The Future of Automotive Tech: Top Trends in 2023

Cars have come a long way in the past couple of decades. Once-cutting-edge technologies like backup cameras and blindside sensors are now standard, and the industry’s not done evolving yet. Several growing tech trends today promise to reshape road transportation as we know it.

If you drive anything made in the past few years, you’re basically riding around in a big computer on wheels. It should come as no surprise, then, that car tech is advancing just as quickly as the gadgets you keep in your home. Here’s a look at five of the biggest of these trends that will shape the market in 2023.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are easily the biggest automotive trend of recent years, and that will continue to be the case in 2023. Tesla may have kickstarted the modern EV wave, but it’s far from the only player today. At least a dozen new EVs could hit the market by the end of the year from familiar names like Chevy, GMC, Honda and Kia.

Pressure to go green is rising across industries, leading many automakers to pledge to be fully electric within the next decade or two. With battery technology getting cheaper and more efficient virtually every day, that goal is also getting closer and closer to reality.

You can expect almost every major car company to at least announce something electric within the coming years. Most of these will be battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), but hydrogen-powered fuel cell EVs (FCEVs) will slowly become more common, too.

Self-driving features are another car tech trend to keep an eye on. Making a safe, reliable, fully autonomous vehicle is remarkably complicated, so don’t expect to drive without ever touching the wheel quite yet. However, autonomous features like lane assist and automatic parking will become more common and functional this year.

Mercedes just became the first automaker to offer Level 3 autonomous driving in the U.S. That means these cars can do many basic driving functions — namely, parking, steering, braking, accelerating and navigation — all on their own. You’d still need to take over at higher speeds or more complex driving situations, but you can enjoy most of the journey hands-free.

This achievement is a major step forward for self-driving cars, so it’ll make quite a splash in the auto market. You can safely assume similar self-driving features will premier in vehicles from other automakers before long.

The internet of things (IoT) is also making its way into the automotive market. People bought more connected cars than non-connected ones for the first time last year, marking a turning point for car technology.

What constitutes a connected car varies between models. Some give you a built-in Wi-Fi network so you can stream music or use navigation services without eating up your mobile data. Others connect to a dedicated app to let you start the car, lock the doors, and more from your phone.

Having a dedicated app for your car can also make it easier to take care of its maintenance. IoT sensors in the vehicle can notify you on your phone when it’s time to replace or repair some parts. Considering some repairs can cost up to $7,000 in some cases, those early warnings can save you a lot of money.

Another trend you may recognize from your home electronics you’ll start to see in cars is AI. Artificial intelligence is what makes driverless cars possible, but that’s not the only way vehicles will use this technology in 2023.

More cars today are coming out with smart assistants as part of the vehicle. Several models from Fiat Chrysler have Amazon Alexa built-in, and some car companies, like Mercedes, have developed their own voice-activated smart assistants. With these AI tools, you can control things throughout your car like adjusting your music or opening garage doors while keeping your hands on the wheel.

AI is making its way into cars in less showy ways, too. Smart features can detect if you may be tired and alert you to focus on the road or pull over. Some automakers are using the technology to personalize vehicles to customers’ tastes.

Some car tech trends are more about how we use cars than the vehicles themselves. That’s the case with shared mobility, where you use services like ride-hailing and shared ownership instead of owning a car outright.

People book more than 40 million trips on the two biggest ride-hailing services every day. More than half of people would share a ride with someone else if it cut costs without adding much travel time. As these trends expand, you can expect apps like Uber and online services offering shared vehicle ownership models to grow.

Technologies like 5G networks and smart city infrastructure make these services and new ownership models more practical. As they become more common, shared mobility will take up a bigger part of the automotive market.

These five trends highlight how there are some big changes on the horizon for the auto industry. Car tech is advancing rapidly, so you can expect many significant changes in the coming year. While the specifics of these trends may still be a little uncertain, one thing is for sure — cars at the end of 2023 will be a far cry from those a decade ago.