For Chinese companies, the bet is that lower prices and more AI features will persuade people to wear smart glasses all day, recording their lives through constant video and audio. If you lower the price to around $200, “people will start to use them every day,” says Brian Chen, general manager of Appotronics’ innovation center. That shift would raise obvious privacy and security concerns that both Rokid and Appotronics have acknowledged, but they see the potential payoff as worth the risk.

From Vacuums to Cars

Several major Chinese electric vehicle companies, including Geely and Great Wall Motor, brought their cars to CES, but what stole the show were two brands that almost no one had heard of before. Nebula Next and Kosmera both showed off sleek, luxurious electric sports car prototypes, neither of which are available on the market yet. Both brands have connections to Dreame, a leading Chinese robot vacuum company, but they claim to operate independently from it. At CES, however, the Nebula Next and Kosmera booths were tied to Dreame in the conference’s directory.

Putting aside this complicated corporate relationship, the idea of a robot vacuum company investing in EVs is not as absurd as it sounds. 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 company, started an EV company in 2023. Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone and home device giant, launched its first EV in 2024.

Dreame isn’t the first and won’t be the last Chinese company crossing over from electronics to EVs, says Lei Xing, an independent car market analyst and the former chief editor of the China Auto Review, who checked out Kosmera’s prototypes at CES with me. China’s sophisticated supply chain, engineering talent, and manufacturing ecosystem make it relatively easy for newcomers to take a shot at building cars, Xing explains, but only a few will succeed. Others could end up more like Apple, whose long-running car project ultimately collapsed. “Life and death will be a natural outcome,” Xing says.

Robovans Are Coming

When I went back to China last year, I made sure to try Baidu’s robotaxi service, which is roughly on par with Alphabet’s Waymo in the US. What surprised me in China, ...