CES 2026 Recap: Future of EV Brands, AI, Robotics and Market Trends

Good morning, everyone.

Yes, welcome to a very special time for the EV show by Ludacris Feed.

I am Tom, your host this morning at 10 a.m.

Today is Wednesday, the 14th of January, 2026.

We are hosting at a very unusual time because we have a very special guest with us this morning from the United States.

So looking forward to chatting with Larry Evans from Technica later on as he recaps his experience at the CES show,

the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas recently.

So stay tuned for that very shortly as we introduce Larry.

But before we do that, let's, as always, welcome our co-host for today.

And that is, of course, Riz Akta from Carlo Pelleris. How are you?

Hey, Tom. Good to be on. Very special time.

We're going to learn lots of cool things of what's been happening at CES and, you know, just general EV scene in the U.S.,

which we don't get very often to talk about.

So yeah, looking forward to this one.

Yeah, thanks for joining us, Riz, in a morning.

I know it's business hours for you and good that you've got the specter there on hand to chill out in while we're chatting.

Well, let's first of all thank our sponsors for the show, of course.

Thank you to Riz and Richard from Carloop.

Thank you that you're empowering Australia's EV revolution with data.

And also thank you to Power Shop as well.

$100 signed up credit for new customers for their EV day and EV night plan.

Check out the link in the video description below.

One more thing to want to promote is the Everything Electric show in Sydney that's coming up very, very soon in about six weeks time.

Sixth to eighth of March at Sydney Olympic Park at Hombouche Bay.

That is, yeah, this is the premier, I think the premier EV show in Australia at the moment.

So this is the one to attend.

If you're going to attend one this year.

And Melbourne, of course.

So check out Everything Electric in Sydney.

And Riz and I will be there, of course, and lots of other people we might know from the EV world very soon.

All right.

I sort of promoted Larry coming on the show very soon, but let's just say hello to some of our regulars who've joined us at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday morning.

So hello to John.

Thanks for joining us.

And thank you to DWA.

Thank you, Richard.

I can see there.

Oh, slightly smoky Melbourne.

Yes, saying or thinking of you in Victoria there with your bushfires.

So stay safe for everyone.

Hello to also Kevin.

Hello to for the burbs as well.

Must be to join us.

All right.

Let's welcome, as I said earlier, Larry Evans from Clean Technica joining us from which part of the world today, Larry.

So right now I'm in Jamaica.

Usually I'm based in New York, but straight from CES, I went to Jamaica overnight flight to another connecting flight made it here for family vacations, which just so happened to fall immediately after I left CES.

So trying to catch up, relax.

CES is absolutely overwhelming in any way, every way, shape, or form, emotionally, mentally.

And it's good to get a little bit of time away to kind of regroup and get my get all the calluses and blisters on my feet healed up and let my voice recover a little bit and, you know, kind of organize my thoughts.

So it's been a great trip.

Well, first of all, thank you for joining us.

I think it's about six o'clock in Jamaica at the moment.

Isn't this where you are?

So yeah, thanks for joining us before you head off to dinner, of course.

But yeah, I'm sure our viewers will be very happy to hear from you.

But just to set the scene, CES for those of you who don't know, all three of you in the world, CES is the largest consumer electronics show, I guess, in the world.

It regularly gets about, I read about 150,000 people per year hosted in Las Vegas this time of the year, every year.

And I believe 2026 was the largest post pandemic attendance so far, which is really good to see.

Did that feel that way, Larry, when you were there?

Did it feel big and busy?

So it's my first CES and it felt absolutely overwhelming.

On my feet, 14 hours a day, kind of nonstop, trying to visit and talk to as many people as possible.

I didn't even make it to every convention hall.

It's an amazing event.

And I just wrote an article about, like, Tesla getting off track and going off on all these technology tangents.

You walk around there, it's very easy to go on technology tangents that go far away from clean technology in EVs.

So it's a practicing, maintaining focus and endurance to get through the show.

Now, before we get into what were your highlights from the show and obviously from an EV point of view,

you've been to Auto Guangzhou and that, by the way, everyone, this is where me and Larry met in Guangzhou about two months ago.

We met in Guangzhou, did their tour and also we obviously saw the Auto Guangzhou show.

And Auto Guangzhou, just to set the scene, for those of you who've seen my videos,

that show got 800,000 people going through their doors over, I think it was four or five days there.

And Shanghai, Auto Shanghai earlier this year was about a million visitors.

So, you know, huge scale.

And Larry's been to both now.

How did the CES vibe compare to the Guangzhou vibe?

So, due to the scale of EVs and cars in general, the booths are much larger at Auto Guangzhou.

And they're very crowded.

It's a lot of people because the booths are smaller.

A lot of the times you're dealing with software companies.

Sometimes you're dealing with larger EV companies.

But overall, the booths are smaller.

There are a lot more of them.

There are also a lot of technology vendors, manufacturers who would be, you know,

manufacturing this part or this component or the other.

So, it's a lot more vendors, people to talk to, a lot more different areas you can go off into than Auto Guangzhou.

But it's, I would say, physically not necessarily larger, just more packed full of technology.

Okay. And I also read this year that the focus was less on EVs, more on obviously tech.

I mean, what EV brands were present at CES this year?

So, I would say that, you know, overall, the EVs that I saw the most were actually Chinese vehicles,

even though they don't sell Chinese vehicles in the US.

There were booths from Soniafila, which is a new brand, very much in the screen and entertainment section of the show,

which makes sense because that was their focus.

You know, selling more the entertainment aspect of the car than the car aspect of the car.

I think they had a big booth, but a lot of that focused more on their robot than it did on their cars.

But other than that, we saw Geely, we saw Great Wall,

a number of technology providers who developed technologies for these, for electric vehicles,

had NEOs, we saw BYD, Caresoft had a Y-E7.

Overall, I would say that 4GM, the big US players have kind of scaled back their EV plans at the moment,

so we didn't see too much from them.

Tesla rarely comes to these shows, so we didn't see anything from Tesla,

other than a few people using their vehicles to display other technologies.

So, it was an interesting mix.

You get the definite perspective there that technology is global.

You can't put lines on a map around it and think you're going to contain it.

And the more you get into all the bits and pieces that go together to make an EV, to make a self-driving technology,

the more you realize that this is not something that makes any sense to try and contain within one geography,

even though our politicians will try.

That's so true, Larry. The internet has really opened the doors for all of us.

We live so far away in Australia, but being able to see on various platforms what the world is about

and the tech that we see worldwide, it's really, really good.

What a nature we live in.

I mean, I'm curious, Larry, what to obviously see as design,

it's designed for the American consumer being in Vegas.

Did you manage to harness some of the feedback from the audience that were there?

Like, what do they think of the Chinese brands or Chinese EVs that they saw on the floor?

So, CES is actually industry-only.

So, you can't get just run-of-the-mill consumers there.

So, you have to be somehow involved in the technology industry,

clearly with 150,000 people there.

It's a fairly loose definition of industry-only, just because it's so many people.

But within this audience, who's very tuned in and very aware of what it takes to develop technology,

many of them are trying to develop this technology.

A lot of them were far more accepting than what you might expect at a consumer show.

Overall, you know, Geely had one of their vehicles, and I forget the model number itself,

but it's their four-passenger, super-luxury MPV with marble

and like the massive screen in there and the reclining seats.

And, you know, yeah, it's 120,000 US dollars in China,

but like that's, you know, as class money for something that's just so over the top

that people have a hard time comprehending it.

I was at the CareSoft booth.

I was talking to them quite a bit.

And CareSoft is a company that tears down vehicles and provides reports to manufacturers.

And you just look at that vehicle and you talk to people there.

And everything that people touch, everything that where they see value is extremely well-executed.

And even people who don't want to admit it, once you interact with that.

I mean, Jim Farley, head of Ford, didn't want to admit that the SU-7 was a tremendous vehicle.

Once you get in there, you interact with that.

You see how tight the seams are.

You knock around on it with your knuckles.

It's impossible to get around that.

A lot of people were at the Geely booth.

I think Geely booth has two paths in to the market,

potentially as a technology provider.

They showcase a lot of their technology,

but people were overall very receptive of that vehicle.

Great Wall was there and Great Wall didn't just show EVs.

They showed this four-liter V8 in kind of almost like a throwback part of the industry,

which is Great Wall overall is a little bit of an outlier in the Chinese market along with Cherry.

But people had kind of mixed results on that,

but very kind of accepting of the technology once they got to get their hands on it.

It's not what a lot of people thought a Chinese car would look like.

We have experienced this.

I think a lot of people in our market have this idea that's portrayed in the media about what a Chinese car is like.

Then when they touch it, feel it, get around it.

They see that's tremendously different than what they thought.

True, seeing is believing.

Before traveling to China a couple of years ago, I was the same.

I didn't believe a Chinese car could be that good, but I'm totally sold.

They are just leaders in their field for EVs, that's for sure.

Is there any hope for the American brands like GM?

Anything that you can hang on to in terms of what they can bring to market?

I would say that there's always hope.

I think it's how you approach the subject.

If we make it in us versus them battle, I think that Detroit's already lost.

We are not going to go against them and win.

If we make it in us with them, taking on the entire ecosystem that's being built up around all these different technologies,

there are a lot of potential paths to success and a lot of winning together type of situations that come up.

People still love their Detroit brands.

They love their US brands.

I'm sure even in Australia, people still have that Ford versus Holden kind of deep passion way down,

even though the product might not be exactly where they want it to be right now.

I think that there's still potential.

If you walk around, you see people developing motors, developing batteries,

developing doughnut was there with their new solid state battery,

making a lot of news there.

They're developing skateboard chassis.

One of their partners was in there.

You saw catering, which is kind of an old school driver's brand with these track toys.

They had a immersion cool battery, which was really cool.

There's many ways that you could potentially still have a Western brand be very competitive and have a meaningful product.

I think if we try and do it on our own, it's just going to be too difficult.

I'm just putting up on the screen there the doughnut bike that we heard about just prior to CES,

and I'm sure they were there as well.

I don't like the word adversarial.

You're right, Larry.

I think your collaboration is much better to progress tech, so hopefully we'll see that.

As you said earlier, we'll transcend political boundaries, too.

Guys and girls in the audience, send some questions towards Larry.

If you have anything you want to ask specifically about CES and Riz,

feel free to jump in as well for any questions you've got.

Larry, this is pretty fascinating for CES there.

Now, CES for cars hasn't really been a big thing,

but last year, Zeke had a whole booth,

and we were pretty closely in common eye with the Zeke team here in Australia,

having visited some of their factories and seeing what they're doing.

So they had a pretty big presence on the floor in this year with Julie.

Do you think that we're going to see more and more of these large Chinese brand GWM?

You said it was there.

I saw a photo of the CTO that was at CES, GWM CTO as well.

So she was here in Australia only a couple of months ago.

So it's quite interesting to see how these global ambitions are going,

but do you feel we're going to see more and more of these larger brands?

Maybe BYD having their own presence there.

Yeah, I think BYD especially because not only do they...

BYD makes Apple iPads and they make the chassis for iPhones

and they make a number of the other consumer electronic devices that you're already buying,

whether people realize it or not.

They also have energy storage applications.

And just even from an enablement of the EV ecosystem perspective,

I think it makes tremendous sense that they could be there.

Julie has the advantage that they own Volvo and they have a factory in the U.S.

and because of that they have a path into the market.

But the more consumers see this and I have this kind of ongoing column about

you can't buy this America, showing people all the stuff that they can't buy,

the more people see what's possible.

I think that a number of these Chinese automakers might start getting in there

showing people what's possible.

It is also a very international crowd.

So there are a number of Chinese people.

There are a number of Korean people, Europeans.

It's not just Americans there even though it's a U.S.-based show.

But this audience seeing what's in there,

Julie was showing off some of their LiDAR units

and some of these things that they could be selling and supplying to other manufacturers.

I think BYD especially has a number of technologies they could be supplying.

Even if we don't see BYD brand, we could see that.

I know Xiaopang is doing a lot of work with their self-driving technologies.

They're developing products for Volkswagen.

We could see that technology in the market faster than we could see their brands.

That's quite fascinating because as it appears that John McElroy from AutoLine

got a scoop from the Ash from Geely who was there

that they firmly believe they will be in the U.S. market in the next three years.

So it's quite interesting to see how fast Geely and these brands are moving.

It's politics that's holding it back.

It truly is politics.

And it's very odd politics where you have very educated,

fairly liberal-minded people in the tech scene who really want this free trade.

You have business people who want the free trade, consumers who want it.

And then you have a mid-mix of people on the left and the right

who like legacy industries, legacy automakers, the unions of legacy automakers

that combine to kind of put in these protectionist measures.

I went to one of the... CTA is a strong supportive trade

because without that global ecosystem, a lot of consumer technology periods.

CTA is the Consumer Technology Association, I believe.

They're the organization who puts on the show.

So they're a firm believer in this global collaboration

because if you look at any technology product,

it's going to have a Samsung chip from the U.S.,

Albuquerque and firm, Chinese, no battery,

a number of different parts that are all coming together to make that product viable.

And it's actually really hurting our small businesses

in a number of ways because we aren't able to compete

because we don't have access to the global infrastructure,

our ecosystem and infrastructure.

Yeah, I think Ruth, to your point about three years,

you could want to get into America.

I mean, that sort of coincides with the...

potentially the next administration coming in,

if it all goes well, obviously we don't know what's going to happen in three years.

A comment from Richard here,

that donut solid state battery sounds like a Nikola level scam.

I heard this week as well.

I was very surprised that a solid state production vehicle has been brought to...

well, is potentially coming to market so quickly.

But do you hear anything about this, Larry?

So they're saying, you know, 400 watt hours per kilogram,

which is just amazing.

Yeah.

And they're touting how great this is.

I asked, like, is it truly solid state, not just like semi solid?

They're like, no, it's solid state.

And then I started asking them about technical details and they're like,

yeah, we can't share any of that.

Yeah.

And, you know, on a certain level, I'm in that same boat.

Is this real?

Because we've been hearing solid states around the corner.

It's around the corner.

It's going to be any day now.

And we've seen some small scale applications,

but they sounded very convincing that this was happening.

I just want to know the details.

I think that, you know, for our group,

we want to know what it actually is and how it's actually working.

And, you know, until I see those details,

there's always going to be that level of skepticism.

That said, it is a motorcycle.

This isn't a car yet.

You know, there were some cars on the donut lab.

There was a kind of a skateboard style chassis on the donut labs stand

into another vehicle that they were also showing.

Could it show up in cars?

What's the price point on that?

That's the other thing.

It's, you know, evidently BYD also as well as state batteries

and, you know, trial production for long-term testing.

Is donut actually going to have a cost-effective,

market-viable, durable, automotive battery?

Like, I sure hope so.

But only time to tell.

Yeah, I feel like, as you guys know with the Chinese brands,

it's very little lag time between promotion advertising to production.

You know, it's like very quick.

Whereas I feel like brands like this,

there might be a longer lag time between ever production, ever entering.

So that's the difference.

So I think some of that has to do with the business model.

Like a lot of Chinese brands are trying to avoid Osborn fact.

They're also trying to keep their competitors from kind of copying

their strategy and trying to out-compete them.

Like BYD is like, we're going to have to kind of keep a lot of this

technology closer to us in order to avoid that happening.

On the other side, you know, you look at CES.

A lot of these people are trying to get capital.

And that might be their true audience versus consumers.

BYD has capital.

They aren't trying necessarily to pump up the, you know,

get a whole bunch of venture cap in to make this happen.

They're really trying to win the market.

So it's going to be a little bit different approach.

That said, there's a, I think it's dream vacuum was there

with their Cosmera, which felt very much like a throwback

to when, you know, Chinese EVs were just getting started

and it was very much this kind of pie in the sky.

Looks like a Boop Gotti mixed with the something else.

You know, I wish them well, but they're like, yeah,

we're going to market this when I talk to them as a record breaker.

We're just going to break all the records.

And I'm like, how are you going to do that?

Like, I mean, Porsche can tell you it's not the easiest thing

to just walk in there and break all the records.

So I, once again, I wish them well.

They're working on a new design.

What they showed evidently is just a prototype

and they're working with the European Design House

on the next generation.

But it very much felt like that kind of capital

seeking presentation from that organization

versus ready for market vehicle.

I mean, Larry at the Guangzhou show,

you would have seen the BYD U9 or Yang Wen U9 Extreme

that actually did shatter a lot of the speed records

and it was there for people to see that, you know,

that takes years, decades of dedication to do.

Well, yeah.

And I tell you what, the one thing that a lot of people

aren't paying attention to with that is that's largely 3D

printed in aluminum, like the extreme version of that

and the technology that goes into that and developing

that ability to make this platform and, you know,

make a refined vehicle that's, you know,

like if you sit in it, it's not like cobbled together

supercars that we grew up with in the 80s.

No, it's a comfortable, surprisingly large vehicle

that, you know, is a fully developed product.

And I think that somebody like Cosmere is going to have

a hard time competing with something against it.

And, you know, they just went from almost breaking the record

to 3,000 horsepower plus.

And, you know, they can keep doing it.

Like they have the resources to make it go even faster.

So I think that this idea that I'm just going to walk

into the market and break all the records,

that's a tall order.

I wish them luck.

If they do it, congratulations.

I just, man, it's a tough one.

That's tough.

Yeah, from what we've seen.

And, you know, like we have been spoiled by all the new EVs.

They're very comfortable, built so well.

It's just like a new standard really set by a lot of the

Chinese brands for sure.

And you make good point, Larry, about how funding is

definitely part of the game for consumer or trade shows

like this to get that venture capital,

whereas a lot of the Chinese brands obviously have that

backing already.

So that's a good point, really good point.

Larry, what was the, that U9, what was it?

The land speed record, almost 500 Ks an hour,

top speed, wasn't it?

496, I think, yeah.

Unbelievable.

Yeah.

Larry, what?

500 was the tire limit.

So they couldn't hit 500 without breaking the

tire limit, like on paper.

So who knows, it couldn't go even faster.

I wanted to ask you, Larry, apart from EVs,

just quickly to wrap up like what,

what were some of the other highlights from a sort

of general consumer tech point of view?

Were there any interesting robots on the reels

that I was watching?

Yeah.

So like going around the show,

like you see a lot of robots.

AI was kind of like a joke.

Everyone's like, oh, it has AI in it.

This is great.

You know, like everything is AI.

It's like digital a few years ago where everyone

put digital on everything.

You know, the technology overall period,

consumer, you know, the consumer aspect of like

government stuff was fascinating.

Very hard not to get distracted by that.

The robots were everywhere.

Everyone had one.

Hisense had one.

There was a line of almost an hour long to get

the Hyundai booth to see the Boston Dynamics Atlas.

You know, AGI bot is a brand that I wasn't

familiar with, but they are actually leading

in sales right now.

They're also helping a lot of other humanoid robots

develop.

And, you know, they are really a company that

I would keep my eye on.

But once again, that's kind of distracting

overall from, you know, the clean technology aspect.

And I just wrote an article today about kind

of keeping on pace in how Elon Musk's

technology tangents with Tesla,

that kind of took him away from, you know,

the environmental aspects and the EVs have really

seen massive amounts of competition.

Like the idea that Tesla is going to walk in

and it's going to be easy and they're going to

have first mover advantage.

They don't have first mover advantage.

And the competition is amazingly fierce in these.

It makes you wonder what would have happened

if Tesla just focused on making EVs.

And, you know, where they would be today,

would the product be as relatively stale

in the market?

Or would we see a completely different, you know,

all that creativity and all those resources applied

to EVs where we would be today?

It's fascinating.

You know, in terms of self-driving,

Waymo, Zooks, there were a number of different,

you know, people offering robo taxis.

A lot of people offering not just self-driving,

systems, but components of that system from LiDAR,

AGI training, you know, all of those pieces

where you can see how somebody could put together

a system that would move forward.

Going back to EVs, the one thing I would say

is the one EV that was probably the least focused

on being an EV was the Soniafila,

which was in the home entertainment section

of the website.

And you look at this $90,000 vehicle,

and they really focus more on the entertainment

and screens on the interior,

barely mentioned any of the technical specs to it.

In the show, it was a massive hit.

Will it be a hit in the market?

Is going to be a really tall order?

When I saw it and I looked around it,

it most reminded me of an IM from SAIC,

which has all the screens,

which has this entertainment focus to it,

but also doesn't start in $90,000

used last and go up to $120,000.

A similar kind of Perola-sized vehicle

costs about $25,000 from IM,

which is a more premium brand from SAIC,

but in a global market,

I just have a hard time seeing this thing

really catch on.

It's kind of bland on the outside,

except for this display screen,

which we've also seen on IM

where it shows different characters on the front screen.

In our market, if we don't get a lot of options,

it could be a good option.

It could be all about the quality

and the execution of this.

You can look at it on paper

and not really know how this is going to catch on,

but outside of the place where everyone's focused

on home entertainment, consumer electronics,

is it going to perform as well?

I think it's going to be a tough question for them.

Honestly, it's not a bad-looking vehicle,

but we keep touching on the fact

that these need to come to market quicker.

We can't just have a long promotion time

and prototype time.

That's the problem with these brands.

It's basically a $100,000 car.

It's Yang Wang U7 territory.

U7 is a 1,300-horsepower monster

with electromagnetic suspension and the screens

and super-premium materials.

This looks good in a conservative design way,

but is it up to that level?

Of course not.

Is it good that we're going to have access into U.S.?

Sure, but I just think

that they're going to have a hard time breaking through it.

We just feel like the Japanese are just a step behind or two.

We've got the Leaf coming out of Nissan this year, obviously,

and the Masters got a collaboration with Deep Hell and Chang'an,

but it needs to step up.

Tony, particularly, I think, is step up the game to compete.

They had some very interesting, all the Japanese brands,

some very interesting EVs in collaboration in Guangzhou.

I think that if we can get more access to the Japanese brands,

those markets, it could be a way for them to enter markets like the U.S.

Mazda had some interesting vehicles in Guangzhou

that were from their partners.

I think it could be a way for us to get access to that technology ecosystem.

It's just, you know, whether or not that's allowed to happen.

I mean, I can't see the states allowing Chinese cars too soon,

but your neighbors, I mean, you know, Mexico, Canada,

I'm here in Canada later this year,

might see some more Chinese goods,

might be closer to shore than you think.

Yeah, and the other thing that keeps coming through my mind

is how much the Chinese market is maturing, right?

So, you know, in the U.S., we still, other than Tesla,

we have basically no net profitable EV maker.

You know, GM is losing money, Ford is losing money.

They both massively scaled back, you know,

took massive ride-offs on that.

China is basically making legal to lose money on car sales.

You have to have all of the gross margin covered,

plus marketing, plus finance, plus what there was one other.

Marketing, finance, oh, management fees.

So all the operating expenses except R&D, you know,

have to be covered by the price of the vehicle that you sell it at.

That's going to make a very mature market very quickly.

You're going to see a lot of the kind of uncompetitive brands drop out.

And by the time, you know, in three years,

we're going to be looking at a very, very mature market

that people only can compete in terms of investment on the R&D side,

which is also going to push it forward.

It's not going to be sales promotion that drives cars.

It's going to be R&D focus.

You aren't going to be able to cut costs by taking a loss.

You're going to have to cut costs by engineering the costs out of it.

And I think that is going to be a tremendous game changer

for their market, even though they're already ahead.

And that's going to be mature.

It's going to be cost-effective.

And nobody's going to be able to say that they are dumping product on the market

unless they're selling for massively below Chinese prices,

which, you know, clearly none of them are, especially in Australia.

You know, nobody's going to be able to make that claim

and have it be accurate moving forward.

So they're going to be in a very solid position,

whereas we're going to be a few steps behind

because we did that scale back based off of, you know,

the politics that are happening right now.

And Riz, you know, we are basically a great example of what can happen

if you allow a lot of brands into the country.

We have pretty much everything that any market could ask for outside of China.

Riz, you know, we will probably see some consolidation, I think, in the next year or two.

Yeah, it's likely to happen.

I mean, we've got another five or six brands yet to come, you know,

Chang'en with Avatar and Ninho with their Firefly

and potentially Honbo, Dong Feng, you know,

it's just, we're getting so much.

And yeah, there will be a level of consolidation.

And we're going to see growth from brands like, you know, X-Pane,

BYD, of course, had over 50,000 sales in 2025.

Nearly half of them were electric.

Their pickup truck is going bang, you know, gangbusters at the moment, the shark.

And they've got a couple, but just the level of products in the line,

in the pipeline are amazing.

And one of the things we're seeing, Larry, in Australia now is,

for example, a car will get launched in China

like Leap Mode B10 was launched in March from memory.

And they were already showcasing it for people to be able to pre-order

by like September, October in Australia.

So that timeline is shrinking really rapidly now.

Yeah, I wrote an article about BYD recently

and that they are taking on a cell phone product update schedule

in that if you look like at the Chinl, they had 80 kilometers,

120 kilometers at the beginning of the year and no self-driving.

Then in February, they added self-driving.

And then on October, they bumped that up to 128 for the 2026 model

in terms of range.

And then just last week, they bumped that up to 210.

And it's like multiple updates a year.

You aren't even waiting for a full year for an update,

much less some of the legacy automakers where you might wait

multiple years.

It's happening multiple times a year.

And right now, the export markets have been a little bit isolated

from that.

You look at Europe, they're still on the Song Plus,

on the Gen 4 DMI platform.

And they're on Gen 5 now.

And the Song Plus is actually being discontinued in China

to move over to the C-Line 06.

So you already see some of that happening.

And then that's getting into other markets where they're starting

to see that cell phone speed accelerate.

And then the other brands are also stepping up their updates

schedule, like we saw with cell phones.

And that's going to just constantly be accelerating,

I think, for the next few years.

I think that consumers might have a little bit of an adjustment

going through that.

When the intelligent driving came out for BYD,

there was massive backlash.

There were getting complaints left and right.

I just bought this car.

Now it has all these features.

And they are charging more for it.

There's going to be an adjustment period.

People had to make that adjustment with cell phones,

knowing that I just need to buy it now.

It's not going obsolete tomorrow.

It's going to keep working.

And with these EVs, they will keep working.

But there's going to have to be some adjustment

because you're just going to say, hey, I have to buy.

I'm going to buy the car now.

I know it's going to get changed.

And that'll be good.

The one thing that's a positive on that

is we're also starting to see real OTA updates

that actually are game changers for the vehicle performance.

You saw with BYD's DMI system,

a 10% improvement in fuel efficiency

from an over-the-air update.

You're seeing range extensions of 10% approximately

from an over-the-air update based on AI data

and analysis of all the optimizations of the system.

So people are actually getting better cars a year in

than they originally started with,

but there's still even better cars

being launched at the same time,

which that dynamic is...

It's going to be something for people to get used to.

And the software from OTA is obviously

also improved the overall UX and driver experience,

just improve efficiency, obviously.

Having to find small things like where the air conditioning is

and how to get up with car play,

that improves the quality of life.

And that is the little things like that

help differentiate good cars from really good cars.

So it is exciting.

Yeah, that's a great point.

And like their self-driving systems,

especially because a lot of these are relatively new systems,

they don't have years and years of data being fed into them

like some of the older systems do.

So they're improving at a very rapid pace.

BYD is confident enough in their self-driving system in China

to have level four on parking,

which essentially means they take on responsibility

for any accidents that happen during parking

in terms of self-driving,

which part of that is like a lawyer argument going on there.

But it's impressive that the technology is improving to that pace

that they're willing to make those kinds of moves.

And we saw even when we test drove the P7 Plus,

you could tell that that system is learning very rapidly

and their descriptions and how it learns

from different road conditions in different locations.

It's amazing how fast that's moving.

In that case, it seems to be learning on the fly

in your specific vehicle

before waiting for an OTA update to get there.

And it's amazing how fast this is moving compared to

what we thought was possible a decade ago.

And Lara, you and me enjoy,

we test drove the P7 Plus with XMGP in Guangzhou two months ago.

And before that, I'd only experienced FSD in Australia.

And I was obviously very impressed with Tesla FSD,

and I wondered how far ahead Tesla was in that game.

But having sat in the P7 Plus with XMGP on board,

I was, as I'm sure you were very impressed

at how good it was adapting to their local roads.

And honestly, I can say head on heart,

the Chinese are not far behind at all

in that self-driving department, at all even.

Well, maybe not at all.

I mean, first of all, it's a lot easier to...

I've driven in Sydney.

It's a lot easier to drive in Sydney

than to drive in Guangzhou.

I mean, you have scooters going in and out.

Nobody uses turn signals.

People merging across four or five lanes in one go.

It's a lot more complicated than it is there.

I find that the X-Pong system is much more conservative

in terms of like it follows speed limits.

It's not overly aggressive.

It is a little bit more calming experience than Tesla.

It'd be great to have them back-to-back

on the same roads in the same experience,

but the system is clearly learning very rapidly

and we saw the very first iteration of it

and I guarantee it's better now.

Absolutely, yeah.

It'd be great to see that product

and other systems come to Australia to really,

as you said Larry, test them back-to-back.

That'd be a great experience.

Larry, I just wanted to thank you again

for joining us today.

I'm sure you've got exciting dinner plans coming up.

Look, we'd love to have you back later this year.

That's okay with you.

Yeah, I'd love to be back.

If you don't mind me putting in a quick plug

for our show that's coming up.

We actually have an electric home show coming up

in Hawaii, which is kind of a good draw.

It's relatively close to you guys,

but that's going to be April 24th through the 26th.

You can read more about it on electrichomeshow.com

and you can follow my articles on Klingtechnica.com

and I really appreciate the opportunity to be on the show.

I'll be happy to be back.

I can do other time frames other times,

but thanks for being flexible on this during my vacation.

I really appreciate it.

No, thank you for joining us during your vacation

and we'll leave a link to Larry's Klingtechnica page

on the Ludicrous Feed video description,

so check that out.

Larry, Riz and I will keep talking for a bit,

but thank you again once again for joining us

and stay safe on your vacation and have fun.

Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Riz.

Thanks. See you around.

Wow, Riz, that was awesome, wasn't it?

Having Larry chat to us about CES?

Oh, so insightful.

I guess the fact that he's just been there,

it's really fresh.

It's the biggest tech show in the US anyway.

I'm sure there's probably other stuff happening,

but yeah, so exciting to see all these brands

that you and I and our viewers and listeners

get the chance to test drive here in Australia

and also those that have visited China

that they're all really making strides

to get into the North American market.

So collaboration is the only way to go.

Yeah, absolutely.

But yeah, it would be great to have Larry back

and chat to us.

I guess giving us an American perspective as well

on the EV world.

Riz, I just wanted to quickly chat a few more things,

sort of more local issues.

And yeah, so this, well, it's not really local,

but this is your article in The Driven

and it's great to see the 7 GT.

Obviously, this is a very sexy vehicle

that we were drooling over at the recent auto shows

in Sydney and Melbourne last year in 2025,

but great to see this finally going to national

and looks like Europe will be the first market

to specifically, is it Belgium?

The Belgium Brussels Motor Show

that got to see this firsthand?

Yeah, it was unveiled at the Brussels Auto Show.

It's interesting where the years only started

and there's Brussels is on, there's CES.

There's probably not far before some of the Chinese shows

keep going for as well,

but announced at Brussels is heading into Europe.

Very, very interesting to see

that how quickly Zika's moving with this product

for our viewers context.

It first got into showrooms in China in April last year.

So within a year, it's already heading to Europe

and I know there's been indication that it could come

into Australia along with Zika 9X,

which is very, very large, luxurious vehicle

that they're also looking at.

So awesome to see it's heading over there

and I guess we might hear more later this year

what the right-hand drive market plans are,

including ours here in Australia.

Yeah, this car is the real deal.

There's 7GT with the golden LFP battery,

obviously you can charge very quickly.

We've seen a few tests in Australia for the 7X.

That can definitely charge almost 400 kilowatts.

We don't have anything faster than a 400 kilowatt charger,

but yeah, this is a phenomenal vehicle.

So hopefully we'll see this launch in Australia,

if not this year.

Well, hopefully this year,

I don't want to, hope for anything later, honestly.

What?

Ask to come to the market.

I mean, Tom, you and I both saw the amount of interest

around this car as well, like people getting in and out.

Some people specifically attended the shows

just to look at this particular car.

So a lot of interest.

The interior looks stunning.

And I think we need a wagon.

We need to set the standard in Australia to say

we can't have electric wagons that are not over $200,000,

such as the BMW i5 Touring.

And the other one is the Taycan Cross Turismo.

So if this would come in under $100,000,

I think there'd be quite a bit of interest for people

that let's say not everyone wants an SUV.

No.

I mean, the Roland spec might come in under $100,000.

By the way, Roland sends his apologies.

He's obviously got to work today.

But honestly, I feel this car will be closer

to the 7X pricing.

I'm hoping it's got to be close to 60K, honestly.

Fingers crossed.

I feel like we need purple hats with MWGA,

make wagons great again.

I'm happy to wear that hat.

What do you reckon?

Look, I'm on board.

So Zika, if you're listening,

we've got a marketing campaign already lined up

for this car for you.

Absolutely.

Happy to test that for you guys.

And just quickly, Zika sent me some info this week

about the 8X.

Look, we don't often plug in hybrids,

but this caught my attention too.

Look at the battery size on this thing.

For a plug-in hybrid, 70 kilowatt hour battery.

That is bigger than some of the smaller mid-size SUVs

on the market, including the Geely,

even the Tesla Rural Drive Model Y.

I don't think it's 70 kilowatt hours.

So this is not a bad option for those who want

best of both worlds.

I think the key is that people that are looking at equivalent

petrol vehicles, petrol diesel cars,

usually cars like this large are generally diesel.

If this can be driven on, you know,

what's its petrol-only range,

oh, sorry, EV-only range,

it will probably be around 200-ish.

Yeah.

Hopefully more.

Maybe a bit less.

Yeah.

150 to 200 kilometers real-world range.

And if you're getting that,

then, you know,

that's enough for most people's daily driving.

So WLTC of 230.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I guess if that, you know,

individual was going to go and buy a diesel BMW

or something like that, or diesel Audi,

and this is an option, and they go for this,

I think it's, you know,

better for from the point of view that, you know,

they take the risk for having a petrol engine

on board in terms of servicing.

Yeah.

But it's still cheaper then,

cheaper to run and cleaner to run

before daily driving than any of those diesel models.

So, yeah, biggest cost.

Apparently, this is also being considered

for international markets.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I think, yeah,

obviously they want to push hybrids into Australia.

It's understandable until our charging network

comes up to speed.

But yeah, I mean, 70 kilowatt hours

is a decent-sized battery.

Almost, I don't know,

range extender kind of option, right?

Spend most of the time on this,

on the battery before you use petrol.

And just finally, before we wrap up the show today,

Tesla, of course,

is this a world first,

our market being the first to take up

a five-year unlimited kilometer warranty?

According to Tesla's press release, it is.

Okay.

And I think a lot of people in the US

and the UK are saying,

when is the local Tesla team going to

introduce this?

But it's a good thing.

I think part of it is driven by competition.

You know, no manufacturer

decides one day they'll wake up

and they want to extend warranty and take on more risk.

So I think

this is obviously very strategic

in a sense to help Tesla bring

their warranties closer

to what some of the Chinese manufacturers are offering.

But B1D, I believe, from memory is

six years now

and the C-Line 7 is selling so well

that, you know, it's

giving Tesla,

you know, a bit of run for its money

where they do need to up

other incentives to encourage people.

Of course, this only applies

to cars that are purchased after

the 1st of January.

So there are some people in the camp

who have purchased

or taken deliveries of their vehicles

at the end of last year who are wondering,

well, what about us type of thing?

So this would be interesting.

This transition happens every time

manufacturer makes these changes.

But good to see

you know, world first here in Australia

five year warranty and limit kilometers

for private use.

And that is the key, right?

Competition in this country is so strong now with EVs.

We've got so many brands.

It's really spurred the local team in Australia

to increase or improve the warranty

for customers buying Tesla.

So that is the benefit, I think, of having so many,

so much competition.

So we're certainly benefiting from that.

Five year warranty is fantastic.

Alrighty, well, look, Riz,

once again, thank you for joining us today

at a very special time, of course.

What have you got on for the rest of the day?

Busy, busy, I'm sure, in the spectre.

Thanks, Tom.

I'm actually in East Turac at the moment.

We'll be attending

the Kuyong Classics.

There is an EV brand there

who are sponsoring it, so I'll go

and check out what they have to offer.

You know,

I believe Kyrios

and a couple of other players will be on the court

if they haven't already been.

But, yeah, we'll check that out

and then, yeah, back to work, back to the grind

and looking forward to our next

live stream, which I think will be

in the evening next Wednesday.

Indeed, yes, next week

we'll be back to our regular scheduled programming

at nine o'clock on Wednesday night.

But thank you, Riz, for joining us

and also thank you to our audience who've joined us today.

I've seen 50-plus numbers for a live stream

on a Wednesday morning, which is pretty good,

pretty encouraging, but if you're watching this

on replay, thanks for watching this far

and also on Audio Podcast as well.

And once again, thank you to Larry Evans

from Clint's Technica for joining us today

on the show, giving us his insights

on the CES show recently in Vegas.

And thank you, Tom,

for making it all happen,

because otherwise we wouldn't get

insights from Larry if he hadn't

ran into him in Guangzhou.

And yeah, it's lots of awesome contacts

we have globally, which is

awesome, and you're going to only really find them

on the ludicrous feed.

That's right. Now, Joe and I had a great time

hanging out with Larry in Guangzhou,

so great company, great travel companion too.

Alrighty, well, thanks for joining us, everyone.

Thank you, Riz, and we shall see you

next Wednesday night on the show.

Thanks, Riz. Have a good day.

Thanks, everyone. See you later.

Thank you.

CES 2026 Recap: Future of EV Brands, AI, Robotics and Market Trends

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