CES2022 - The return of free parking

2021 saw the return of a few trade shows and conferences. Many of us found out the hard way that purely digital formats do not work, the lasting impression is not having visited a place and met real people but having watched a webinar with chat as the only means of interactivity. There not only the personal face-to-face interaction was missing, also a good part of real life trade show's value is serendipity, the possibility to discover to encounter to discuss to meet the unexpected the intriguing the glad to know or happy to see. There is little surprise in digital venues.

Maybe .. one of the trends of this years CES, the Meta-VR/AR interactive 3D worlds will do better than life webinars, this needs to be seen. Back in 2009 I was convinced that stereo-3D visualization with the new flat panel TV sets would become popular.. Did not happen in 2010, 2012, or 2014. We used the goggles for a couple of Bluerays and then even the kids switched back to the easier to digest 2D format.

One more trend .. at least in the previous years, and everybody related to the CES2020 as the "previous CES", there were autonomous cars .. already in 2020 this trend was growing old, now in 2022 it is clear that automated driving will happen first where the money is, meaning humans paid to drive will be replaced in trucks, delivery vans, taxis, farming, valet services and eventually parts of automobile racing. After the somewhat autonomous Roboracer series did not really catch the attention of a wider public, here in North America the Indycar Autonomous Challenge may be more appealing to the local racing fans. On January 7th I was out on the Las Vegas Speedway to watch these cars in action. See my report toward the end of this article.

Back to the CES2022, year two of the pandemic. Thanks to travel restrictions and measures to avoid health related risks, many of the bigger exhibitors pulled out in December leaving empty spaces which on the other hand gave better exposure for the exhibiting efforts of smaller companies who remained on course with their actual participation. While parts of the new West Hall were somewhat deserted, most halls of CES were busy at 60 to 70 percent occupancy.

The outside plaza and lot spaces remained mostly unclaimed, only BMW put up the usual show near the Monorail station. Other notable automotive participants were suppliers Valeo and Aptiv, in the West Hall only Stellantis came with a full quiver of cars, and new electric car companies from Vietnam and Turkey unveilled their contributions to The Future of Mobility, even if that means clogging our cities with more SUVs and crossovers:

There is still hope that traditional car ownership will remain the main way to assure individual mobility, but even at CES electric bicycles and other forms of mobility solutions came to the surface, awaiting their future use, impatiently.

Time will tell, and contrary to the autonomous/automated driving developments that mostly happen in North America, two-wheel mobility has a leading edge in Europe and parts of Asia. Or maybe we'll all use services based on the clever Citroen Skate which will bring the mobility solution of your choice to your doorsteps? Disclaimer: I once was a proud owner of two Citroen C8 minivans which were the most practical solution for my mobility needs when the kids were growing and gas was cheap. Oh, and I also owned a Jeep Cherokee, once . .and a nice Fiat Tempra Station Wagon but that was 30 years ago.

CES2022 wanted to be and was the marketplace of ideas and future trends for consumer electronics whether at home, at work or on the move. Nowhere this could better be seen than in the basement of the CES Venetian Expo where the Eureka Park hosted more than 800 startup companies from all over the World, especially Europe with many country sponsored booths from France, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK, also Asia with South Korea, and Japan. Many more countries sent their new best new talent, notably Taiwan, Ukraine and Israel.

The 2022 edition of CES was shortened to three days and since many of the bigger exhibitors did not show up I skipped the third day of walking the show floor and ventured out to the Las Vegas Speedway thanks to the Indycar Autonomous Challenge where identical cars built to Indycar standards by Dallara were racing in one-on-one heats at speeds of over 160 miles / 250 kilometers per hour.

After the qualifying time trials in the morning, the eight cars were put into one-on-one knock-out races where one car had to overtake the other with speed incremented for each such maneuver. Although this format was adapted to the American Speedway ovals, at the end of the competition two teams from Europe fought the final among themselves: TUM the Technische Universit?t München ran fine at speeds up to 250 km/h when e-novia Polymove, the italian team from Milano and Torino, overtook them one last time and became the winner of the grand prix: