CES 2023: upward mobility 🚗
CES 2023: upward mobility 🚗
Rise in automotive agenda at CES mirrors an unmissable tech opportunity
TL;DR
CES 2023 was a masterpiece for tech enthusiasts. Particularly if you’re interested in opportunities intersecting software and hardware.
Automotive is a large and growing topic at CES. Some say it is now North America’s largest automotive tech event.
Further developments in sensors (both in and outside the vehicle), software and analytics (digital twins), are driving improvements to vehicles and their functionality.
Commercial vehicle tech for logistics and farming, both autonomous and electric, are things to watch.
Hi everyone!
The new year is upon us!
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but if there was one, it would be to keep fit and keep training. After all we off to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro in under 2 weeks’ time.
I’ll also be sharing why we decided to do this. I’ll be raising money for charity, for a cause I hope you’ll help support me with.
More on this next time.
As it turned out - the last time I was in the US was, surprise, surprise… also… Vegas…
But this time I wasn’t there for Calvin Harris or David Guetta or the Chainsmokers.
This time it was for CES 2023. And it was all electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and… combine harvesters!
So what better way to usher in the new year than to visit CES 2023 in Las Vegas (just a casual 60 hours of flying across 7 flights…).
And why was it worthy of me going all that way to look at cars and combine harvesters?
Well, Reilly Brennan from Trucks Venture Capital proclaimed in his newsletter that CES has become the actual 'North American International Auto Show'. I couldn’t agree more.
Also, automotive is expected to be one of the most tech-disrupted sectors for the next decade at least.
ASML the semiconductor company, forecast its automotive business to grow at a 16.3% 5-year CAGR to 20251. This is the biggest single growth segment for them.
Asia, and particularly China, presents an unmissable opportunity for growth in this sector.
Much of this is being driven by demand for stronger processing power, vehicle functionality, growth in sensors in the vehicle, and vehicle connectivity.
At CES I saw ample opportunities for European and Israeli mobility tech entrepreneurs to add value to potential customers, particularly in the US and Asia.
My action was mainly confined to the West Hall of the LVCC.
Autonomous vehicles
After all the hype around 2017/2018, AVs seem to be having a second wind.
And there seems to be a spiritual fit within the commercial vehicles segment.
After all, commercial vehicles see much more road time than passenger vehicles. Their routes are also much more known.
I spoke to players like Gatik – putting mid-range trucks on roads across America.
With Walmart, they have a key commercial deployment of note.
For the long-haul, we have the likes of Kodiak. They even managed a demo with chipmaker Ambarella’s AI perception system-on-a-chip in their self-driving truck.
But don’t think it’s simply restricted to large vehicles.
Ever heard of sidewalk delivery robots? They are becoming a big thing!
One interesting concept propping AV up? Teleoperation.
I managed to drive a sidewalk robot from Coco which was located all the way in Los Angeles. This was courtesy of DriveU.auto’s teleoperation technology which made sure we had a consistent and low latency video stream. This meant distance was no real object – I heard they had successfully demo’d it working across continents!
An Xbox controller to hand, it felt like I was playing a video game.
This has got to be the future of mobility!
Sensor extravaganza
Whichever way you see autonomous and connected vehicles developing, capturing and analysing data inside and outside the vehicle is key.
Whether lidar, camera, or radar, sensor companies were everywhere to be seen.
There was an overflow of companies in this segment. Many of them were even located in the North Hall (a hybrid of digital health and mobility)
Outside the vehicle:
4D radar is interesting; the fourth D is to do with determining the elevation of objects and their relative speed.
One shining example is Arbe, an Israeli 4D radar company now listed on Nasdaq.
Part of this was creating the right point cloud, so that the vehicle’s ADAS system didn’t misjudge the elevation of objects, and kick in to suddenly stop the car before reaching an underpass, for example.
Some other companies I saw included Cubtek from Taiwan, and Bitsensing from Korea. All of these had slightly different takes on 4D radar. They also had many use cases beyond automotive, including in IoT and wellness.
Also, if you want your sensors to work all year round, come snow, rain or fog, you’ll need Canatu’s carbon nanotube film heaters to prevent de-icing or de-fogging. They were doing a roaring trade at CES 2023.
Inside the vehicle, driver and passenger monitoring is becoming key. Traditionally you had dashcams, which Garmin had a strong offering. But at CES they have been showcasing much, much more than this. They’ve even been pairing their smartwatches with drivers to monitor their wellbeing.
Emotion3D and SAT are joining forces to offer both facial signs and vital signs monitoring of drivers. Sensor fusion at work here. Garmin is also in on it. Sleep prediction for drivers will be a big thing, and they have even announced a joint press release about it.
Going forward, doing this contact-free will be a big trend. Again, radars are looking resurgent here.
Agricultural and mining vehicles: magnificent beasts
There was Caterpillar. A huge, long queue just to get into their mammoth 100-tonne Cat 777 autonomous mining truck.
There was also John Deere showcasing their autonomous tractor.
Apparently there are only around 50 of these in the world. They also cost up to $400,000 a pop.
Now, in the highly cut-throat world of agriculture, unit economics have never been more important.
Deere’s ExactShot technology makes sure farmers get the most efficiency for the amount of water – seed – fertiliser they use. Apparently this can save up to 60% of fertiliser used.
Also, their See and Spray feature uses 36 cameras installed across their vehicles which can differentiate weeds from plants. This can reduce herbicide used by 66%.
This is an astonishing area I’d love to learn a lot more about.
Meat and potatoes: Software, Analytics and Digital Twins
The vehicle is rapidly becoming a computer on wheels.
As part of a continued effort to scale the enhancement of the vehicle’s AI brains, data labelling is now becoming more and more automated.
Thanks to companies like Understand.Ai this is becoming a reality.
I also walked past Keysight’s exhibit, a company offering a suite of digital twins solutions to accelerate AV, ADAS and EV battery development.
They had a mock-up vehicle, with a robot race driver dude at the wheel. Oh, and they were giving out Snickers bars to passers-by. True American style.
Another cool company was Foretellix.
Foretellix is creating accurate driver safety and AV simulation test cases. They believe the number of testing hours companies are putting in don’t necessarily correlate to better AI engines for AV.
Rather, simulating in a smart way, by planning the test based on their library of highway scenarios and tried and tested “edge cases”.
There is a lot of sense in that.
After many years of hype in the AV space, perhaps the key is to work smarter to accelerate AV adoption using the tools at our disposal. Pushing through endless road hours on test vehicles may not simply be the solution.
Electric Vehicles
I’m not going to dwell on the topic of EVs, it’s much covered.
The EV revolution is well on its way. From attending CES 2023, you wouldn’t get a sense that hydrogen was big on people’s agendas.
But here are some of the cool things I saw:
I checked out the Mercedes booth where they were exhibiting their VISION EQXX. Marketed as the most efficient Mercedes ever built, it boasts more than 1,200km of road time on a single battery charge. Way to satisfy range anxiety in style.
You could even test drive it next door. I wished I had the time to do so.
And it was pleasing to see new EV upstart Vinfast from Vietnam, making a statement at CES 2023. Their VF 6 and VF 7 models were on show, equipped with their VinAI intelligent system. They were looking to take the world by storm.
In the US, they have already opened 9 showrooms in California alone.
Creating a mobility ecosystem
With such a great opportunity for disruption in automotive, it’s not hard to understand why some non-traditional players now want to have a piece of the mobility pie. And it’s all about developing a symbiotic ecosystem.
Foxconn MiH was exemplary here.
At CES 2023 they brought together the likes of Lordstown Motors, Monarch Tractor, and INDI EV. Their ecosystem already boasts over 2,500 partners, suppliers, OEMs and the like.
After Foxconn started building iPhones for the world, the Foxconn MiH Consortium plans to build its first car. Called Project X, it should be ready later this year, and mass production is expected next year. Stay tuned.
I also went to a side event hosted by Ecomotion from Israel. They connect and support over 500 start-ups, all in the mobility space.
What a great community.
Be sure to check out their flagship event held in Israel during May each year.
So, what does this all mean?
My last auto event was at IAA Frankfurt Messe back in 2019. A traditional auto show.
There, I spotted Angela Merkel casually strolling through the crowds. The auto industry is a traditional affair in Germany, after all.
But even then, much was being said about how automotive companies and tech start-ups weren’t going to traditional auto shows as much (for example Toyota didn’t have a booth).
Well, the automotive world surely descended on CES 2023.
Yetserday’s petrol heads have given way to nimble computer scientists.
More and more, the industry is being known by its catch-all term. Mobility.
In an era where the hardware of a vehicle is but a vessel to contain all the software good stuff, expect all the rich functionality to be intangible.
In terms of tech disruption in the mobility space…
surely we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg 🧊
P.S. when people say bring a good pair of sneakers to CES, it’s good advice. 2.5 million square feet means there’s a lot of walking to do! 👟
And now for some rather irrelevant outtakes:
That crazy about Asians now are we? 🤔
…
Oh, and on the cab ride over, the cabbie told me, in Las Vegas, CES was happening at the same time as… an adult entertainment convention…
Only in ‘Murica, my friends!
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All views contained in this article are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organisation.
None of the above constitutes investment advice in any way.
ASML 2021 annual report (page 28)