I’ve heard my industry colleagues say that CES 2026 was “slow” on the automotive front. Well, I still walked at least five miles a day to cover tech’s biggest trade show, had dozens of conversations with top executives from around the world, and came home with the flu. (I’m on the mend, but thanks for asking.) I’d say it was plenty busy.
But while CES had noticeably less in the way of new electric vehicle debuts, it should’ve erased any doubts that the war is on for the future of self-driving cars. And one company in particular seemed to be everywhere on that front.
Welcome back to Critical Materials, your go-to source for the biggest news driving the future of transportation. On today’s docket: We check out the rise of Nvidia in the self-driving space. Plus, Polestar squeezes out some wins after a rough couple of years, and Stellantis figures out what’s next after killing off its plug-in hybrid models. Let’s dig in.
25%: Nvidia’s ‘ChatGPT Moment’ For Self-Driving Cars
Nvidia CES 2026 Keynote
Photo by: nvidia
At CES last week, automakers, startups and suppliers alike showed off the latest and greatest in software, chips, radar, cameras, lidar—all the things seen as necessary to supplanting human drivers.
And one thread ran through many of the major autonomy announcements: Nvidia. Not just with chips, either, but with Alpamayo, a new family of open-source AI models, simulation tools, and datasets designed to train driverless cars.
With every car company and robotaxi concern out there chasing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and ultimately full autonomy, the tech giant is basically saying, “Come to us, and we’ll do the hard part when it comes to AI.”
That hard part is manually training these cars to drive themselves, which was a painstaking task a decade ago that can now be automated through AI to happen at warp speed. Here’s what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement:
The ChatGPT moment for physical AI is here—when machines begin to understand, reason, and act in the real world. Alpamayo brings reasoning to autonomous vehicles, allowing them to think through rare scenarios, drive safely in complex environments, and explain their driving decisions.
It’s not hard to understand why this makes Nvidia such a contender in the space. Not every company that wants to create AI for self-driving car development has the time, capital or software expertise to get it right. Nvidia’s offering an off-the-shelf, open-source solution here—provided you use Nvidia’s GPUs and other hardware. The partnership list above in that screenshot from Huang’s keynote speech shows that this company is going to be a long-term power player in the space.
Naturally, this led many to ask: What about Tesla, which has largely walked away from new car development to hang its future on AI-powered autonomy? Well, keep in mind that even Tesla is an Nvidia client, too. Here’s what Bloomberg had to say:
That afternoon, Musk weighed in with a post on X after a user shared a transcript of Huang’s remarks. “Well that’s just exactly what Tesla is doing ????,” Musk wrote.
The Tesla CEO added that while getting a system to work most of the time is relatively easy, solving rare and unpredictable edge cases is far harder.
The world’s richest man has claimed for a long time that Tesla’s system will have the ability to reason — that is, to make humanlike decisions in specific traffic scenarios — after a future software update. Earlier this week, his chief AI lieutenant, Ashok Elluswamy, responded to a question on X, saying a further update will come in the current quarter.
Huang learned of Musk’s response during an interview with Bloomberg Television at CES the next day.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Huang interjected, of Musk’s claim to already be doing reasoning. “I think the Tesla stack is the most advanced AV stack in the world.”
As that story notes, Tesla and Nvidia are “fundamentally different companies.” One is a vertically integrated, electric carmaker with a highly advanced software platform that has been developing camera-only autonomy for over a decade, and the other is a chipmaker and software giant that now supplies technology to almost everyone.
But given the sheer scale of what Nvidia can do, and the way it’s growing, it may prove that the ultimate leader in self-driving tech won’t be a car company.
50%: Polestar Finds Success At Last—In Europe
2026 Polestar 4
Photo by: Polestar
It’s no hot take to say that the Geely Group-owned Polestar has had a rough go since its launch as a standalone electric performance car brand a decade ago. It once aimed to be a Sino-European answer to Tesla.
But despite the early popularity of the Polestar 2, the brand has suffered from slowing sales, a thin lineup (until very recently), product delays, shaky finances, tariffs on some Chinese-made models and upheaval in the executive ranks. And now, it’s contending with an EV slowdown in the United States—all while becoming a near non-entity in China.
Lately, however, Polestar is seeing some rays of hope in Europe, where it has concentrated many of its recent efforts. Here’s Reuters with the payoff:
The company’s sales rose 27% to 15,608 vehicles sold in the fourth quarter. It sold 60,119 cars throughout the year.
Over the past year, Polestar has increasingly leaned on Europe, which now accounts for about 78% of its sales, as conditions in the United States and China became more challenging due to weaker demand and intensifying competition.
“Europe is absolutely the core, and we see it works exceptionally well. We go into France, we hire Volvo retailers. We bring a French team in there and our cars are very well received,” CEO Michael Lohscheller told Reuters.
Polestar maintains that it has even more new models in the pipeline, like the Polestar 6, a premium convertible, and the Polestar 7, a European-built crossover that should be priced to do battle with the Model Y and others. Maybe if Polestar can keep building in that continent, it’ll be well-positioned to ride out any EV slowdowns elsewhere.
75%: Stellantis’ Plug-In Hybrids Are Dead. Now What?
Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe
As our industry colleagues at The Drive first reported last week, the U.S.-market plug-in hybrids that Stellantis hyped up for so long—the Jeep Wrangler 4xe, Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe, and Chrysler Pacifica PHEV—are now DOA.
The company has been touting its “back to gas” powertrain strategy for months now, and since it’s no longer staring down tougher fuel economy rules, it doesn’t need to bother with PHEVs. This, despite the Wrangler 4xe being America’s best-selling PHEV model (a fact that says a lot about America, when you think about it). The vehicles also struggled with recalls related to fire risks, and without the PHEV tax credit, they felt less enticing.
So is Stellantis giving up on electrified power? Not exactly, reports Automotive News; it’s betting big on extended-range EVs, which use an EV platform but pack a gas engine as a generator:
A Stellantis spokesperson said the recalls didn’t factor into the decision, instead attributing it to a shift in customer demand. The company will move ahead with launches of its range-extended electric powertrain technology, which is expected to debut this year in the Jeep Grand Wagoneer and Ram 1500.
This “approach reinforces the company’s commitment to offering advanced propulsion systems that maximize efficiency and provide options from internal combustion to hybrid range‑extended, and fully electric solutions,” the spokesperson said.
Sean Hogan, chairman of the Stellantis National Dealer Council, said he’d rather have vehicles that sell because of their characteristics instead of subsidies.
“I think the market is heading towards a regular hybrid,” Hogan said. “If you look at just the general market, it’s the hybrid cars that are killing it, not the plug-in hybrid. We hate to lose a powertrain, but I feel that Stellantis is probably making investments into powertrain systems that, in the end, are going to pay off much better than a plug-in hybrid.”
We’ll see. That also proves Stellantis will have some educating to do on how EREVs work. Can that strategy pay off better than the compliance vehicles it’s made so far?
100%: What Do You Want Out Of The Self-Driving Car Boom?
Mercedes MB.Drive Assist Pro Prototype Drive
Photo by: Patrick George
What do you really want out of this self-driving car boom? Better highway driving for your vehicle? Point-to-point urban driving, like Tesla FSD, but on more cars? Full-blown robotaxis everywhere? None of the above? Drop us a line in the comments.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
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