Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation (MFTBC), a major Japanese commercial vehicle maker, has announced to establish a joint venture with Taiwan-based Foxconn.
Despite the debut of the Alpamayo self-driving AI architecture by Nvidia at CES 2026, Mercedes-Benz, the earliest adoptor of the architecture, instead turned to focus on enhanced Level 2 systems (L2+) with the removal of the L3 autonomous driving functionalities in the refreshed version of its flagship S-Class in late January.
A century-old automotive trading relationship between the US and Canada is approaching a breaking point, accelerated by repeated statements from President Trump that have cast doubt on the future of cross-border integration.
As Taiwan and the US reached a consensus in their tariff negotiations, a long-standing cloud hanging over Taiwan's automotive aftermarket industry began to lift. Securing the most favorable treatment under Section 232—capping tariffs at 15%—was not only a trade victory but a psychological turning point for Taiwan's vehicle-parts supply chain. The agreement has injected new confidence into the sector, allowing manufacturers to shift from a posture of defensive caution to one of proactive expansion.
President Trump's recent decision to link the question of Greenland's sovereignty with punitive tariffs has sent a chill through Europe's auto industry and Asia's manufacturing supply chains. What might once have been dismissed as a trade dispute now looks more like a form of geopolitical brinkmanship; an attempt to bind industrial lifelines to strategic demands.
The EU said this week that it is considering setting minimum import prices for Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs), a move that would replace the steep anti-subsidy tariffs currently in place. The proposal is widely seen as a signal of easing trade tensions between Europe and China, aiming to protect European automakers while allowing Chinese manufacturers to preserve reasonable profit margins. China's Ministry of Commerce has welcomed the idea.
If the main stage at CES 2026 still tried to preserve a sense of future possibility for software-defined vehicles, conversations away from the spotlight told a different story. In private discussions among supply-chain executives and engineers, the tone was noticeably cooler; it is pragmatic, cautious, and marked by hard-earned restraint.
At CES 2026, the global auto industry's conversation has shifted. The focus is no longer confined to the aspirational language of software-defined vehicles (SDVs), but increasingly to the physical limits those ambitions must confront. Battery-electric vehicles are often cast as the most natural embodiment of this future. Yet quietly, and perhaps more consequentially, vehicles powered by internal combustion engines are running up against a harsh and largely irreversible constraint of their own: the physics of computing.
