Part of the fun of going to CES, and this year, being a judge for innovative products, is advance information about cool devices, the opportunity to see them up close and meet with the people from companies that made them.
The biggest “device” of them all at CES 2026 will be the Tensor robocar. And I have received an invitation to see it and talk to Tensor executives at the show.
The Tensor will be the first Waymo-like vehicle an individual can buy — starting early 2027, anyway. It will be the culmination of the hype around personal robots. And what is the autonomous vehicle after all, if not a robot on wheels, in the words of Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA.
After seeing Waymos all over my home base of San Francisco, and taking a few Waymo rides, I am intrigued about people actually owning one. I imagine how convenient it would be if the robocar were always parked nearby, so I wouldn’t have to wait for it to wend its way through rush hour traffic, then try to find the pickup spot. Waymo can only pick you up at designated pickup spots, which, in my experience, have never been where I am leaving from. How convenient it would be to have a Tensor that gave me a ride to the airport and then drove itself home instead of driving myself and leaving my car in an off-airport parking lot. A personal robotaxi avoids all that.
The Tensor could be the robotaxi you own rather than the robotaxi you rent.
Don’t We Have Level 4?
Tensor positions the robocar as the first SAE Level 4 (L4) autonomous vehicle designed for private ownership and the “clearest path” to consumer L4. Level 4 vehicle means no steering wheel, no pedals and point-to-point navigation without requiring any human control or intervention.
No car company has yet attained Level 4 autonomy, despite Tesla’s claims to the contrary. Tesla has promised L4 autonomy for years and on occasion claim they have it with their so-called Full Self Driving mode. The SAE begs to differ, however, insisting that no vehicle can achieve Level 4 until it can operate autonomously in all conditions and in any location. Tesla’s Full Self Driving mode requires hands on the wheel and all too often, human intervention. More on Level 4 later.
What’s New and Different?
The Tensor robocar has no rear-view cameras. Who needs them when you have cameras facing backward and a screen inside the vehicle? The side rear-view screens are screens shaped like rear-view mirrors, mounted on the door panel below the A-pillar. Not having side rear-view mirrors would cut down on the vehicle’s drag coefficient (Tensor claims a Cd of 0.253) were it not for the not-very-aerodynamic LiDAR scanners that take their place.
The coolest thing about the Tensor is that, in autonomous mode, the driver-side screen (there are two) slides toward the driver’s central viewpoint, and the steering wheel disappears underneath it. At the same time, the pedals lowers into a recessed housing on the floor. Tensor bills the disappearing steering wheel and tuck-away foot pedals a “world’s first” and credits Tier-1 partners, including Autoliv, ZF, Bosch, Veoneer, and Batz, for their smooth operation.
“You can watch a movie, work on your next business plan… It’s hands-off, eyes-off driving,” says Amy Luca, Tensor’s CMO, in a video recorded at the Abu Dhabi (UAE) auto show earlier this year.
Or play games. The steering wheel (more the shape of a yoke than a wheel, actually) can be used as a game controller.
Tensor owners can talk to the Tensor using their voice, and the Tensor talks back.
Communication with those outside the vehicle is done with LED displays on the 4 corners that display different patterns and graphics, such as walking men as you might see at a pedestrian crossing, but on the Tensor, it signals that the vehicle is aware of you’re your presence. Pretty clever, since there would not be a driver to make eye contact with.
The Tensor’s back wheels help steer the vehicle and give it an 18.5 ft turning radius.
More on Level 4 Autonomy
Level 4 autonomy, as defined by SAE, is hands-off, feet-off and eyes-off operation in limited areas and conditions. Robotaxi fleets are allowed to operate in designated zones only. The holy grail of autonomy, Level 5, is unrestricted autonomous operation anywhere, any time and under any condition. Car companies are literally billions of miles from Level 5 autonomy.
The Tensor vehicle claims Level 4 autonomy, i.e., unsupervised driving within approved zones. Outside the approved zones, Tensor surrenders the steering wheel and pedals and lets you drive it like an ordinary vehicle. However, it is not clear if the vehicle senses it is outside the approved area on its own or if the owner must request control.
Unlike the Waymos most often seen in San Francisco, which are retrofitted Jaguar SUVs, the Tensor is built from the ground up as an autonomous vehicle. Jaguar is discontinuing production of the I-PACE, so Waymo, to expand its fleet, had to find another base vehicle. At CES 2025, Waymo presented such a vehicle, a boxy-looking minibus-like vehicle that will be produced by Zeekr, part of China’s Geely Group.
Good Morning, Vietnam
Waymo may have found a solution to the base-vehicle problem in China, but Tensor went the opposite way. Tensor came into existence in 2016 as AutoX in San Jose, California, and soon began producing and operating robotaxis in China. But as the U.S./China relationship soured amid the Taiwan issue, concerns about data privacy, the trade deficit and tariff wars, the company changed its name and distanced itself from all China operations. That did not mean that Tensors would be produced in the U.S., as the present administration would undoubtedly have liked. The company moved production to Vietnam, contracting VinFast, the country’s first multinational automotive brand, which has built a sprawling new facility in the Bay of Tonkin.
LiDAR All Around
Tensor seems to have designed its own LiDAR systems. AutoX applied for several Chinese patents for LiDAR units, including a system to clean them, according to JUSTIA Patents. On Tensor’s site, we do indeed see LiDARs that are like no other and all sporting the Tensor brand. Tensor claims that the Halo LiDAR, the one on top, emits 25.6 million beams per second, making it the highest-resolution LiDAR on any vehicle.
Tensor employs a total of 5 LiDAR units, its Halo on top plus 4 “Sentinel blind spot” units. One Sentinel is mounted on the very front of the vehicle — too much at risk in a front-end collision for our liking. Two LiDARs are where the side rear view mirrors would be in an ordinarily vehicle. The fifth is much harder to spot, almost flush with the rear of the vehicle.
Waymo also makes its own LiDAR and installs five on the Jaguar SUV base vehicle. That’s five more LiDARS than Tesla robotaxis, which have little more hardware, if any, than Tesla’s Model Ys. The lack of LiDAR reflects the view of Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, who stubbornly asserts that since humans don’t need LiDAR to drive, neither should Teslas. Elon, and perhaps consumers, may appreciate the sleek look of Tesla robotaxis over the bug-eyed, bulbous look of LiDAR-equipped Tensors and Waymos. Engineers? Not so much.
Sensory Overload
There are over a hundred sensors on a Tensor, perhaps more than on any other vehicle. In addition to the LiDAR units mentioned above, there are on board:
- 37 Cameras. 17 ultra-high-resolution exterior cameras, including 1 under-chassis camera for curb/obstacle/person/pet detection, and “interior monitoring.” That may sound creepy, but it might also be useful, such as when the vehicle recognizes hand gestures, such as pointing. For example, on the company website, we see a person say, “Close that window,” pointing to an open window.
- Radar is used where lower resolution is sufficient, such as speed (think radar guns) and longer range is required (weather conditions, azimuth and elevation).
- 22 microphones to detect sirens, voice commands such as a traffic guard saying “Stop!” or the owner saying, “Find a place to park.”
- Multiple motion and position sensors, including GPS (GNSS, Global Navigation Satellite System), IMUs (inertial measurement units) and wheel encoders.
- Environmental & Safety Sensors for system health, fault detection and safety, including water and immersion sensors, collision and impact sensors and system health and fault-detection sensors
Under Vehicle Sensors
The Tensor robocar is unique among autonomous vehicles in having an under-vehicle camera. From the video on Tensor’s site, it looks like a Roomba and like a Roomba, it attaches and detaches from a docking station underneath the vehicle and functions when detached and connected wirelessly. The Tensor, on the other hand, is chock full of sensors. It also has radars and ultrasonic sensors. Some sensors have washers and wipers to keep their vision unimpaired through rain and snow.
How Much?
But all those sensors don’t come cheap. Nor does the supercomputer. The LiDAR units are all made by Tensor, and their cost is not disclosed, but we know low-end LiDAR units cost $500 to $1,000 each, and high-end units have sported price tags of $100,000. Waymo’s LiDARs are estimated to cost from $35,000 to $100,000.
That’s just the LiDAR, and although there are only 5 of them, there are a hundred other sensors, including high-resolution cameras.
Motor Trend predicts the Tensor will be priced like a high-end sedan, such as the Mercedes S-class. Mercedes are sold in the U.S. for as much as $340K (Maybach version of the S-Class). Motor Trend is guessing it will be in the $200K area.
Supercomputer on Board
The Tensor will have on board a supercomputer composed of 8 Nvidia DRIVE AGX Thor SoCs (systems-on-a-chip), billed as such. I suppose that makes the Tensor have a supercomputer. Altogether, the computing power will deliver 8,000 TOPS (tera operations per second), or 8E12 operations per second.
TOPS is a metric used to measure, simplify, and advertise the performance of neural processing units (NPUs) in AI. TOPS is not a perfect metric, Windows Central says. Many variables contribute to how well a system can handle AI tasks. Nevertheless, TOPS provides a quick reference to an NPU’s speed and allows comparison to the competition.
So, is 8,000 TOP a lot? Umm… yes. Apple’s A19 Pro, the SoC found in the latest and most powerful iPhone, said to surpass desktop AI PCs, does 35 TOPS. The most power-hungry neural networks on the road are Tesla vehicles, which are said to max out at 200 TOPS to process the vehicle’s camera vision. Tesla’s “next gen” FSD, the A15, is rumored to require operating at 2,500 TOPS.
Waymo does not volunteer a TOPS number and uses a combination of Nvidia and proprietary hardware, making comparison difficult. But we can be fairly certain that 8,000 TOPS is towards the highest end of mobile supercomputing. For now…
Neural computing power is needed to solve matrix equations, the sort familiar to finite element analysis. However, the urgency in a mobile application is much greater than in engineering applications. The solution must be local, onboard the vehicle, not be requested from cloud servers, if the solution is to act such as “BRAKE RIGHT NOW.” Such actions cannot be left to the vagaries of Internet availability, network strength and its inherent latency. By the time the data is fed into a server a thousand miles away, the calculations are done, then the action item returned to the vehicle, the cat — or worse — has already been run over.
Availability
If you want to be the first to own your own robotaxi, you will have to wait. You can put your name on a mailing list, but since the company hasn’t set a price, it can’t really accept a deposit.
The company expects to deliver as early as late 2026 in the UAE and early 2027 in the US, pending regulatory approval, according to Motor Trend.
In the U.S., a vehicle typically must comply with FMVSS, a set of mandatory safety regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and administered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that define the minimum safety performance requirements for motor vehicles. It covers things like crash tests, okay, but it also requires steering wheels and side rear-view cameras. Right away, the Tensor may not comply. Robotaxi companies can and have applied for and been granted exemptions, but in numbers of thousands. Okay for robotaxi fleets, not okay if you want to sell personal robotaxis.
In addition, there is a thicket of individual state rules and permits. Tensor states it has been certified for driverless L4 testing in California since 2020 by the California DMV but it’s not clear if that is for a test fleet or for general sale to the public.
See the Tensor at CES 2026
Tensor’s invitation puts the robocar at CES 2026, LVCC West Hall, booth #5701. CES itself runs January 6–9 in Las Vegas.