Why a Chinese robot vacuum company produces not one but two electric vehicle brands

For Chinese companies, the bet is that lower prices and more AI features will convince people to wear smart glasses all day, recording their lives through continuous video and audio. If you lower the price to about $200, “people will start using them every day,” says Brian Chen, general manager of the Innovation Center at Apotronics. This shift would raise obvious privacy and security concerns that both Rokid and Appotronics acknowledge, but they see the potential payoff as worth the risk.

From brooms to cars

Several major Chinese electric vehicle companies, including Geely and Great Wall Motor, brought their vehicles to CES, but what stole the show were two brands that almost no one had ever heard of. Both Nebula Next and Kosmera showed off prototypes of sleek, luxury electric sports cars, neither of which are available on the market yet. Both brands have relationships with Dreame, a leading Chinese robot vacuum company, but claim to operate independently of them. However, at CES, the Nebula Next and Kosmera booths were linked to the Dreame in the convention guide.

This complicated relationship between companies aside, the idea of ​​a robot vacuum company investing in electric vehicles is not as ridiculous as it seems. If anything, it’s just the latest example of how Chinese electronics companies are parlaying their existing manufacturing expertise into making cars. The founder of Roborock, another Chinese vacuum cleaner company, launched an electric car company in 2023. Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone and home appliance giant, launched its first electric car in 2024.

Dreame isn’t the first and won’t be the last Chinese company to move from electronics to electric cars, says Lei Xing, an independent auto market analyst and former editor-in-chief of China Auto Review, who examined Kosmera prototypes at CES with me. China’s sophisticated supply chain, engineering talent, and manufacturing ecosystem make it relatively easy for newcomers to try building cars, but only a few will succeed, Xing explains. Others may end up looking like Apple, whose long-running car venture eventually collapsed. “Life and death will be a natural consequence,” Xing says.

The robots are coming

When I returned to China last year, I was keen to try out Baidu’s robotics service, which is almost identical to Alphabet’s Waymo in the US. But what surprised me in China was the number of self-driving package delivery cars roaming the same open streets alongside my robo-taxi.

Neolix is ​​a leading manufacturer of hardware and software in China for automated vehicles. It says their number deployed in China is increasing roughly tenfold each year and will reach about 10,000 in 2025. (For comparison, there are about 2,500 Waymo cars operating in the United States.) Neolix claims to account for more than 60% of the market and has no major competitors globally, says Zhao Yu, the company’s CEO. Neolix brought a trio of its cars to CES, ranging in size from a mini-fridge to a golf cart: tiny windowless boxes sitting on oversized wheels, with no driver inside.

Neolix is ​​looking to expand internationally and already has pilot projects underway in the Middle East, East Asia and Latin America. It is eyeing the US market as well. Zhao told me that he realizes that any self-driving company in the United States will face intense scrutiny over issues like safety and data security, but he hopes to work with local partners who can help navigate compliance requirements here. “As a technology company, working with one cloud provider for any market is the cheapest option, but it won’t work,” says Zhao. “You have to talk to local regulators and find out which cloud providers they approve.”

Create 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 big enough to support an entire social media platform. This vision has not yet been fully realized, but at CES I met two AI video companies competing with OpenAI’s Sora.

Kling is the AI ​​division of Kuaishou, a hugely popular Chinese short video platform. Together, the Kling app and website have more than 60 million registered users, most of which the company says are located outside China. About 100 people attended Kling’s panel event at CES with power users of the platform. Jason Zada, the award-winning director who made Coca-Cola’s controversial 2024 holiday commercial, said he recently used Kling to create a YouTube video showing a fireplace quietly burning while Santa, turkeys, astronauts and snowmen make inexplicable appearances. Zada said he created more than 600 clips with Kling and stitched them together to create a final 105-minute video. It costs about $2,500 in token credits.