Autonomous machines were on display in big numbers at CES 2025, showing how the tech is forging ahead despite some setbacks. There were cars, robotaxis and industrial machines for farming and construction, filling West Hall at the Last Vegas Convention Center but also at offsite venues.
Recently, GM pulled out of the its five-year $10 billion robotaxi pursuit, while several companies in China and Waymo in the US are growing. The robotaxi mission is quite different from what several companies in the auto, ag and industrial space showed off, including John Deere, Kubota, Ambarella and Oshkosh, among others. Here’s a quick glimpse at six machines that stood out, even a flying car! (Calm down, not in production yet and not actually flying at CES.)
Waymo’s booth at CES was, ironically, adjacent to Deere’s, even though a robotaxi has arguably a more complex job than a tractor. A robotaxi must negotiate highways and sidestreets filled with dashing cars, traffic signals and pedestrians dashing across the street.
The way Waymo handles sensing complexity is through multiple sensors and a large lidar unit on top of its Jaguar vehicles being deployed in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles and, soon, Austin. Texas, and Atlanta through the Uber app. Miami is another future destination.
John Deere officials openly admit is it not as difficult to autonomously drive a tractor on a fixed piece of land with almost no other vehicles on the field, although the tractor company did add a lidar sensor to its orchard tractor to detect dense tree canopies. A big reason lidar has not been used more widely is cost, and at one point Tesla said the technology wasn’t necessary.
Waymo is progressing quickly in the cities where it operates, and even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took note of how often you see a Waymo vehicle (usually a trademark Jaguar body) in San Fran. (Nvidia GPUs and the Drive platform are used by Waymo.) Waymo vehicles are in abundance throughout much of Pheonix, too, so I recently took at 2 mile and $12 trip to the grocery store and back, noticing how simple and ordinary the process felt. At the grocery, pedestrians were dashing back and forth to the parking area in our pathway, but the Waymo eased along gingerly and safely. (Overall, it was a mundane experience, although I know several people who aren’t willing to jump in a robotaxi and want to know, “What happens if something goes wrong?”)
Waymo boasts ii has reached 150,000 weekly trips where it operates and over 5 million trips altogether since late 2020 and the data it gathers on each trip is used in further self-driving adjustments. Waymo operates at SAE Level 4, which means they operate in certain conditions and environments but a human can still take control, with the use of a steering wheel and pedals.
Waymo says it has seen an 81% reduction in airbag deployments from police-reported crashes when compared to the average human driver over 33 million miles.

Waymo showed off a 6th-generation vehicle, which is described as optimized for costs. It has a simpler design with 16 cameras, 5 lidars, 6 radars and external audio receivers. Its capabilities are designed to navigate colder cities.
Over at Ambarella, the company rented hotel space and showed off five new chips it designs for deep learning, assisted driving and more. (The company also specializes in four other chips for on-device Generative AI at the edge.) The highlight of my visit was a 15-minute drive around Vegas secondary roads to show off Level 2.5 sensing capabilities, which the company is shopping around to carmakers for use in future vehicles. (Level 2.5 is obviously between Level 2 (partial driving automation) and Level 3 (conditional driving automation).

Ambarella, based in Santa Clara with more than 900 workers, claims it makes chips that require lower power and support high definition or ultra high def video compression which operates more efficiently than chips from Nvidia or Qualcomm. The company won a CES Innovation Award for its radar architecture to allow both central processing of raw radar data and deep, low-level fusion with other sensors such as cameras, lidar and ultrasonics.

Also off the main venue, Nvidia showed off a Nuro vehicle minus the large lidar on the top first shown in 2020. It was originally designed for cargo capacity for deliveries autonomously, with no space for passengers or divers.
XPENG from China showed off the Aero HT eVTOL, a modular flying car that is stored in the rear of a electric minivan and unfolded to go into operation. The minivan acts like a charger for the vertical takeoff and landing. It is expected to go into production in 2026.

A vertical takeoff and flight might scare away the people who won’t ride in a Waymo without a driver, but I’m in line to try it out if that happens anytime soon. Given the years of regulation with unmanned drones in the US, it seems right to guess that to legally fly to work in an eVTOL in a busy city might be a ways off.

Kubota North America showed off several machines near other tractor and equipment companies in West Hall, including the Agri Concept 2.0, which the company described as “offering data, AI, automation and electrification as a choice of powertrain for when you want to drive and autonomous when you don’t.”
There was also a Kubota all-terrain Compact KATR, four-wheeled multi-functional robot with stability control to adjust the robot’s four legs to maintain a level cardo deck. The innovation won a CES Innovation Award in the industrial equipment and machinery category.
KATR can also be powered by either electric or combustion engine and will carry of a load of 284 pounds. It can be controlled remotely or via an onboard controller. The company said its proprietary algorithm processes sensor data in real-time then commands the robot’s four hydraulically acdtuated legs to extend or retract to maintain platform stability. Four independent motors help with the navigation over tough terrain.
