CES 2023 highlights: More screens, greater augmented reality, and personalized user experiences
“Cars are no longer about getting from A to B; they’re an extension of your own living room. You might have a four-bedroom house, but actually, you now have a five-bedroom house — because the fifth bedroom is your car”.
That was Alex Hirschi’s (Supercar Blondie) take on the evolution of the car and the tech on display at CES in Las Vegas this month. The annual exhibition again illustrated the leading trends in the automotive industry, which we have summarized here.
Screenification
The increasing size and number of vehicle screens is a topic we have previously touched on and a trend that doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.
At CES, Peugeot unveiled its Inception electric car concept, which features the next-generation i-Cockpit and ‘Hypersquare’ control system. This is a steering wheel and an infotainment system combination with a tablet-like touchscreen at the center. Circular recesses in each corner allow users to control various aspects of the vehicles with their thumbs, meaning they don’t have to take their hands off the wheel.
Pickup truck manufacturer RAM showed that digital touchscreens aren’t just limited to luxury sedans. Its 1500 Revolution BEV Concept features virtually no buttons, with most functions having migrated to two main touchscreens. The smaller of these can even be detached and used as a standalone tablet outside of the truck.
But it wasn’t just vehicle manufacturers presenting their visions for future in-car entertainment and connectivity. Suppliers like Continental also revealed their own innovations. The German tire and tech company unveiled its Curved Ultrawide Display, spanning 1.20 meters in width and curving from one A-pillar to the other. As if by magic, the display becomes visible only when it is needed.
Metaverse and augmented reality functions
Despite this fresh new wave of touchscreen technology, BMW took an extremely minimalist approach with its i Vision DEE concept. The car doesn’t feature any touchscreens at all — instead, the main interface takes the form of a heads-up display across the entire windscreen. A ‘mixed reality slider’ in the dashboard allows the driver to determine the information they see on this display, from level 1 (basic driving and navigation data) up to level 4 (augmented reality). This interesting technology puts drivers in control. Rather than being bombarded with data, they can set their own preferences for the type and amount of information that’s most useful and interesting to them.
Holoride is also embracing virtual reality and the metaverse with its in-car entertainment system. A physical device is mounted to the vehicle’s windscreen and connects to passengers’ VR headsets via Bluetooth. The system’s software then taps into the vehicle’s movement and location data to create an interactive and immersive experience.
Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality aren’t limited to consumer-facing features. Incari has already implemented immersive tech as a development tool with extended reality functions available in version Incari Studio 2022.2.
Personalized, software-driven user experiences
Coming back to the quote at the top of this article, this bold new technology around screens and augmented reality shows how our vehicles are becoming more than just a means of transport. Driven by software, these new innovations are personalized to individual users to create new experiences.
To avoid digital technology like touchscreens and augmented reality becoming marketing gimmicks characterized by superlatives, they shouldn’t be treated as individual functions. Instead, it’s important to consider them in the context of the overall vehicle. Only in that way can they truly become a meaningful enrichment to the user experience.
As BMW CEO Oliver Zipse put it in his keynote speech at CES: ‘Digital leadership in the car is not about who has the biggest screen, the highest processing power, or who writes the most lines of code. The only thing that really counts is what the user feels and experiences.’
The agile-friendly workflow and modular architecture of Incari Studio support the complete UI/UX creation process. Focused on team collaboration, it unifies the work of designers, developers, and suppliers on one platform while providing improved tools for logic coding, 3D animation, technology integration, and a lot more. Subscribe to Incari Studio here.
