CES 2019 – Auto Show for the Evolving CASE World!

I apologize for my tardiness as this is my first blog in a while – MBA, Consulting and a 2.5 year old left me with very little time. And one thing I have already learnt from my short stint at B-School- I will not abuse words like strategy and analysis anymore.

It’s time to head to Vegas for an insane, interesting and hectic week – also known as the Consumer Electronics Show. The auto show part of CES is getting bigger and for the first time in a few years we will witness vehicle debuts at the show including the new CLA from Mercedes and the extended range LEAF from Nissan. But what continues to pull analysts, industry execs and general public into the show is the technology showcase – whether you call it CASE or ACES, the focus will be on connected car, autonomous mobility, shared mobility and electrified powertrains. But one big difference is 2018 in many ways can be witnessed as the year that brought he autonomous driving world into reality and showed us clearly that Robotaxis will hit the market first in geo-fenced locations and that startups (e.g. May Mobility) are moving faster and practical than conventional auto companies and technology giants. Technology struggles, business model challenges in terms of selling this to customers and regulatory challenges all came together to bring this much hyped bubble into reality. I and my team from Frost & Sullivan are very much looking forward to meeting all of our key clients, really exciting showcases and pick up pointers for the evolution of this market.

Based on some initial reading and observations, we believe following are some of the key trends to watch out for this year at the show

Impact of Fully Autonomous Driving on Vehicle Interiors - With increasing supplier participation, CES is an important place for tier 1’s to showcase concepts on vehicle interiors taking into account the concept of domain controllers, high compute platforms, L4 and L5 autonomous driving.  Expect the likes of Faurecia, Harman, Visteon, Magneti Marelli, Continental, Bosch and Denso all to give us ideas into how future seat configurations will be, networked multi-display cockpits and use of biometrics and driver status monitoring to personalize and secure the driving experience.  OEMs like Audi are expecting the “star of the show” tag with their new immersive entertainment concept developed with Disney on display - focusing on how autonomous idle time can be monetized.

City Focused Services and Solutions - From further developments in the transportation mobility cloud unveiled by Ford at CES 2018 to cellular V2X demonstrations by Qualcomm with a number of OEMs to a city based fleet and data as a service offering by Continental, there are a number of interesting announcements we can expect pertaining to services that are offered to a city or engaged by the city as a customer. While it still remains a puzzle on whether cities can pay for any of these services, the barter system is improving and that is leading to interesting experiments by OEMs, suppliers and startups. Interestingly Continental is also showcasing a city fleet management service for EV shared mobility use cases and a host of interesting use cases in their data as a service platform and even concepts for intelligent street lamps. Sharing and ingesting data enabled use cases with the city is definitely a critical development – the monetization potential of this is the million dollar question.

Next Gen Infotainment and Connected Experience- thanks to CE Giants - Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all expected to drum up their presence at the show with a focus on the automotive side of their business as well. On display will be showcases from OEMs like BMW unveiling their intelligent personal assistant (developed with Microsoft) and next generation of a connected daily experience using these highly integrated in the cars. Expect to also see next generation force touch surfaces, capacitive touch and other innovations from a hardware and UX side as well.  Google is still keeping other suppliers and tech players guessing with its overall play for the automotive industry including Google Automotive Services and its other assets

Data, Monetization Avenues and Data Security – Expect big buzz around DATA!! - Security startup Trillium is unveiling a Blockchain based trusted data platform at the show – a solution that allows OEMs and future mobility providers to focus on the CASE world with tightened data security. Interestingly, the use of Blockchain here actually makes sense and is a clear differentiator in ensuring anonymization and added security.  Also expected are further unveiling of use cases for data sharing focused on cities, commerce in-car from players like Xevo and a host of others.

And as Expected Sensors and the World of AI - Another crucial area of showcase will be around autonomous sensors ranging from stereoscopic cameras to solid state LIDARs from a host of companies such as Foresight Automotive to Cepton to LeddarTech to Innoviz and the likes. And on the AI front, suppliers like ZF are expected to unveil the second generation of its ProAI solution. More vendors like NVIDIA and other Silicon vendors are expected to showcase further improvements in their solutions as well. Expect the likes of AWS to showcase their newest compute and simulation offerings for the autonomous world as well. 2019 might be the year when practical sensor choices at affordable prices emerge for the mass market to adopt along with adoptable ML and AI solutions

Interesting Showcases from Israel - This is one trend we are extremely proud of because of Frost & Sullivan’s close association with the startups and disruptions happening in Israel. Over 65 Israeli companies are going to demonstrate and exhibit at CES this year. We are looking forward to meeting a lot of them and get to know deeper the technologies and solutions on offer.

Frost & Sullivan will publish a series of articles and a detailed post-event wrap up report summarizing all the announcements and offerings. I and my team will be at the show from Jan 7 to 11 and drop me a line if you want to meet or want to discuss the articles or the report. Am pretty sure we will all clock a ton of walking miles this year and if nothing else, get fit!