Honda believes you I want to talk to your car.
The Japanese automaker this week shared new details about its 0 Series, its latest foray into electric vehicles. Two electric vehicles, the 0 Saloon and the 0 SUV, will debut in 2026, with rounded and unconventional styling that whispers the future. The electric element is just a small part of the planned innovation, Honda executives promised on stage at CES in Las Vegas. In a presentation during the show, Honda’s electrification director Katsushi Inoue emphasized the “new level of smart vehicle technology” built into the 0 Series.
“Honda’s approach to the art of making things has always been human-centered,” he said, and then showed off more or less the opposite: a talking robot built into the car.
To show the robot in action, Honda projected a short video which showed a driver speaking intimately with the His-similar to a system that lives inside your electric car, with the chatbot personified by a Siri-like animation on the dashboard. “The saloon is my companion, always by my side, opening me to new experiences and expanding my world,” said the theoretical driver of the saloon during the promotional video. “Tell me more about yourself,” the car said. “Of course,” the driver responded.
The Series 0 will come with a new operating system, Asimo, named after Honda’s pioneering robot from the 1980s. This integrated operating system is designed to continually update its experience based on the driver’s preferences. The system will “enable Honda to offer a personalized ownership experience that will enhance driving pleasure,” the automaker said in a news release.
Indeed, evidence that automakers hope to reshape drivers’ intimate relationships with their cars was everywhere in Las Vegas.
“It was a theme throughout CES: you’re talking to a machine. You’re not connecting with humans,” says Jessica Caldwell, chief insights officer at Edmunds. “Everywhere you look, there are robots.”
Many automakers and suppliers have implemented experiences and design updates focused on adapting to drivers’ preferences through software and interior systems, and finding new ways to make them happy inside the closed (and perhaps lonely?) cockpit. ).