Why a Chinese Robot Vacuum Company Spun Off Not One but Two EV Brands

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, however, was how many autonomous parcel delivery cars there were roaming the same open streets alongside my robotaxi.

Neolix is the leading company in China making both the hardware and software for robovans. It says the number of them deployed in China is growing roughly tenfold each year and reached about 10,000 in 2025. (For comparison, there’re about 2,500 Waymo cars operating in the US.) Neolix claims to represent more than 60 percent of the market and has no major competitors globally, says Zhao You, the company’s executive president. Neolix brought three of its cars to CES, ranging in size from a mini-fridge to a golf cart: tiny, windowless boxes perched on oversized wheels, with no driver inside.

Neolix is eager to expand internationally and already has pilot projects underway in the Middle East, East Asia, and Latin America. It’s eyeing the American market too. Zhao told me he’s aware that any self-driving company in the US will face heavy scrutiny on issues like safety and data security, but he’s hoping to work with local partners who could help navigate compliance requirements here. “As a tech company, working with one cloud service provider for any market is the most affordable option, but it won’t work. You have to talk to local regulators and learn which cloud providers they approve of,” Zhao says.

Generating Viral Videos

When OpenAI launched Sora 2 last year, it was making an ambitious bet that generative AI can be not just a tool but a content genre big enough to sustain an entire social media platform. That vision hasn’t fully materialized yet, but at CES I met with two AI video companies that are competing with OpenAI’s Sora.

Kling is the AI division of Kuaishou, a massively popular Chinese short-video platform. The Kling app and website combined have more than 60 million registered users, the majority of which the company says are based outside China. About 100 people attended Kling’s panel event at CES with the platform’s power users. Jason Zada, an award-winning director who made Coca-Cola’s controversial 2024 AI-generated holiday commercial, said he recently used Kling to generate a YouTube video featuring a fireplace calmly burning as Santa, turkeys, astronauts, and snowmen make inexplicable appearances. Zada said he created over 600 clips with Kling and pieced them together to make the final 105-minute video. It cost about $2,500 in token credits.