What CES 2025 Taught Us About The Future Of Automotive Technology

Ramin Shirani, CEO and Co-Founder, Ethernovia.

At CES 2025, I had the opportunity to see firsthand the technological innovations that are shaping the future of the automotive industry. Any long-term attendee of CES can attest that its role as the nexus for automotive innovation has grown significantly over the past decade.

Top global automotive OEMs and tier-1s are in attendance, as are the software and hardware companies crafting next-generation applications and microelectronics. This year proved no different, with an expansive showing of automotive keynotes, panels and technology demonstrations. Three takeaways in particular stood out at this year’s show.

Software-Defined Vehicles Are Revving (And Booting) Up

Continuing on from CES 2024, CES 2025’s automotive showing heavily focused on the software-defined vehicle. Software-defined vehicles (SDVs) hold an enormous amount of potential: The harmonious marriage of hardware and software in passenger and commercial vehicles enables key features like reliable autonomy, over-the-air vehicle upgrades and updates, immersive infotainment and much more.

This year, it became clear that SDVs are not vehicles of the future but rather a very near reality. Garmin’s Unified Cabin 2025, a “digital cockpit experience,” was named a CES 2025 Innovation Award Honoree. Honda announced the ASIMO Operating System software platform for its 0 Series electric vehicles, slated to launch in 2026.

However, important questions remain about the continued development and roll-out of SDVs. In a panel, The Road Ahead: Software Defined Vehicles, Infineon Technologies’ Peter Schiefer noted the importance of microelectronic dependability and cybersecurity in SDVs, while Mercedes-Benz AG’s Magnus Oestberg commented on the varying expectations between younger or digital-native drivers and older drivers.

When Generative Artificial Intelligence Meets Automotive

At CES 2025, AI was simply ubiquitous, including throughout automotive demonstrations. Automotive AI, of course, goes hand-in-hand with SDV and autonomous developments (for example, its usage to improve location mapping or sign recognition in autonomous vehicles).

Writing in TechCrunch, Kirsten Korosec and Rebecca Bellan noted how, specifically, the connection between generative AI and automotive was at the show—even if they remained skeptical about some GenAI features becoming reality: “Automakers have been swept into the generative AI hype mix—a trend that started last year. Even the casual observer likely noticed the term[s] ‘GenAI,’ ‘[ChatGPT]’ or ‘LLMs’ throughout the vehicle technology section of the LVCC. It was everywhere—and nowhere, if you catch our drift. In some cases, there were real partnerships and plans behind the words.”

Korosec and Bellan noted how major players are using this emerging technology: BMW’s integration of Amazon’s Alexa and large language models into an upcoming sedan and Qualcomm’s integration of GenAI to improve and personalize the in-cabin experience.

The promise of AI, broadly, and GenAI, more specifically, is immense across industries, and automotive is no exception. But in conversations with engineers and developers during CES 2025, it is clear that automotive AI will face many of the challenges being experienced by other industries’ AI use cases, including massive data and power demands.

Industrial And Agricultural Vehicles Getting An Upgrade

CES 2025 also offered a stark reminder that advanced technologies will not only impact commercial fleets and passenger vehicles but also heavy-industry and agricultural vehicles. John Deere announced new autonomous-capable machines for farming, quarry operations and commercial landscaping. Kubota, from Japan, showcased its Agri Concept 2.0, “offering data, AI, automation and electrification as a choice of powertrain.”

The presence of these types of off-highway vehicles will likely continue to grow in future iterations of CES, as will their capabilities. Of course, their advancement has exciting implications beyond transportation, into augmentation, automation and enhancement of industrial and agricultural labor.

A Look Under The Hood: Vehicle Architecture In 2025 And Beyond

Several additional automotive topics caught my attention: electrification, 5G integration, accessibility and more. CES is the great bellwether of technological innovation. So, where does the automotive industry go from here? Virtually every major automotive trend demonstrated at the show and showcased above relies on an improvement to in-vehicle networking.

Whether examining passenger, commercial or off-highway vehicles, any discussion of automotive functionality sits atop a foundational conversation about the future of in-vehicle networks. LLM integration, software-defined features like over-the-air updates and advanced sensing for autonomous or agricultural vehicles—all increase the amount of data flowing through the car.

What is required is an in-vehicle networking architecture for energy-efficient, high-bandwidth, low-latency data transmission.

Currently, most vehicles on the road today operate on domain-based architecture, in which one controller is dedicated to individual features (such as infotainment, the powertrain or the chassis). That architecture has served the automotive industry well for several decades, but the explosion of data enabling modern-day vehicles has necessitated a change.

In a zonal architecture, sensors are connected via Ethernet to controllers based on their physical location within the vehicle rather than by function. The result? A lighter, simplified and higher-bandwidth in-vehicle network that can effectively manage the flow of large amounts of data throughout a vehicle.

And while conversations about zonal architectures crept into the public sphere in late 2023 and 2024, 2025 should prove to be the year that discourse evolves from “How do we develop these systems?” to “How do we make these systems a reality at a global scale?”

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