Our automotive team participated in CES 2023, one of the most influential events in the world. Read from Piotr Romanowski’s blog which hot trends he spotted on site.
Every year in January, the biggest brands and innovators meet in a remarkable Las Vegas Convention Center for the Consumer Electronics Show. This year, over 100 000 visitors showed up to see the newest trends from various industries, including the automotive. There is a revolution in the industry as Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) want to be perceived not only as car producers but also as tech companies with increasing collaboration between the two industries.
In CES 2023 the automotive highlights focused on electrification, software/infotainment, new system-on-chip (SoC) components, maps, and cloud solutions. Here are a few takeaways from those trends.
Undoubtedly, software has become a key enabler for automotive innovation as software-defined vehicles are starting to redefine the whole industry. The trend is driven by customers' demands known from the smartphone experience – they want responsive touch screens, digital clusters, a variety of infotainment applications, and internet connectivity. Software is becoming the main factor that brings value to the drivers' and passengers’ car experience. The new features enabled by software updates are also seen as a new source of revenue for the industry.
Companies across the automotive value chain need to harness the opportunities of the ongoing revolution. This is one of the main reasons big OEMs (like BMW, Mercedes, and many others) are firmly committed to Software-Defined Vehicles.
This year, CES presented vehicles, and domain solutions were nothing short of a software-defined automotive reality – including connectivity, cloud-based solutions, and infotainment systems.
❝ The automotive software market is projected to more than double in size from $31 billion in 2019 to roughly $80 billion in 2030. McKinsey report
Playing around with new infotainment platforms is the easiest way to experience the automotive software revolution. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Companies want to differentiate between the in-car experience and the variety of features their platforms provide to drivers and passengers.
At this year’s CES, Afeela from Sony and Honda stood out with a side-to-side panoramic, enormous screen, and separate back seat passenger displays. Garmin also proudly presented the Unified Dashboard — the Android Automotive-based infotainment that will run simultaneously on a single SoC with safety-critical systems powered by BlackBerry QNX hypervisor technology. The demo presented the capabilities of AAOS delivering a multi-zone customized experience, including a personal user interface profile for each passenger, 5G connectivity, streaming services, and a cloud-based gaming.
Yet another significant automotive industry trend, is strongly connected to the software-defined reality. To deliver new software-defined car functionalities in a fast manner, enabling unique experiences and a new source of income for the manufacturers, a cloud-based environment is needed.
Cloud solution providers were very active during CES – there were announcements of collaboration from Microsoft, General Motors and Amazon Web Services to deploy brand-new vehicle services based on the MS Azure cloud solution. All favor simplifying software development and speeding up the deployment and updates process. Also, Qualcomm joined forces with Salesforce to develop a new connected automotive platform built with Snapdragon Digital Chassis and Salesforce Automotive Cloud to enhance connected services through driving data analysis.
Indeed not a new trend, but this year we could see a complete focus on electrification with not much tension on hybrid vehicles. We witnessed the debut of brand-new concept cars from BMW (mind-blowing Vision Dee vehicle with e-ink body color-changing technology, and the ID7 electric sedan from Volkswagen. Stellantis presented the futuristic Peugeot Inception model and stunning RAM 1500 Revolution EV truck concept. As a matter of fact, not only cars but a massive variety of different EVs were there, including boats, electric tractors, motorbikes, scooters, and bikes.
Alongside brand-new vehicles, various infrastructure solutions dedicated to electrification were shown, including modern charging stations including Mercedes-Benz’s high-speed charging network in the US to compete with Tesla's supercharging stations.
The race toward fully autonomous driving, as a holy grail of the industry, is in full swing. Compared to previous years, we couldn't spot self-driving car demos or self-driving Ubers on the streets of Las Vegas. However, the trend expanded with new use cases, including shared mobility solutions from companies like Holon and ZF Group believing that public transportation will heavily rely on people-mover electric vehicles soon.
Regarding the sensors, LiDAR (light detection and ranging) solution companies dominated CES. The reason is simple – LiDAR technology helps automakers with autonomous driving development. Luminar, a leading company in this field, showcased different cars equipped with its newest technology, including the long-awaited Volvo EX90.
Powerful computing platforms responsible for real-time sensor data processing must support autonomous driving solutions. Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Ride Flex SoC this year, supported by advanced computing capabilities and cloud-native architecture.
Talking about autonomous driving in practice – during CES, Mercedes-Benz announced that its car reached Level 3 autonomy in Nevada; another state approval process is ongoing in California. The German OEM thus became the very first automaker to launch a Level 3 automated driving platform in the US.
As automotive software platforms become increasingly complex, neither OEMs nor Tier-1 can deliver complete solutions for a modern, software-defined vehicle on their own. That's why we observed numerous partnerships between companies during CES 2023, as mentioned above.
We were delighted to see new solutions presented by our customers and partners at CES. Including Here Technologies innovations: Automated Driving Zone, a cloud-hosted software that allows manufacturers to decide when and how to activate automated driving functionalities as well as UniMap – automated mapping technology allowing digital maps to be rapidly created soon using AI.
In Tietoevry, we also strongly believe that one of the critical success factors is having a solid alliance within the industry. This year Tietoevry Create partnered with AUTOSAR and COVESA at the CES accompanying event - Networking & Reception Showcase, proving how various solutions from different organizations can complement each other. Tietoevry Create team extended the AUTOSAR PiCar demo, which represented a base Adaptive platform functionality, with a COVESA Vehicle Data Specification solution.
What an inspiring event, thank you CES, and see you all next year!
Read more about how we drive automotive software solutions forward