Bosch Mobility announces hydrogen combustion engine for 2024, automated valet EV charging and more at CES

LAS VEGAS — A week after Bosch Mobility's official launch as an independent unit of its mega supplier parent, the group outlined business plans across various parts of the auto industry and announced plans for a new hydrogen combustion engine.

The giant automotive supplier also plans to unveil products focused on electric and autonomous vehicles and in-vehicle customer experience at CES 2024. One example is connectivity to an automated espresso machine that will provide a driver with a hot beverage when they arrive home.

Bosch announced last year that its mobility solutions group, the company's largest business unit, would reorganize to become Bosch Mobility to refine its role in an industry that will increasingly rely on software, computers and semiconductors in its vehicles. The reorganization, effective Jan. 1, gives Bosch's mobility business more autonomy within the German company's corporate structure. It's expected to be a lucrative unit for its parent. Bosch Mobility is targeting global sales equivalent to $88 billion by 2029.

Bosch is No. 1 on the Automotive News list of the top global auto suppliers, with worldwide sales to automakers of $50.46 billion in 2022.

"CES is going to be a very important jumping-off point for me and my team," Paul Thomas, president of Bosch Mobility Americas, told reporters ahead of the show.

The company will announce new products to improve the driver experience, help decarbonize heavy-duty transportation and solve bottlenecks to autonomous driving with electric vehicle charging. Here is a roundup of some of Bosch's CES announcements:

Bosch plans to launch its first hydrogen combustion engine this year. The company believes hydrogen is the key for decarbonizing heavy vehicles, Thomas said. Hydrogen combustion engines share many components with conventional diesel engines and require less technician retraining than electric powertrains and fuel cell vehicles. When powered by green hydrogen, the engine is almost carbon neutral, Bosch said.

"If you get into heavy, heavy vehicles that need to pull, you won't be able to do it just [with] electrification," Thomas said. "You have to have a powertrain that provides similar flexibility as a gasoline engine or diesel engine."

Bosch has also received its first hydrogen fuel cell stack orders from truck manufacturers in Europe, the U.S. and China.

Bosch's shift toward hydrogen follows a jump in hydrogen investment around the world. The U.S., for example, is investing $7 billion in the construction of regional clean hydrogen production hubs. Bosch may participate in the hubs, Mike Mansuetti, president of Bosch in North America, said in a statement.

"Our goal is to help drive forward the clean-energy economy in North America. This is an area where we can contribute our expertise in the production and provisioning of hydrogen," he said.

Bosch is testing the automated valet parking technology it announced at CES in 2023 and added an automated charging function. The technology, launched with Volkswagen subsidiary Cariad, is being tested at Cariad's staff parking garage in Ingolstadt, Germany.

The feature guides a driverless vehicle to a parking space with a charger, and a robot opens the charging port and automatically inserts the cable. It removes the cable once the battery is fully charged. Then the vehicle drives itself to a regular parking space, opening the charging spot for the next EV.

The product optimizes the charging process by charging and parking vehicles without human interaction and saves customers long wait times at chargers, Bosch said.

"Every step toward greater convenience in electromobility increases not only its attractiveness but also its acceptance," Tanja Rueckert, member of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH, said in a statement.

Bosch is debuting a chip that combines infotainment and driver assistance functions on one unit, which will lead to a faster reaction time and reduced energy uses. The supplier announced the chip in May.

A single chip, called a system on chip, processes multiple functions from infotainment and driver assistance simultaneously. That could include automated parking and lane detection with personalized navigation and voice assistance, Bosch said. The united chip will require less space and cabling in the vehicle.

In 2026, Bosch expects $3.3 billion in sales revenue for vehicle computers for infotainment and driver assistance. The company expects the overall market to reach $35 billion by 2030.

"Central vehicle computers are the heart of software-defined cars. In the future, they will control all the domains in modern vehicles and reduce the currently high number of individual control units," Markus Heyn, member of the board of management, said in a statement.

Bosch Mobility linked with Amazon Web Services to have a latte ready as soon as the driver arrives at their home. The companies partnered on a connected, fully automatic espresso machine that can be controlled from the car using a voice assistant. Bosch Mobility and Amazon Web Services also partnered on a point-of-interest assistant that uses the vehicle's interior camera to recognize which restaurant the driver is looking at based on eye movements. The voice assistant automatically tells the driver whether the restaurant is open and has a table available.

These examples show "how driver assistance can be repurposed in new ways," Thomas said.