The car business is staring down the barrel of the biggest changes in its 100-plus year history. Some version of the sci-fi future hitherto only possible via special effects is coming true – it's so close you can touch it, at least in beta form.
Where do you go to see the auto industry's brave new future, to see the cars of tomorrow, big ideas and new inventions? Motor City, home of the Big Three, where Henry Ford perfected assembly lines that gave cars to the masses; where General Motors' big blue sign sits like a halo high above the city; where Chrysler launched the minivan?
No, you don't go to Motor City to see the future of cars any more, you go to Sin City, to CES, held every January – not coincidentally, just a few days before the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
CES is stealing Detroit's thunder, as auto makers increasingly use it as a stage to unveil their latest products and concepts. Detroit used to be the first auto show of the season, but that's changing.
For most people, cars are about to turn into just another (expensive) gadget, and where better to drive that message home than at CES?
"Cars are becoming the most emotional device," said Ricky Hudi, Audi's executive vice-president of electronics development. "It's the biggest shift since the invention of the automobile, absolutely. From electric drive, to the end-to-end user experience, to the ability, if you want, to let the car drive autonomously: these three megatrends form a new experience."
This year at CES, you could control a car just by waving your hand, Minority Report style. You could pilot a drone from the dash of a Ford pickup; you could sit in an Audi with a glass cockpit; don a pair of virtual-reality goggles and ride along in a race car; witness the birth of an ambitious new car company called Faraday Future backed by a Chinese billionaire; see yourself in an all-electric Volkswagen microbus, and; test-drive cars that drive themselves, which – does that count as a test-drive?
Three CEOs from major auto makers gave speeches, and "more than 115 automotive tech companies and nine auto makers" debuted products at CES, taking up 200,000 square feet of exhibit space, according to show organizers. That last figure, by the way, is up by 25 per cent over last year. Car companies have been increasing their presence at CES since first exhibiting there in 2007.
The entire show used 2.2 million square feet, or more than 34 soccer fields, spread across several hotels and convention centres along the Las Vegas Strip.
"Connectivity" was the most overused buzzword at CES. Nobody issued a press release without it, but it's never defined (connected toilets!). The idea is that by connecting everything – car, phone, house, TV, e-mail – this stuff will get easier to use, in turn making your life easier, less complicated.
You won't have to learn how to program a destination into the nav, the car will know where you want to go and offer directions. You're out of milk? Your fridge tells your car, which tells you and suggests directions to a store on your way home. Your car sends detailed mapping data to the cloud as it scans the road, creating a massive database and hyper-detailed navigation information, which your car can in turn draw from – for an annual subscription fee.
Just before CES, a consortium of auto makers – Audi, BMW and Daimler – completed the purchase of Here, a navigation and mapping service formerly part of Nokia, which could one day do exactly that. It cost them $2.8-billion (U.S.). The consortium outbid Uber, Baidu and others.
Cars and technology are converging, and CES is becoming the meeting place.
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