Hello and welcome to the Automotive News Shift podcast, where we bring you the latest on

automotive technology, trends, and transformation. I'm Molly Boygan, tech and innovation reporter at

Automotive News. Today's guest is Itai McKelley, a senior analyst at TD Cowen. He gives us his take on what to expect at

this year's CES 26, happening in Las Vegas. Our automotive news team will be there, including me.

I am moderating several panels, and if you'll be there in person, come check out the Getting Real About

Evie's panel on Thursday, January 8th at 2 p.m. Pacific time in the West Hall. And if you

can make it to Vegas, you can still catch all of your automotive news favorite people at

our Congress Conversations live stream, which is happening on Wednesday, January 7th at 10.30 a.m. Pacific

time. Get more details about that on the LinkedIn page for automotive news. Now, without further ado,

I bring you my conversation with T.D. Cowan's Etai McKellie to tell us what to expect on

autonomy, AI for the vehicle, robotics, and more at CES

2026.

Itai McKelley, senior analyst at TD Cowen.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me, Molly.

So I think broadly, how are you expecting this year's CES 26 to be different from last

year's CES? I'm not sure it will be very different. I think typically

we walk into CES. We want to learn whether A, are we going to see any new partnerships in mobility?

You know, I've seen a lot in the past year or so in the rubotaxy space. It's been a hot space.

So people always want to know what we see additional partnerships.

And two, what do we see in terms of new product announcements?

Usually there's a focus at CES on autonomous vehicles, so a lot of sensors and other technologies that would go into an autonomous

...