Welcome back to the latest episode of The Future of Automotive on CBT News, where we put recent automotive and mobility news into the context of the broader themes impacting the industry.
I’m Steve Greenfield from Automotive Ventures, and I’m glad that you could join us.
I was out at CES in Las Vegas this week, and it was an amazing few days immersed in automotive and mobility technologies.
CES was formerly the Consumer Electronics Show. The rebranding a few years ago was in response to the show growing beyond simply exhibiting new and innovative consumer-facing electronics. In fact, if anything, it’s become more of an automotive show than anything at this point.
CES is an annual Las Vegas trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).
The first CES was actually held in June 1967 in New York City.
In 1998, the show changed to a once-a-year format, with Las Vegas as the location. In Las Vegas, the show is one of the largest trade shows in Las Vegas.
To put the size of CES in perspective, you’ve got 140k attendees over the course of the week. The show is actually so big that it not only fills all of the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center, but actually spills into surrounding hotels.
For example, one of the most exciting areas to visit at CES is the basement of the Venetian Hotel, which hosts thousands of Startups from around the world. It’s almost overwhelming to try to walk the floor of the Venetian and take it all in.
As you can imagine, at this year’s CES there was a lot of buzz around AI.
Interestingly, there also seems to be a trend towards translucent TVs. So, when your TV is off, it’s as clear as a window. I think there is immediate application to heads-up displays on car windshields.
We also saw this year a lot of robotics startups that enable human movement. Think of exoskeletons like the early versions of Tony Stark’s Iron Man.
We also saw a lot of cool industrial technologies like autonomous mining, tractors, and grass mowers. And more of these big equipment manufacturers are also launching electrically powered versions of their heavy equipment.
In terms of auto manufacturers, many of the OEMs decided to sit out this year.
Whereas we saw a number of Chinese OEMs in the past few years, this year the only one exhibiting was ZEEKR, the high-end brand of Geely.
The Sony/Honda joint initiative once again exhibited their Afeela vehicle, and announced they were starting to take pre-orders with the intention of selling directly to consumers and bypassing the Honda dealer network. I’m certain this will once again be a point of friction with the Honda dealers as they gather in New Orleans for NADA in two weeks.
With a price point of over $90k, the frankly uninspired Afeela is going to have a very hard time getting traction with consumers in the U.S.
On the other hand, we saw the final prototypes of Honda’s two “Zero” electric vehicles, and I think their designs are very exciting, and could be very well received with consumers when they bring them to market in 2026. If you haven’t checked them out, they have really sexy styling and could really resonate with consumers.
For anyone that really enjoys getting a sneak peek into the future of cutting-edge technologies, I highly suggest attending the CES conference in Las Vegas, which is always held early in January each year.
So, with that, let’s transition to Our Companies to Watch.
Every week we highlight interesting companies in the automotive technology space to keep an eye on. If you read my weekly Intel Report, we showcase a company to watch, and take the opportunity here on this segment each week to share that company with you.
Today, our new company to watch is Upwell.
Upwell focuses on accounts receivable automation for logistics.
Upwell allows you to transform your accounts receivable workflow with the power of AI.
Their product streamline collections to allow you to get paid faster.
Upwell solves the AR challenges for logistics, including:
- Improving Cash Flow
- Automating Legacy Systems; and
- Enhancing your consumer experience.
Upwell allows you to:
Use AI to quickly resolve invoice exceptions that are keeping you from getting paid.
Accept payments and access extra capital when you need it. And…
Analyze your data to predict future cash flow and know who is going to pay when.
If you’d like to learn more about Upwell you can check them out at www.Upwell.com.
So that’s it for this week’s Future of Automotive segment.
If you’re an AutoTech entrepreneur working on a solution that helps car dealerships, we want to hear from you. We are actively investing out of our DealerFund.
If you’re interested in joining our Investment Club to make direct investments into AutoTech and Mobility startups, please join. There is no obligation to start seeing our deal flow, and we continue to have attractive investment deals available to our members.
Don’t forget to check out my book, The Future of Automotive Retail, which is available on Amazon.com. And keep an eye out for my new book, “The Future of Mobility”, which is almost done, and will be out soon.
Thanks (as always) for your ongoing support and for tuning into CBT News for this week’s Future of Automotive segment. We’ll see you next week!
