Big Investing Takeaways From CES 2026

0:29We're in the middle of CES. CES going on right now. So I wanted to talk about a few of the interesting topics. The first one I want to cover, we're going to talk about our duds. I'm pretty excited about that later in the show. So stay tuned for that. But some of the biggest announcements were actually related to autonomous driving. And I want to ask you two about one specifically, and that's Uber's reveal with Lucid. We knew that they were working together. Neuro is actually the technology behind Lucid's autonomous vehicle, but this is a Waymo-like vehicle, runs on NVIDIA's stack. They're actually bringing this to market supposedly in 2026.

1:03Lou, is this the blueprint for the future? Are we going to see more companies like this? Or is this just kind of a one-off that is getting a lot of pub this week? I mean, I think alliances are a big part of the blueprint. So on that level, yes. And the nice thing about this alliance is, look, you have best to breed, right? Lucid makes excellent vehicles, I think, and also large luggage-ready vehicles with 400-plus mile range. So, that's a big part of it. Uber, we've talked at length about their distribution network. So, that is best of breed. And Neuro is a well-regarded player with Autonomous doing a lot of different things.

1:40I don't know, though, if this combination really strikes me as, wow, Lucid is an expensive automobile. I mean, who knows what, I mean, there's markup, but at retail, what they're bringing to the table is, what, an$80 ,000 plus fee? Yeah, if you're criticizing Waymo turning a Jaguar into an autonomous vehicle, this is going to be even more expensive. And with a lot less economies of scale, right? A lot less going on there. You didn't ask this, but can this particular thing work out? I mean, for one, we'll see. Having it on the road in 2026 versus having it at scale in 2026 is a different thing.

2:15And also, I do think that we need to remain excited about this because there's a ton of CapEx. There's a ton of high costs. I think the blueprint is probably some version of best of breed, but kind of with more thought on the big scale providers, maybe those Detroit companies you love to talk about, but other people just kind of partnering, but not necessarily this alliance as the model for what's to come. What did you think about this one, Rachel? Is this something that at least piqued your interest or not? Yeah, it definitely piqued my interest. I do think it could be interesting to see how this could create some kind of a blueprint for a different type of business model, you know, more of a specialized horizontal partnership model rather than the vertical integration we've seen with Waymo, for example.

3:03And I think it's kind of really interesting to look into how this partnership with Lucid, Neuro, NVIDIA, and Uber works, because it really divides the expertise of these industry leaders, right? So, you've got the robo-taxi, the hardware. That's built on Lucid's Gravity SUV platform. It offers luxury, long range, up to 450 miles, seating for six. They're handling the manufacturing at their Arizona factory. Then you've got sort of the brain of this partnership, right? That's Neuro. They're lending their level four neuro driver software and sensor suite. The computing side, that's NVIDIA, right?

3:39So, the vehicle runs on NVIDIA's Drive AGX Thor platform, which is basically this incredible supercomputer. It processes massive data from high-resolution cameras, LiDAR, and radar in real time. And then finally, you've got the experiential piece, and that's Uber. And so, of course, Uber provides this massive user base. They're designing this exclusive in-cabin interface. for this new vehicle, and riders can then one day use the Uber app to summon the vehicle and place an order. So, on-road autonomous testing began in the Bay Area just in December. They're now slating commercial service for late 2026 in the Bay Area.

4:18Uber has said they plan to deploy about 20 ,000 or more of these vehicles over the next six years across dozens of global markets. So, I think it's a really, really kind of interesting and exciting new entrant into the space. I mean, obviously, this partnership was announced months ago, but this is kind of the first time we've seen some kind of proof of concept of what that could look like. And I think there's benefits for all of these different players within this broader ecosystem. So, I'm kind of excited to see where this goes. And as someone that's been very impressed with Waymo and what they've done in this space so far, I think seeing this kind of new partnership model could be a really interesting alternative to that to watch.

4:58Lou, Rachel touched on this, but the big change here does seem to be that we're going from these vertically integrated companies. That was always the theory behind Tesla, right? They're manufacturing the vehicle. They're doing the technology. Then they would potentially have their own app for robo taxis. Waymo kind of did the same thing because they had to build it from scratch. Now we're finally seeing, and this typically happens with new technologies and new business models, the vertical integration. You're solving a whole bunch of problems. You've got to kind of do them yourself. Now, this is Lucid and Neuro and Uber, but why can't this be General Motors and a company like Mobileye or Ford or Volkswagen, where you have way more scale, way more cost efficiencies, way more options for the vehicle itself, too?

5:40You know, we have talked about maybe a six passenger vehicle that can fit a bunch of luggage is great. But also what happens if you only need two seats 80 % of the time, like Tesla's theory is with the robo taxi. This does, it seems like if this works, it could be almost replicated with every single OEM. Is that the right way to think about it? I think it's definitely something to keep in mind as an investor, because I think there are some risks to it. But yes, I think that what this tells us is that whether it's Mobileye, whether it's NVIDIA, Qualcomm has chips too, that you can partner with someone.

6:16You don't have to be vertically integrated. And here's the weird thing, Travis. We want a minimum standard. I want to know I won't crash. But I don't know if semantics about, but this is better. If you create a system that has good reliability, it's only the engineers and the fanboys who are going to care. But this is technologically superior. All you have to do is get to that critical mass, and you're in the game. So, investing billions of dollars to have the perfect system or the slightly better, the 99, the 7 nines instead of 5 nines as far as 99.999 % or whatever. I don't know if that's money well spent for these that are trying to go to them.

7:01It's going to be interesting to see if the best strategy and autonomy for automakers was actually just to wait. See who can figure this out. It's possible that that is that that's long term, the winning strategy. When we come back, we're going to talk about a company we don't talk about often. And it's Lego. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. I'm Kyle Wood, host of Fun Facts Daily. We all know the Winter Olympics have thrilling competitions, but the history of the sports is more odd and interesting than you might realize. Like, archaeologists have found skis that are over 8 ,000 years old, meaning that people in Russia and Scandinavia were skiing before the Great Pyramids were built in Egypt.

7:39Fun Facts Daily is covering all the stuff you never realized you always wanted to know about the Winter Olympics and hundreds of other topics. So follow Fun Facts Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. One of the announcements that caught my eye this week, and this is kind of a CES kind of announcement, but Lego announced that they are introducing smart blocks, smart tags, smart characters, kind of bringing technology to a very old product. But, Rachel, this seems really intriguing. One of their initial launch partners is Disney with some of their Star Wars characters and Star Wars sets that are going to come with a number of these different smart chips, make all kinds of sounds.

8:21It almost seems like bringing technology and some of the robotics that we've seen with some of the technica and things like that to simpler blocks. Is that the right way to think about it? Is this the future of Lego? It could be. I mean, it's interesting because there have been some sort of iteration of this technology around for a long time, but it's come a long way. This is the first time we've seen Lego really implement this in their products. Lego has positioned this, and this was sort of how they framed their announcement, as the most significant evolution in their products since their 1978 minifigure, for those who follow the Lego lore.

8:54So this new product uses BrickNet, which is basically a proprietary Bluetooth-based protocol to allow the Lego bricks to communicate locally with insane millimeter accuracy. So basically, this creates a digital twin of that physical play in real time. It's a really kind of exciting thing, I think, if you're a kid. It's really an upgrade to this technology. So these smart bricks, they use a custom-made chip, sensors, lights, and a speaker, and it creates a really interactive and responsive play experience, but without a screen, which I think is something that's probably very compelling for a lot of parents, too, right?

9:31You know, your kid is still playing with all these different types of products, but they're also very technologically advanced. And I think the idea here is that the smart brick is going to add a dynamic kind of interactive layer to traditional screen-free Lego play. So, one of the examples I saw them give was like in a Star Wars Lego set. You could have a lightsaber dual tag that would trigger lightsaber clashing sounds and light effects as the minifigures interact, which honestly sounds so cool to me. I would love to do that. So, I think this is fun. Yeah. So, I'm going to slightly push back at them.

10:05I get the marketing team is excited about this, but the most significant evolution since 1978 was probably when they realized that everybody loves Legos and the Creator's editions or something and started marketing these$500 ,000 sets for adults. That was going to be more. I predict that would be more of a revenue driver for Lego than this will be. I'm going to play the old grump here. This stuff is cool. I don't know if kids really care or appreciate it where you're going to drive revenue. You know, there's some, this looks neat. I can see sort of French things. I don't blame Lego for doing it.

10:41I can see collectors liking it. I can see some consumers, but this kind of feels like just because you can, they've always used technology. The Lego botanicals have really cool little plugins where they glow basically, where it's just like pieces. So they do a lot of this. They're always sort of add-ons, compliments. I have no problem with them doing this. I would love to own this stock, Lego, If you want to go public just to me, please let's do that would be a great IPO to have in 2020. Oh, I would be excited about that. Yeah, but but look, is this really wow the next evolution of Lego or just kind of a cool add on that's going to get some buzz?

11:20I think I'm closer to the latter than the former. It will be very interesting. Lego is one of those things that I cannot really get my kids excited about. But we do have one of those really low trains that comes with an app. That's pretty cool. and for three, four, five-year-olds, that's pretty cool, you know, bringing technology to something like Duplos and Legos. We'll see if this has legs, though. Disney definitely seems to be excited. When we come back, we're going to look at our CES duds and there are a lot of them. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

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12:30TVs. This was going to be the future. We were all going to be wearing these wacko glasses at home. Guess what? That didn't happen. The stocks that went up because of that theory did not perform particularly well over a long period of time. So what sort of duds have you seen, Rachel, where you just sort of look at it on the surface and you go, oh man, I am really not buying that? Yeah, there were a few. I mean, speaking of smart glasses, right? So Lenovo, they had a smart glasses concept. It was essentially this non-working prototype that has a monochrome display and a camera, but it didn't really offer from what was apparent at the presentation any really compelling use cases compared to, say, the smart glasses that one can purchase for Meta.

13:11And we know how tough that wearables division has been for Meta as well. Yeah, that almost seems like you don't want to be following in Meta's footsteps into the glasses. Yeah, that's not an area that's necessarily proven profitable, at least not in recent history. There was another one called the Lepro AMI AI Soulmate. It was described as an always-on 3D AI soulmate. It's essentially a holographic woman inside an eight-inch curved screen. I mean, a little bit invasive, maybe also just an example of putting AI into products that don't need it. So that was a slightly odd one. I've got to ask about that one because this sort of highlights to me there's a lot of these startups that are building stuff with AI.

13:54But how much of it is actually things that we're going to use and how much of it? This is where I get a little 1990s vibes on the Internet. There was a lot of companies that were doing things that just were never actually going to make money. And then, you know, when the crash happened, it was like, oh, obviously these were not real business models. This one I look at and I go, man, this this is this is this is tough. And they're spending a lot of money trying to make A.I. into a soulmate. I don't know how many people are going to want to buy this thing. And I think it also goes back to like a lot of the comments I was seeing coming out of CES was there were all of these different sort of products that had sort of the term AI attached to them, but it wasn't necessarily something that's going to make our lives better as consumers.

14:39It's not something the average consumer is asking for. One other one, there were these powered rollerblades, so the Peak S Electric skis. They're designed to simulate skiing on dry land. There was a reporter who tried them, described the experience as sort of a slow, awkward skiing motion across carpeted floor. So, hey, you know, I don't want to knock it until I try it. But again, that's one of those examples where I'm thinking, are we asking for this? Do we need this? I don't know. It was fun to watch. I'll say that. We got to circle back to the soulmate. There's a fine line between innovation and dystopia, and that line runs through the marketing department.

15:25We'll see. Maybe I'll just be a late adapter to a soulmate. I still think there are analog ways to go about that that might be better and i'm going to that travis i'll tell you i i can't beat that in terms of predicting duds i will say i thought the lg the uh cloid cloud roid which is a home rob robot i i think that was creepy and if you look at that demo but out of all of the home robots that we have seen the humanoid robots that was maybe the creepiest yes and just just it's got we we shouldn't get into it to this on this podcast, but it has a weird figure, which is just like, what were you?

16:04I don't know. That was an engineering compromise, I think. Here's the point I want to make, though. It's interesting going through this to me. So many of the things were just, like Rachel said, slap AI on something we already have, or version 2, 3, 4.0 of something that's been tried and failed. Pebble has a new ring. LG is doing another paper thin television that they say can just go on the wall with magnets. Um, we give Apple a ton of flack for not coming up with the next big thing. And it makes me wonder looking at what CES says. The next big thing is maybe we're just on a point of the technological curve where it's hard to come up with, with what our current capabilities are something that really, really moves the needle.

16:53I mean, Johnny, Johnny, even Sam Altman, if they come up with their AI imaginary friend device, whatever, whatever open AI spent billions for, maybe they'll make me look stupid. But I just think maybe this, my investor takeaway is for Apple, maybe we're being too hard on them because I don't see anyone else knocking out of the park in terms of the next big thing either right now. Yeah, I think that is a fair takeaway. And it seem like ai is being slapped on everything i i also have to just wonder what does that mean for for the future of this ai development because we're talking about trillions and trillions of dollars worth of value if those gpus are being rented out to you know build a soulmate or build a model that's you know behind the ring or something like that that people aren't actually going to buy this is this is the challenge is there's got to be a business model behind it some of these i don't i i wonder if there is fundamentally a business as always people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the motley fool may have formal recommendations for or against so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear all personal finance content follows the motley foals editorial standards it is not approved by advertisers advertisements our sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only to see our full advertising disclosure please check out our show notes for lou whiteman rachel warren dan boyd behind the glass and the entire motley fool team i'm Travis Hoyam.

18:12Thanks for listening. We'll see you here tomorrow.