A look at CES through the DGTLmobility lense…
This year’s CES was all about moving from current interfaces and infrastructures to immersive concepts of the future. Virtual and augmented reality solutions as well as intimate artificial intelligence help create new levels of experiences. Radical transparency was a key theme as systems are becoming self-sustaining and sensors around our body, our cars and apartments are interconnected to facilitate multi-sensory storytelling, in other words a new living experience.
In their review of this year’s CES, Verge stated: “It was a quiet year for CES — the show wasn’t filled with any blockbuster product announcements, or marked by any explosive new trends. Technology has arrived at an awkward middle period: things like smartphones and tablets and laptops are mature, while new things like VR and self-driving cars are in their earliest stages.”
As a first-timer at CES, we can’t speak to past conferences — but a few stories clearly grasped our vision for the impact on mobility in the future:
#1 Mobility services focus on linking your home and car
In his German-style keynote Volkswagen Passenger Cars CEO Dr. Herbert Diess predicted the car to become the “most important device on the internet”. Alongside Volkswagen, BMW and Ford focused their stories around this year’s CES on the intersection of our home and car experience. Once your home is equipped with the latest cutting-edge technology, for instance from Volkswagen’s technology partner LG, you can start dreaming about some of these functionalities:
- Home appliances switch into an eco-friendly away mode once you leave in your car
- Security systems are activated for away mode
- Temperature control can adjust for your return home
- Your robot cleaner will know from your location and your calendar when which parts of the home should be cleaned
- Your music genre can automatically adjust based on what you listened to in your car
- And if you took the car for a longer trip but friends are in front of your house, you can open the door from the distance
Together with LG, Volkswagen envisions an ecosystem approach to linking IoT devices at home and in the cars.
In a beautifully designed concept, BMW showcased how through their app solution the i8 can be ordered and autonomously drives up to the driveway at home and how driving experience and living at home interact in the future including trip planning at home.
In the light of these two far-reaching concepts, Ford’s partnership with Amazon Echo is an approach that we could see in the near future: By communicating with Alexa, the AI behind the Amazon Echo, the user can control lights at home as well as start his car and check for status updates on the car.
To round up the immersive home and car experience, VW revived its van with the Budd-e concept. Check out how it drove across the Strip in Vegas:
#2 Investments in artificial intelligence are key for OEMs in interaction between cars and infrastructure
After Tesla gave some of their users the impression, that they have entered a somewhat truly autonomous age in October (they quickly found out that they haven’t quite yet), other car manufacturers are using CES to highlight the importance that artificial intelligence can play for them in years to come.
Toyota focused on artificial intelligence announcing its $1bn investment in that space in the next five years. The first few thousand dollars were spent on the mini car display of how the system learns and adapts over time, a nice car reference to the Deepmind Q Learning playing Atari Breakout video (if that doesn’t ring a bell, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih8EfvOzBOY)
Toyota’s concept car, Kokai, had a notable feature: It puts the driver in the middle of the car. While we haven’t seen this feature for a few years, it might be a necessary one in an uprising the debate of the role of AI in the streets of the future.
After leading the headlines at CES 2015 with the autonomous car driven from LA to Las Vegas, Mercedes focused on presenting their concept study which was shown at IAA in Frankfurt in September as well as applications built around the idea of platooning, the train-like grouping of cars or trucks along a highway.
#3 Mobility providers enters a new era of partnering
Partnerships do now combine skills in vehicle manufacturing of traditional OEMs with mobility service solutions. While some car manufacturers have been aiming to grow this organically with varying degrees of success (for instance Mercedes > Car2Go & Moovel, BMW > Drive now, Ford > GoDrive pilot in the UK, and VW > Quicar pilot in Germany), 2016 has started off with announcements of partnerships between Ford & Google as well as GM & Lyft with their recent $500m funding. After the German trios’ (Audi, BMW, Mercedes) acquisition of maps provider here for $3bn from Nokia last year, this marks the start of another wave of partnerships across different levels of mobility services.
#4 A new platform dimension in producing cars
One of the most awaited presentations was the one of Faraday Future which now — 18 months after its founding — presented its concept car and vision for the future. The US-based, Chinese-backed company aims to disrupt the market of electric cars with its 750 employees and an all-star leadership team including Richard Kim who lead BMW’s design for the i3. Their concept car FFZero01 is a 1,000hp sports car which FF likes to refer to as its car for concepts. The products to come will be built around a common variable platform architecture with similar front and rear sections as well as expandable battery strings along the center chassis of the vehicle. For their keynote check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s36AYPmsp_c
#5 Holograms are here — at least in Vegas
CES’ startup zoo Eureka Park at the Venetian featured Kino-mo, a London based company, developing holographic solutions for the future of advertising. Their holo displays are the most solid hologram technology we have seen so far. Overall, holograms did not play a big role at CES — maybe a trend to come for next year’s show. We are still a couple of years away from market adoption of this technology, but things are likely to pick up in advertising over the year to come. Once this technology becomes more accessible and developed, travel and mobility companies will be in a race to provide this technology to beam people into conference rooms or onto stages. This could be a fun keynote for CES 2020.
#6 Head-up displays 2.0
While Google Glass hasn’t quite found its way back out of Google’s research labs yet, BMW implemented a solution into their helmets which lets rider see speed (and speed limits, just for reference of couse), navigation, location of friends on their bikes, and receive notification on calls in a well-designed visual display. Here is a glance from the outside, the check it out you might want to give your local BMW dealer a bit more time till the end of the year.
It has been a CES full of interesting concepts for the mobility space but yet much work around building the right infrastructure to support the digital platforms that car manufacturers, mobility service providers and appliance manufacturers are envisioning for us beyond 98” 8K screens and smart ovens and fridges. Oh yes, and hoverboards of course…
///
