For Chinese companies, the bet is that lower prices and more AI features will drive people to wear smart glasses all day and constantly record their lives through video and audio. If you lower the price to about $200, “people will start using them every day,” says Brian Chen, general manager of Apotronics’ Innovation Center. This change will raise obvious privacy and security concerns that both Rokid and Apotronics acknowledge, but they consider the potential payoff worth the risk.
From vacuums to cars
Several major Chinese electric vehicle companies, including Geely and Great Wall Motor, brought their cars to CES, but the ones that grabbed the most headlines at the show were two brands that no one had heard of before. Both Nebula Next and Cosmera showed attractive, luxurious electric sports car prototypes, neither of which are available on the market yet. Both brands have ties to leading Chinese robot vacuum company Dream, but claim to operate independently from it. However, at CES, Nebula Next and Cosmera were joined by Dream in the booth directory of the conference.
Putting this complicated corporate relationship aside, the idea of a robot vacuum company investing in EVs is not as absurd as it sounds. If anything, it’s the latest example of how Chinese electronics companies are using their existing manufacturing expertise to build cars. The founder of Roborock, another Chinese vacuum company, plans to launch an EV company in 2023. Chinese smartphone and home device giant Xiaomi plans to launch its first EV in 2024.
Dream is not the first and won’t be the last Chinese company to move from electronics to EVs, says Lei Jing, an independent car market analyst and former editor-in-chief of China Auto Review, who checked out Cosmera’s prototype at CES with me. Xing points out that China’s sophisticated supply chain, engineering talent and manufacturing ecosystem make it relatively easy for newcomers to try their hand at building cars, but only a few will succeed. Others may end up like Apple, whose long-running car project ultimately collapsed. “Life and death would be a natural outcome,” Xing says.
Robovans are coming
When I went back to China last year, I made sure to try out Baidu’s robotaxi service, which is roughly the equivalent of Alphabet’s Waymo in the US. However, what surprised me in China was how many autonomous parcel delivery cars there were roaming the open roads alongside my robotaxi.
Neolix is a leading Chinese company that manufactures both hardware and software for RoboWAN. It said their number deployed in China is increasing nearly tenfold every year and is expected to reach about 10,000 in 2025. (For comparison, there are about 2,500 Waymo cars operating in the U.S..) Neolix claims to represent more than 60 percent of the market and has no major competitors globally, says Zhao Yu, the company’s executive chairman. Neolix brought three of its cars to CES, ranging in size from a mini-fridge to a golf cart: small, windowless boxes mounted on large wheels, with no driver.
Neolix is keen to expand internationally and already has pilot projects running in the Middle East, East Asia and Latin America. It also has its eyes on the American market. Zhao told me he knows any self-driving company in the US will face heavy scrutiny on issues like safety and data protection, but he’s looking forward to working with local partners who can help meet compliance requirements here. “As a technology company, working with one cloud service provider for any market is the most cost-effective option, but it won’t work. You have to talk to local regulators and learn which cloud providers they approve,” says Zhao.
making viral videos
When OpenAI launched Sora 2 last year, it was making an ambitious bet that generative AI could be not just a tool but a content genre large enough to sustain an entire social media platform. That vision hasn’t been fully realized yet, but at CES I met two AI video companies that are competing with OpenAI’s Sora.
Cling is the AI division of Kuaishou, a hugely popular Chinese short-video platform. The Cling app and website combined have more than 60 million registered users, the majority of whom the company says are based outside China. About 100 people attended Cling’s panel event with power users of the platform at CES. Jason Zada, an award-winning director who created Coca-Cola’s controversial 2024 AI-generated holiday ad, said he recently used Cling to create a YouTube video that featured Santa, a turkey, an astronaut and a snowman quietly burning up a fireplace. Zada said she created over 600 clips with Kling and stitched them together to create the final 105-minute video. It cost about $2,500 in token credits.
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