The 2026 Outlook for Autonomous Cars and EVs: Five Predictions

💡 5 Predictions For 2026

Happy New Year and welcome to 2026! I don’t know anyone who isn’t happy to put 2025 in our collective rearview mirror.

That’s especially true in the automotive industry and the broader e-mobility space: last year brought nearly unprecedented chaos, ups and downs to the electric vehicle market, and policy whiplash across the entire sector.

But 2025 also showed us that despite many setbacks, EVs aren’t going anywhere—and autonomous vehicles really aren’t going anywhere. And I expect those two trends to converge this year in ways that will define how we get around for decades to come.

Now’s as good a time as any to look ahead at what we can expect in 2026. I actually don’t like making predictions; I’m a reporter, first and foremost, and that means I don’t like being wrong.

But as I get ready to head to CES (drop me a line if you’ll be there too!) I wanted to run down five major trends that are on my radar, and where I expect them to go in 2026 and beyond.

💰 1. Affordability Will Define The Automotive Conversation In 2026

The now-dead EV tax credit and $7,500 leasing loophole weren’t just a boon to electric sales. They helped juice sales numbers for the entire American auto industry; for much of 2025 and the preceding years, the best and cheapest way to get into a new car was to go electric.

Now, all of that is gone, and it coincides with the average new car retailing for around $50,000. Affordability is about to be an industrywide problem, no matter what “fuel” the cars run on.

We’re still waiting on the final tally for new car sales in Q4, but it’s expected to be rough. Even with the usual end-of-year clearout events, Cox Automotive predicts that sales will be down more than 5% year-over-year. Blame tariffs, or wider economic uncertainty, or the K-shaped economy (where wealthy buyers have the most power), or just people not wanting to finance a car for a decade. Whatever the cause, people may be holding off on new car purchases until prices cool off.

Will they? As I wrote for The Atlantic recently, there’s no easy way out of this problem—it’s not like carmakers are in a rush to generate fewer profits. And we’re as car-dependent a society as we’ve ever been. It’s hard to see a way out of this mess. But any automaker without an answer will be in trouble.

⚡ 2. The EV Market Will Need To Stand On Its Own Now

There is some light at the end of the tunnel: the next crop of upcoming EVs, at least, will be better than ever. That starts with what’s due out in 2026. More driving range, faster charging speeds, better software, lower prices—car companies are learning from their recent EV successes and failures.

My colleague Andrei Nedelea calls these Gen 3 EVs: the third modern generation after the O.G. Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S, and then today’s cars like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the rest. Here are several we’re excited about, including the Rivian R2, the BMW iX3 and the Slate Truck.

They have to be better now that they don’t receive aggressive tax incentives. We’re about to see a “survival of the fittest” moment for EVs in America, and the herd will be stronger in the end. Remember: no more participation trophies.

🚗 3. The Used EV Market Will Explode

Here’s more good news for America’s affordability challenges: all those EVs that were leased in recent years? Many of them are due to be turned in this year. And coupled with EV depreciation, that means the market will see a big surge of high-range, high-tech modern cars with prices from $15,000 to $35,000.

That’s good news for the entire electric space, especially since most EV owners do not go back to gas. Expect a lot of conversions next year as buyers go for the best deals on the market.

🤖 4. Autonomous Vehicles Have Arrived. Now They Have To Make Money

Waymo had a blowout year in 2025, hardly going a week without announcing an expansion into a new city. Tesla, less so, with many undelivered promises by the year’s end—but as committed to an autonomous future as ever. And players like Zoox, Avride, Motional, Nuro and others are just getting started.

The era of “physical AI” has arrived, and all signs point to the technology getting better over time. All of those companies, and countless other Chinese players, will expand rapidly in 2026.

(I’m also expecting some kind of repeat of the San Francisco blackout snafu. Maybe several of them.)

But I’m keeping an eye on economics. What’s the revenue endgame for these companies? Does Alphabet really expect to run a global taxi service? Or is the play more to license their tech to automakers or fleet companies? Scale will happen this year, but I’m especially keeping an eye on how AVs can deliver profits—if they even can.

🖐 5. The Hands-Free Driving Boom Is Here For Your Car

Autonomous taxis are one thing. The other side of the coin is the rise of hands-free automated driving assistance systems (ADAS), like General Motors’ Super Cruise, Ford’s BlueCruise and Tesla’s Full Self-Driving.

More contenders are coming in 2026. Mercedes-Benz has a promising system that can navigate city traffic. Rivian has big plans for point-to-point autonomy. Honda’s 0 Series EVs (which may or may not be coming in 2026, we’ll see) also aim for hands-off driving and eventually, eyes-off driving too.

Moreover, these systems are among the few subscription features that people seem actually willing to pay for. 2026 could well be the year we start to see people really choose hands-free-capable cars over less automated ones.

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If this newsletter helped you make sense of what matters in e-mobility, forward it to a friend or coworker. And tell them to subscribe here.

This is a work in progress, so all feedback is welcome. Send me your thoughts anytime.

💡 Did You Know?

Now that it’s 2026, we’ve reached the 20-year anniversary of the documentary film Who Killed The Electric Car?, which recounts the promising birth and unceremonious death of the groundbreaking General Motors EV1. I haven’t seen the film since I was in college, so I’ll have to revisit it this year.

Until next time,

—Patrick George