CES 2027 goes big on car tech with a Waymo keynote as robotaxis wait on Portland's rules (Nov. 4)

Phil Harpster

17 hours ago

6 min read

A white Waymo Ojai driverless van crossing a downtown San Francisco intersection at Mission Street — A Waymo Ojai robotaxi, built by Zeekr, on Mission Street in San Francisco in July 2026. Waymo is mapping Portland streets with the same model. Photo: Daniel Lu (dllu) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Quick Read

CES organizers said Nov. 2 that CES 2027 will have its largest mobility footprint ever, more than 350,000 square feet of vehicle tech exhibits.
Ford returns for the first time since 2020, Stellantis is back for the first time since 2023, and Uber will exhibit for the first time.
Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana gives a CES keynote on Jan. 5, as her company maps Portland streets with human drivers behind the wheel.
Portland has not issued any driverless testing permits and is still working on rules that could cap fleets and require 50,000 local test miles before paid rides.

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Cars are taking over a bigger slice of the world's biggest gadget show. The Consumer Technology Association, which runs CES, said at a Detroit media event on Nov. 2 that CES 2027 will have its largest mobility footprint ever, with more than 350,000 square feet of vehicle tech exhibits, according to the CES announcement.

One of the headliners is Waymo, the robotaxi company that has been driving its vans around Portland since April. That puts a story playing out on Las Vegas stages and a debate at Portland City Hall on the same track.

Who's coming to CES 2027

CES 2027 runs Jan. 6-9 in Las Vegas. CTA said the mobility exhibits will spread across the Las Vegas Convention Center's West Hall, Central Plaza and other areas, covering autonomous transportation, aviation, marine technology, heavy machinery and connected infrastructure.

Automakers coming back: Ford is returning for the first time since 2020 and Stellantis for the first time since 2023, Forbes reported. BMW, Kia and China's Geely, back for a fourth time, are also on the list.
New faces: Uber will exhibit at CES for the first time, according to Forbes.
Suppliers and chips: CTA named AMD, Aptiv, Bosch, Corning, Garmin, LG Innotek, Valeo and others among the companies showing mobility tech.
Beyond cars: boat maker Brunswick, Caterpillar, John Deere and Oshkosh are on the list too, a sign that self-driving and AI features are spreading to farm, construction and marine equipment.

Two of the show's keynotes are about how we get around. Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana speaks Tuesday, Jan. 5, at 6:30 p.m., and Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa speaks Wednesday, Jan. 6, at 8:30 a.m., after the State of the Industry Address. Conference tracks on connected vehicles, vehicle tech and advanced mobility, and resilient communities run Jan. 6, 7 and 8.

Expect AI to be the common thread. "It's the software, AI, connected systems," CTA Executive Chair Gary Shapiro said at the Detroit preview, according to Forbes. CTA said CES 2026 drew more than 15,000 mobility industry attendees.

The Las Vegas Strip lit up at night, seen from above — The Las Vegas Strip at night. Photo: Clément Bardot / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Plan your trip to CES 2027

CES 2027 runs Jan. 6-9, 2027, in Las Vegas. This search is set for Jan. 5-9 check-in and checkout. Hotels near the show fill up early.

Find Las Vegas hotels on Expedia

Where Waymo stands in Oregon

Waymo said on April 28 that it was "coming to the Rose City" and began manually driving its vehicles in Portland to map the streets, according to a Waymo blog post. The company said it is working with state and city officials on "a regulatory path to deployment."

Six months later, those cars still have a licensed human driver behind the wheel. The Portland Bureau of Transportation says Waymo is using its Zeekr-built Ojai vans, the model in the photo above, for mapping, and that General Motors is also mapping Portland streets to support its Super Cruise driver-assistance system, according to PBOT.

A PBOT permit is required to test self-driving systems on city streets, even with a safety driver aboard, and the city has not issued one, PBOT says. A Waymo spokesperson told KGW that its mapping creates a buffer zone around the city, which can include trips into Vancouver and other metro-area cities.

What Portland's proposed rules would do

PBOT laid out draft rules to a City Council committee on Oct. 13, according to the city's briefing slides and KATU. The proposal would:

Cap each company at 15 vehicles while testing and 75 vehicles in its first year of paid rides, with no more than 225 for-hire robotaxis citywide in year one.
Require 50,000 miles on Portland streets with a testing permit before paid rides, including at least 25,000 miles with a human driver aboard.
Require fleets to be fully battery electric, registered in Oregon and enrolled in OReGO, the state's per-mile road charge program.
Require safety and first-responder plans, crash reporting to ODOT and the city, and suspend a company's whole fleet if its automated driver racks up two or more traffic violations.
Charge per-trip fees similar to Uber and Lyft, and add a fee to support rideshare and taxi drivers who could lose work.

Councilors are split. Councilor Mitch Green has said he has "the appetite" to pursue a ban, while committee chair and Council Vice President Olivia Clark has said she doesn't support a ban or a human driver in every vehicle, KATU reported. Driver's Union Oregon wants robotaxis kept out of the city.

The committee took up automated vehicles again on Oct. 27, according to the meeting agenda, but the city had not adopted new rules as of Nov. 4.

What it means for the Salem area

Waymo has not announced plans for Salem or the mid-Willamette Valley, so a driverless ride here isn't on any public timeline. The bigger near-term decision may come from the Capitol, not City Hall.

Oregon has no state rules for testing or deploying self-driving vehicles, PBOT says. The state only has a voluntary notification form, and so far one company, self-driving truck developer Stack AV, has told ODOT it plans to test on state highways in the Portland area.

A state bill that would have allowed self-driving vehicles and kept cities from regulating them did not move forward in 2026, according to PBOT's briefing, which says an industry-sponsored bill is likely in the 2027 legislative session. That session starts in January, the same month CES puts robotaxis back in the spotlight.

Car tech you can use now

You don't have to wait for a robotaxi to add some smarts to your car. Garmin, one of the CES 2027 mobility exhibitors, makes the Garmin Dash Cam Mini 3, a key-size 1080p camera that records the road and saves clips automatically when it detects an incident. To keep a phone charged for navigation, the Anker 323 USB-C car charger plugs into the 12-volt socket and has a USB-C port and a USB-A port, so it can charge two devices at once.

If you want the backstory, Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, by journalist Alex Davies, follows the self-driving car from the Pentagon's DARPA Grand Challenge races to the race between Google, Uber and the automakers.

And if an electric car of your own is on the list before any robotaxi reaches Oregon, you can order a Tesla through our Tesla referral link. We may earn a referral credit if you buy through this Tesla link.