Key Data & Tips for Vehicle Tech PR Success at CES 2026

We may only be at the halfway point of 2025, but the countdown to CES 2026 for mobility suppliers has already begun. 

Whether your company has new sensor products for automated driving and ADAS, systems that enable software-defined vehicles, new EV charging or battery technology, AI offerings for smarter vehicle systems or hardware/software for connected vehicles – if you want to maximize your PR success at CES 2026, it’s time to start planning your PR strategy.  

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which owns and produces CES, recently released the audited data from CES 2025. We dug through the data and below are several data points with insights and related tips for mobility PR practitioners who want to gain a leg-up on the competition.  

CES attendance is on a growth trend, up some 24% from just two years ago. Much of that growth is with top decision makers in the business-to-business (B2B) space. 

According to the CTA, CES 2025 saw almost 142,500 attendees, with senior-level people – from C-level execs, presidents and founders to vice presidents, general managers and directors – making up more than one-half (53%) of verified attendees.  

In addition, CES 2025 attracted executives from 305 of the top Fortune 500 companies, with some 75% of attendees being involved in the B2B sector that is so important to vehicle technology suppliers. 

CES is an important venue for companies to connect with top B2B decision makers in the tech and mobility space. PR professionals for vehicle technology suppliers should make sure their CES messaging demonstrates how their company’s innovations benefit customers in terms of cost, efficiency, performance, energy-consumption, safety or convenience. 

Talk about customer benefits over features – what the product does for the customer versus what the product is or how it’s made.

Media attendance also continues to grow.  

At CES 2025, 6,582 reporters, analysts and content creators from 84 countries around the world attended this event, arguably the world’s largest trade show and what CTA calls the “world’s most powerful tech event.” 

This is a 23% increase over 2024 in media representatives, with reporters from across the media spectrum – major broadcast networks, tier one business publications, trade media, online and print publications, newspapers, podcasts and blogs.

There are more media than ever who are interested in innovation attending CES, meaning you have more media than ever to pitch and more potential media coverage, if you do it right.  

Of course, not all of them are interested in vehicle technology. Some are there to cover only the latest TVs, games, medical devices or consumer goods. But even if only 10% of the media are interested in the mobility space, that provides you with more than 650 potential media opportunities, if you play your cards right. 

For attendees, CES remains a key global stage for mobility innovations. In fact, vehicle technology/advanced mobility ranked in the top three categories of interest among CES product categories – behind only Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT/Sensors — two categories of high interest to more attendees simply because they cut across all industrial sectors.  

The number of mobility related exhibitors continues to grow as the industry continues to look at CES as the place where automotive innovation comes to life.  

At CES 2025, more than 800 exhibitors displayed a wide range of innovations in vehicle technology and advanced mobility, including smart transportation, electric vehicles (EVs) and charging options, software-defined and autonomous vehicle technology, connected car and V2X technology and artificial intelligence (AI) applications in mobility.  

That means almost one-fifth of the show’s 4,500 exhibitors were related to advanced mobility and vehicle technology – demonstrating why long-time journalist and auto analyst John McElroy has called CES the world’s greatest automotive technology show.

As vehicle technology becomes an increasingly important component of CES, more media interested in vehicle and mobility technology will attend to gather news, rub shoulders with the top executives and government officials and develop news sources in the mobility space. 

So, you’ll want to make sure you carve some time out of your executives’ busy CES schedules for media interviews, meet and greets and introductions to build crucial media relationships that can benefit your company for months or years. 

With an increasing number of mobility exhibitors competing for precious reporter time over three or four days, you’ll be up against some intense competition.  

At previous CES events, reporters have told us they receive more than 1,000 invitations to visit booths and attend press events during the three or four days they’re at CES. It’s simply physically impossible to cover more than a fraction of those events.  

There are only so many hours in a day and navigating Las Vegas and traveling from the hotel to the CES venues with an extra 140,000+ people in town burns up valuable time, patience and human energy. 

And several days full of back-to-back press conferences, media interviews and booth visits can wear reporters down and put them into an information meltdown. 

First, remember reporters are human. Work to make their job easier in a difficult environment. You can do that by starting early in developing compelling pitches that are customized for the specific interests of your top media targets. 

Tie your pitches to the mega-trends in the industry … or to new trends or issues that are emerging. Help the media see why your information would be of interest to their readers, viewers or listeners.  

Then, be easy to deal with. 

Start your pitching early – even before Thanksgiving. Consider doing some pre-show, embargoed interviews to help reporters produce their stories before they leave for CES so they can simply hit a button to publish the story during CES. You’ll likely get more time with the reporter and better coverage this way, as well as the gratitude of a busy reporter.  

Be consistent in your media outreach right up to the show, make your scheduling convenient for them and get as many interview slots locked down before the show as possible. Make your executives and tech experts available – if not in-person then by video or phone call.  

Then, at the show itself, work (with your PR agency if you have one) the show floor hard to pick up additional interviews.  

One approach we’ve used successfully in snagging coverage with media such as USA Today, CNN and The New York Times over the years, consists of walking the halls near the media center during press days to catch reporters between events … and later, during actual exhibit hours, traversing the show floor as much as possible so you can bump into reporters face-to-face. (One day, at CES 2017, I walked a grid pattern on the show floor and covered a personal record of 13 miles on the show floor in my search for additional interviews.) 

Ultimately, doing media relations at CES can be the most challenging, the most competitive and the most exhausting experience of your PR career.  

But if you do it right, it can also be the most exhilarating, most rewarding and most impactful experience of your career. But to do that, you need to start now.

Interested in more CES 2025 data? Check out CTA’s CES 2025 recap release here and the CES 2025 Attendance Audit Summary here.

Jim Bianchi is Senior Mobility Consultant at Franco. Connect with him on LinkedIn.