, hosting our ‘sell-out’ Breakfast Briefing event at The STRAT Tower, centred around a panel of accomplished industry experts, discussing how to enhance the EV ownership and charging experience, followed by industry networking, high above the skyline of Las Vegas.
The team also presented live in-car multi-tariff EV charging demos and API integrations, alongside partners Valtech Mobility and KPIT, hosted clients and partners from our dedicated meeting suite and recorded several engaging podcasts and media interviews during the show, which will be shared shortly.
High-tech but user-friendly cabins
Convenience was one of the key elements raised prominently across automotive brands at CES, with the challenge for manufacturers being: how to make new car tech as usable as possible while driving.
BMW unveiled its Panoramic iDrive format at CES, which aims to prioritise driver focus, personalisation and easy use while driving, addressing the criticism of compromised usability levelled at many touchscreen in-car systems and pared-down interiors. This new display and operating concept is set to be introduced in all new BMWs from the end of 2025 and presents an opportunity for the surrounding in-car services to aid drivers and elevate the driving experience.
Central to this setup is BMW Panoramic Vision - a head-up display where useful content is projected between the two front pillars on a black printed surface at the bottom of the windscreen, which is visible to all occupants. Meanwhile, an optional 3D head-up display above prioritises navigation and automated driving information solely for the driver.
Hyundai Mobis - who lead smart mobility for the Korean car brand - also unveiled a new holographic windscreen display, which projects information across the full width of the windscreen. The content shown includes sat-nav directions along with safety information, plus the prospect of helping to reduce passenger car sickness, with this tech set to be available in future production cars.
In-car connectivity gets more sophisticated
Connected car technology is increasingly prevalent in new cars and Harman’s contribution to CES involved a number of industry collaborations to streamline the in-car experience by prioritising contextual awareness so that vehicles can better respond to typical driving scenarios.
The new ‘Luna’ avatar, powered by Ready Engage uses Harman’s new emotionally intelligent AI functionality, to offer personalised interactions and the ability to anticipate driver needs and respond naturally, through voice and visual feedback.
New vehicles at CES
Afeela, a new car resulting from a partnership between Honda and Sony, was first shown at CES 2023, but is now available to reserve for drivers in California, starting from just under $90,000. This includes three years of premium subscription features, including an Afeela personal assistant, entertainment selection and a level 2+ intelligent drive system.
The Geely Auto International Zeekr brand introduced three new models including a luxurious four-seat MPV, named the 009 Grand, described as one of the most comfortable passenger experiences for a vehicle yet with the potential for an executive meeting anywhere on the go.
Honda presented artificial intelligence tech aimed to facilitate autonomous operation and prioritise driver preferences. This work, enabled by Helm.ai, should offer future Honda models the ability to provide sophisticated driver assistance functionality plus ‘eyes-off’ technology that means that drivers can safely look away from the road in certain scenarios.
Honda also debuted the 0 Series SUV, a flagship SUV due to go on sale in 2026. Honda claims to be prioritising charging and battery efficiency, with the ability to charge from 15-80% in less than 15 minutes and the prospect of minimal battery degradation levels over 10 years of use.
New AI and sensors improve autonomous, safety and convenience scope
Ever more sophisticated in-car sensors and AI functionality played a significant role at CES. However, the current issue to be addressed is ensuring that sensors remain correctly aligned throughout everyday usage and are resilient to typical driving scenarios and challenging weather, as inaccurate calibration could cause unprompted safety issues.
CES 2025 saw more intelligently integrated sensors in the form of cabin-mounted radar technology, which should be able to consistently monitor occupants in car cabins and provide functionality such as child detection and theft notifications.
Similarly, in-car AI functionality was even more visible at CES, with vehicle AI coming in the form of countless separate small usage cases that can provide increased accuracy and reduce the chance of false alerts, such as unwarranted drowsy driver detections being flagged incorrectly.
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable publicly traded company and Toyota announced that they are working together to develop autonomous vehicle technology at CES. This partnership sees generative AI models being used to create artificial environments, video processing tech that enables real-time analysis and makes it possible to create photo-realistic simulations from text prompts that give developers the ability to test automated systems in a huge array of scenarios that would be difficult to create in reality.
This functionality is particularly important in the development of autonomous vehicles, as there will always be significant limitations in addressing every possible scenario in real-world environments. The ability to test automated systems in artificial but infinitely variable environments not only reduces development costs, but also speeds up the process of developing usable autonomous vehicle technology.
Intelligent mapping requires high-quality POI data
Drivers don’t always need turn-by-turn navigation but typically do want notifications of upcoming issues, TomTom claims, using CES 2025 to highlight a new ‘Free Driving’ setup that provides drivers with relevant situational information so that they can proactively respond to road issues - whether the vehicle is currently navigating to a destination or not.
TomTom also mentioned significant demands from drivers for accurate directions to EV charging stations or other key points of interest (which correlates with the findings from our latest Global Driver Survey), provided high-quality verified EV charging and POI data from providers such as Parkopedia is available, with the system combining separate requests into one overall route that takes into account more considerations than ever, rather than responding to these individually.
Hopefully, catch you on the show floor in 2026!