1000 hp Batmobile & Giant Screens on Everything

This year’s top selling holiday presents issued a stark warning about our unconditional love for technology when one of the infamous hoverboards that have been plagued by problems since their release, caught fire and nearly burnt a family’s home to the ground in Australia despite the batteries being fully compliant.

Meanwhile, those who played it safe with buying a Sony PlayStation 4 were left red-faced when they discovered that the online network required for multiplayer online games was unavailable, and many were more annoyed at the lack of communication from Sony during the lengthy outage. However, despite these latest negative headlines, nothing was going to put a dampener on CES, the world’s largest tech consumer show being held right now in Las Vegas.

There has already been speculation about Google and Apple’s plans to disrupt the auto industry with a race to deliver the first completely driverless car for mainstream consumers. Here at CES though it was time for Faraday Future to reveal its prototype car that looked incredibly reminiscent of the Batmobile much to the delight of both car and tech fans.

As with any big tech unveiling, when you see an exciting contraption like this 1,000 horsepower quad-motor vehicle that also embeds your smartphone in the steering wheel to give it a sixth sense personalized to your preferences, you are left with the burning question of when and if the car will be released and how much it will cost. The FFZero1 has already been dubbed a ‘Tesla-killer'. It can exceed 200 mph (321 kph) and accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in less than three-seconds.

If you are already struggling for motivation to improve your fitness in 2016, would it make a difference if you could go for a run anywhere in the world? iFit has announced a treadmill fitted with a 60 inch (1.52m) curved OLED screen that will transport you to a location of your choice in the hope that it will resolve the significant motivation problem that comes with exercise. I currently personally have an elliptical machine in my home bearing a small touch screen with ifit technology in it and must admit that it is quite cool. For it to run on a large OLED screen has to make it better and perhaps more interesting of a work out.

Imagine people getting off their couches and informing their significant others that they were going for a run in London, Paris or Rome upstairs! Although I do wonder if the novelty would wear off, I however do not deny that the initial concept looks rather cool.

It seems that everywhere we look now, someone is staring at a screen, and that includes you reading this article, so maybe we shouldn't be too surprised that companies want to stick a screen on almost anything to give us that window into the other world.

Bizarrely enough, the ‘Family Hub Refrigerator’ from Samsung seems to be tempting crowds here at CES. It comes with and you guessed it - an enormous screen right on the front of it, but before we all start criticizing the notion of a large fridge-screen, let us admit that it is our habits that have created this screen culture madness that we see all over the place.

I have been attending CES for as far as I can remember, and I can tell you that there is an extensive list of gadgets that have wowed me and other audiences at previous CES shows that disappeared and never made it in the real world – ever. However, it is important to remember that the event does allow technology advances to bring new products to market based on interest and growth in certain consumer trends.

I have recently read reports that the tech industry has become a bit boring and that even the mobile revolution is struggling since users are no longer getting excited about the arrival of yet another phone, when all the phone brands are looking exactly like one another and missing the wow factor of when the first ever iPhone was launched.

In my opinion, the key to success for any new tech gadget other than its coolness and utility factor, will be a superior customer experience at a reasonable price that also removes any of our security or privacy concerns.

As for CES, in the last 24 hours, I have seen a car that resembles a Batmobile, some very cool smart home technology and virtual reality gear that is about to go mainstream. So any talk of tech becoming boring is speculative. Tech in 2016 is about to get very interesting. Fasten your seat belts.

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