The Best Car Tech of CES 2019
LAS VEGAS — CES 2019 was knee deep in the technology building blocks that will enable the self-driving cars and electric vehicles of the next decade. With all the bubble cars and cubes-on-wheels that have no steering wheels, just big comfy facing seats, the containers for the 2030-ish future has seemingly been figured out. All that remains is making Level 3, 4 and then 5 of autonomy actually work. ers used CES for multiple purposes: meetings with component suppliers, public showings of new technologies, and just plain showing off cars that the 150,000-plus attendees might want to buy. Here’s a look at some of the best automotive technologies, and cars, of CES 2019.
The Mercedes-Benz Vision Urbanetic (yes, it's a word now) Concept is an autonomous electric vehicle, actually a slice on the bottom with batteries and motors, and either the bubble compartment shown here for 12 passengers or a cargo module with 350 cubic feet of space. The modules interchange in minutes, so it could be a driverless Lyft by day, and a delivery van after the bars close and the last drunks are ferried home.
The Bose Quiet Comfort (yes, same name as the headphones) Ride Noise Control system takes cabin active noise cancellation to the next level. Five in-car microphones listen for road and suspension noise, then play back an opposite, canceling signal. It prioritizes frequencies below 300 Hz, where road noise lives. In a test drive, QC Road Noise Cancellation cut the loudness of road noise by about half, roughly equal to Bose's 10 dB claim.
Tier 1 (that is, big) component supplier Valeo will provide personalized climate control for each passenger in an EV to save battery drain. It scans occupant faces for gender (yes, women get colder) and current body temp. Door radiant heat panels provide targeted warmth along with seat heaters and (for cooling) fans. Cockpit illumination is blue or red to make the occupant feel cooler or warmer.
Nissan joined the 200-mile club with the Nissan Leaf Plus, which raises the range from 151 to 226 miles, using a 62-kWh battery, up from 40 kWh. It's on sale this spring, probably $5,000 more than the current $31,00 base. Nissan also showed the swoopy IMx Kuro crossover concept EV. It's all part of Nissan's plan to sell 1 million EVs by 2022.
Future Nissans will see around hidden corners or past a big truck in front with "I2V," or invisible to visible. Translation: Driver vision onboard sensors plus V2X (vehicle to everything) info on nearby cars, pedestrians, cyclists, and hazards extend the driver's grasp of the road ahead. Nissan uses what it calls omni-sensing technology to create a virtual 360-degree map of what's around the driver.
The Harman Ignite Automotive Cloud platform is a hub to manage all the geeky electronics inside the car: diagnostics, automated driving, over the air updates, and even in-car buying. It also provides internet of things (IoT) connectivity to home and car security, vacation home monitoring through the SmartThings protocol from Samsung, which owns Harman. It prefers 5G telematics and has a conformal (non-protruding) antenna.
Nvidia's Drive AutoPilot is drop-in Level 2 autonomous driving for automakers who want a polished solution ready to go now, meaning for 2020 production vehicles due later this year. Level 2 eases the load on the driver: self-steering, automatic acceleration/braking, lane changing. With full autonomy years off, this is a solid intermediate step. Its Drive AGX Xavier SoC does 30 trillion operations per second and uses 30 watts.
2016 startup Byton showcased a swoopy-but-not-weird crossover, the midsize M-Byte, and a sedan, the K-Byte. The crossover comes first, in 2020, and it starts at $45,000, a spokesman says, with 70 or 90 kWh batteries, and Level 3 semi-automation. The sedan follows. Production is in Nanjing, China. Byton is still deciding on direct sales (the peoples' choice) or a traditional dealer network.
Visteon supplies just about anything for the cockpit or autonomy. A concept head-up display — call it the HUD on steroids — calculates the driver's sight lines and overlays arrows on the turn (photo). Similarly, red or green lines indicate a car in or drifting out of the lane, and vertical lines atop lane markings indicate lane keep assist is pulling the car back from drifting.
BMW let attendees try out its full-size X7 SUV on a handling course, including up and down a steep incline. The X7 competes with the Mercedes-Benz GLS and Land Rover Range Rover for the crown of best big luxury SUV that still has pretensions about handling. It's 203 inches long, starts at $75,000 (inline-six) and $94,000 (V8). It's on sale later this year.
If there’s any doubt CES is not one of the western hemisphere’s most important auto shows, the 2019 convention that used to be called the Consumer Electronics Show made it clear: CES rocks with cars. Also, drones, home health, and personal fitness devices and apps, as well as TVs, video gear, and vibrating even massaging lounge chairs. The presence of cars was further amplified because the entire central parking area, the one along Paradise Road in front of the 3.2-million-square-foot Las Vegas Convention Center, was virtually all automotive suppliers plus the monster BMW pavilion and BMW test track area, plus a massive Hey Google pavilion. The Google and Amazon Alexa talk-to-me interfaces were in a seeming CES death match — certainly a spending match — to curry favor with attendees.
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