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Tech Trends and Insights From CES 2024
Software-defined vehicles, or SDVs, were all the rage. Everyone was talking about them: automakers, suppliers, analysts, media – everyone.
John McElroy | Jan 22, 2024
At a time when most auto shows have withered in grandeur and media relevance, CES has emerged as the most important auto show in the world. No, CES (formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show), is not an auto show. But the automotive sector at CES gets more support and coverage from automakers, suppliers, analysts and media than any other auto show outside of China.
There are so many press conferences, new-car reveals, tech presentations and supplier announcements that I compared it to drinking out of a fire hose. No, one of my colleagues corrected me, it’s like drinking from the outlet pipes at the Hoover Dam.
CES2024.jpgI spent a week in Las Vegas at CES and visited with 30 different companies. What follows are some of the notes I scribbled into my notebook. This is not a comprehensive overview of what was announced at CES; it’s just a quick overview of what I saw and heard. And it mostly ignores what the OEMs announced since they already received so much coverage. This is more about the trends and nuggets I learned from suppliers at the show.
Software-defined vehicles, or SDVs, were all the rage. Everyone was talking about them: automakers, suppliers, analysts, media – everyone. By my definition, SDV is all about defining and controlling every component and system in a car with software, so it can be improved over time with over-the-air updates (OTA). But writing all that software doesn’t come easily to traditional automakers and suppliers whose expertise lies in the mechanical world.
Traditional automakers are struggling with software because organizationally, they’re doing it all wrong, said Jan Becker, the CEO of Apex.ai. He says you need a small, highly efficient team of only eight to 20 exceptional software engineers (SWEs). And you’d better be ready to pay to get that rock-star talent: at least $1 million a year per engineer, because that’s the going rate for top talent in The Valley. Outsourcing software development to low-cost countries is not the answer, he says, adding that traditional OEMs focus too much on cost and need to focus more on value. Moreover, those SWEs need to operate outside the existing corporate organization. They need short development cycles. They need a single depository of all the data for all the vehicle lines an OEM has, i.e., no more “data lakes” strewn across the company. Also, they need to write in C++ or Rust, but definitely not in C.
ETAS, a subsidiary of Bosch, has software that allows OEMs and their tiers to develop software together. Called DEV OPS, it uploads everything to the cloud at the end of every day and evaluates it to eliminate bugs. This is the way the tech industry does it, ETAS says, developing software in slices. Traditional OEMs, on the other hand, tend to build the entire stack and start testing it. But that’s too slow. And by putting everything in the cloud, you look at a vehicle from a total systems standpoint, not just at individual components or systems.
Even headlamps are getting software-defined. ZKW says it can do “scene-based digital light,” which can reduce or increase the amount of light in specific areas. For example, it can specifically reduce the glaring light that reflects off-road signs and back into a driver’s eyes. Or, by using AR (augmented reality), it can spotlight things a driver may not notice, like pedestrians walking alongside a dark road. In fact, it’s so sophisticated that the headlamps could even project a movie onto a screen or a wall. Monetization suggestions, anyone?
Neural Propulsion Systems claims it has an SDV radar that reduces false positives 10x versus a hardware radar. Better yet, it says overall cost comes down 25%-35%. NPS claims it will announce an OEM contract any day now. It also has military applications that can single out a drone within a swarm of drones.
Developing software is so complicated that intermittent electronic issues can drive development engineers crazy. Intrepid Controls has a wireless development tool that connects to all the electronic components in a car. When an intermittent issue happens, it catches it and sends a text to an engineer with a link to a display that shows exactly where and what the problem was. In one case in Dubai, an intermittent problem was traced to an engineer smoking while testing a car and cracking a window open. That led to an issue with the HVAC system trying to maintain the proper temperature. Catching intermittent issues early is all about solving problems fast and developing new cars faster.
AI, artificial intelligence, was another red-hot topic at CES. Everywhere you went, it was AI this or AI that. AIMMO is a South Korean start-up that uses AI to dive into massive AV (autonomous vehicle) video databases and pull out only the video that’s needed. For example, do you need video of dogs walking along a road? Then just buy that video, not the whole database and then having to hunt around looking for the clips you want. The way AIMMO explains it is, “Why buy a whole smorgasbord of food when all you want is the spaghetti?” It’s partnering with BMW and a soon-to-be-announced U.S. OEM. (Sounds like General Motors or Tesla to me.) AIMMO claims a large OEM can save 30%-40% of the cost of data collection, curation, annotation and evaluation, and save up to 60% if they use AIMMO from the get-go.