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It was a most eclectic mix of mobility options at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show.
Carmakers, motorcycle companies, autonomous shuttle hopefuls, and a surprising number of auto industry suppliers came to CES this year. They took up almost half the Las Vegas Convention Center, including all of the gigantor new West Hall, about half of the cavernous North Hall, and most of the land outside the Central Hall. That’s a lot of floor space covered as CES came roaring back from COVID-induced industry coughing of recent years.
Big carmakers like BMW, Volkswagen, and the Stellantis conglomerate showed cool cars, some of them even new. But there were many smaller makes you’ve never heard of and may never hear of again. Have a look at the Trion Nemesis, above, a styling buck that will eventually have a 9-liter turbocharged V8 in the back. Or so says company founder, the charismatic engineer Richard Patterson, a graduate of General Motors, Fisker, and Tesla before founding Trion in 2012. He reminds us of a young John DeLorean. He said there would be a press intro of the Nemesis this summer, although numerous articles came out in 2014 following Trion’s claim the Nemesis would be out in 2016 with 2000 hp. CES is a cathedral of dreams. You just have to believe.
There were other really cool cars, electric motorcycles, bland autonomous people haulers, and at least one or two flying cars. Here’s the best, brightest, and some of the blandest from CES from the perspective of someone interested in cars, or transportation in general.
While Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares reiterated at CES that Peugeot will not be coming back to the US market, the platform under this ultra-cool concept will.
The Peugeot Inception shares the same architecture as the coming electric Dodge muscle cars, for instance. The so-called “STLA Large” platform looks like it’ll make for some fun cars, including the Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept we saw in these same halls during the SEMA show, and which was parked across the aisle from the Inception at CES.
Peugeot says the Inception has 680 hp, a 0-62 mph time of three seconds and a range of just under 500 miles. What more do you want? Plus, it runs on a highly efficient 800-volt system, powering two electric motors, one front and one back. Instead of a traditional steering wheel with a mechanical link to the front wheels, the Inception has an i-Cockpit with Hypersquare digital electric controls and a screen with circular cells in each of its four corners. These cells, Peugeot says, offer “the completely natural and universal grip of the steering control, fingertip driving comfort, and activation of the vehicle’s controls by pressing with the thumb, (using) similar movements to how we use our smartphones.” We were not allowed to sit in it and try it out, but Peugeot promises “the intuitive aspect creates a high level of safety.”
The center of the Hypersquare holds a tablet-type screen from which you control infotainment, climate, ADAS, and more.
The concept, and presumably some future Stellantis production cars, will incorporate the STLA SmartCockpit infotainment system powered by STLA Brain and, once we get autonomous driving in the real world, STLA AutoDrive.
The electric drivetrain is one of the reasons the Inception has such a low rooftop—its height is 52.8 inches, a half-foot lower than a current Dodge Charger. The proportions, likewise, are pleasingly elegant and promisingly sporty. Perhaps the electric future won’t be all toasters and transport pods.
Supplier Magna came out with this extraordinarily simple, efficient, and cheap electric axle about three years ago. The solid-beam rear incorporates a massive electric motor right where the differential usually sits to convert just about any existing frame-rail pickup truck to electric power quickly, easily, and at a lot less expense than designing an entirely new platform architecture. A smaller electric motor setup powers the independently sprung front end, giving you 4WD.
“EtelligentForce is a battery electric 4WD powertrain system for passenger trucks and light commercial vehicles that maintains their full capabilities with uncompromised payload and towing. Magna’s drop-in eBeam™ reduces OEM integration efforts and costs, while towing class-leading 14,500 pounds,” Magna said. “The eBeam electric rear axle is designed as a drop-in replacement for existing beam axles in LCVs, SUVs, and trucks, in classes 1 – 6.”
The demo truck on the stand had both front and rear electric drives and a big 83-kWh battery pack in between the frame rails (production batteries will be bigger). Have a gander at these stats: 8100-pound curb weight, 14,500-pound towing capacity, 8261 lb-ft of torque, and 0-60 mph in 4.1 seconds.
Magna is working on deals with OEMs, it says. Expect to see this very intelligent solution on the road in 2025.
While the Peugeot Inception above rides on the STLA Large passenger car platform, the promising Ram 1500 Revolution sits atop the STLA Frame architecture. That’s frame as in frame rails, the underpinnings of pickup trucks since time immemorial.
While Ford has been selling electric F-150s since last year, and GM is well on its way to launching electric Chevies and GMCs by next year, Stellantis’ Ram division is rolling in the right direction with what may be called the Ram Rev (according to the name on the hood). If the styling and proportions of the production truck are anything like this cool concept truck, look for Ram to lead in the looks department once all three full-size EV trucks are in the market.
Without giving any specifics this far ahead of launch, Ram does say its truck will “be the leader in a combination of areas customers care about most: range, towing, payload, and charge time.” It will accomplish that through a pair of electric drive modules mounted at the front and rear axles, giving the Ram 1500 Revolution all-wheel drive. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a budget-conscious single-module powertrain available when this Ram EV hits the streets. Among its party tricks are a rear-axle steering system that can tilt the rear wheels up to 15 degrees for better maneuverability in city situations, and a Shadow Mode that enables the truck to follow you at walking speeds like a faithful hound dog.
Inside is a two-screen display 28 inches across and—presumably—the same STLA SmartCockpit infotainment system powered by STLA Brain that Stellantis has promised for other vehicles in its stable. In an autonomous perk, Ram says this Revolution concept has a Level 3+ autonomous mode.
Look for a production Ram Revolution in 2024.
The Verge is perhaps the finest product ever to come out of Espoo, Finland, or possibly anywhere. Check out that rear wheel—no hub! So cool! The electric motor is part of the rear wheel—stator inside, rotor outside. It’s fed juice from the 20.2-kWh battery. It also offers regenerative braking, traction control, and four different drive modes. With a weight of 540 pounds, “It’s a chunky boy, but it’s nimble,” said Jarmo Paabs, a real, live, Finn we spoke with. “It’s fun to ride.”
It’s on sale now in Europe and will go on sale here by the end of the year. Starting price is—brace yerself, Helmi—$26,900. But you will be the coolest guy at Newcomb’s Ranch or the Rock Store, and you can’t put a price on that.
In the pantheon of dumb names, the Honda/Sony Afeela rivals the Ferrari FXXK, Suzuki/Diahatsu Scat, and the Mazda Titan Dump. The name is some corporate derivative of “feel,” maybe “I feel ya, man!” If the name leaves you confused, the exterior design outdoes it in completely forgettable jelly bean blandness.
The car represents a focus shift from “power and performance to software, networks, and user experiences,” said Sony Honda Mobility Inc. CEO Yasuhide Mizuno when introducing the Afeela transport pod at CES.
But the technology, OMG, the technology. The company fit 45 cameras and sensors within the concept, in addition to its 800 Tera Operation Per Second of maximum computing power for the electronic controller. The driving experience will be dictated by Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon Digital Chassis, a cloud-connected automotive platform that helps control the chassis dynamics and driver-assistance features.
With this computing power and array of sensors, SAE Level 2 driver assistance will be standard and useable in most situations, including urban and city driving. A limited Level 3 autonomous driving system is in the works. Other notable features include intuitive navigation through augmented reality and the creation of a model-based video game world with the help of Epic Games. The twisting of reality doesn’t stop there, however, as the company plans to create its own metaverse as well.
Prospective customers can pre-order the model in the first half of 2025, with delivery slated for spring of 2026.
If you were around in the 1970s, you might remember hydrofoils. They were the way of the future of marine transportation back then. Until they weren’t. Apparently, those early foilers were foiled by inefficiency, sort of like the Concorde, which was fast but cost too much, among other foils.
The old hydrofoil boats ran on fixed foils that sat underwater the whole time as marine creatures gnawed and grew on them. The Candela C-8 has computer-controlled retractable foils that rise out of the water when the boat’s docked so, no growth. And a non-hydrofoil boat uses something like 15 times more energy to move through the water, which would make it almost impossible to run on battery power alone for any length of time.
“We reduced energy consumption by 80% compared to normal boats. That means you can go far and fast on battery power for the first time in a boat,” said Candela’s Mikael Mahlberg.
Candela says its carbon-fiber C-8 has a range of 50 nautical miles at 22 knots and a top speed of 30 knots, powered by the Candela C-POD electric motor developed in-house by Candela’s 50-strong engineering team. With more than 150 units ordered to date, the C-8, measuring 27.9 feet (8.5 meters), is currently the best-selling electric premium boat, Candela crows. It is electrically powered by a narrow twin-screw propeller fed off a 44-kWh battery. It sleeps two adults and two children in its forward cabin. Price is $395,000. They will be giving test rides in the San Francisco Bay Area in February. Sign up here.
Is that dee-lightful or dee-lirious? Depends on your vision of the future.
BMW’s i Vision Dee is a step off the deep end of virtual driving. Dee stands for Digital Emotional Experience. It wants to be your co-driver and best friend. The Dee can display as much infotainment as you want onto a head-up display, projected onto the windshield. That can include just your speed and navigation commands, or it can envelop the windshield and the side windows to transport you to your own little Fantasy Island. The latter would, of course, require Level 4 or 5 autonomy, which ain’t coming anytime soon.
The Dee can also change its color into any combination of 32 shades of the spectrum, just as last year’s eINK could change from black to white and back again. Making the change requires three layers of special material and a flow of electricity. It all looked kind of complex when we saw it last month in the lab in Munich, making us wonder if all this could ever be made affordable enough to go into mass production. But BMW said some features of the Dee would be on the production version of the Neu Klasse EVs that start arriving in 2025. So wait and see. And pick your 32 favorite colors now.
This might be the ugliest vehicle of any kind ever built, up to and including every kid’s drawings on lined, hole-punched school paper from grades 2 and up. What was the USPS thinking? Whatever it was, they must be proud, since they parked it at CES.
Want to try and stop it based on artistic integrity or just about anything else? Too late. The government has ordered 50,000 of them (it was going to be 165,000) from Oshkosh Corporation, the same company that built the Hummer H1. Not all of them will be battery electric—some will be powered by a 3.5-liter gasoline V6.
The low snout-to-cabin ratio is the result of government specs demanding terrific forward visibility for the driver. Heck, the only thing that would provide greater forward visibility on this would be to strap the driver to a pontoon out front, a la Mad Max.
Don’t like the look? Get used to it. They’re supposed to have a service life of 20 years, by which time you may have passed away from the pain. Gack, my eyes!
This is what CES is all about—or should be all about, anyway. You can imagine someone wearing these on The Jetsons, and that’s what you should find at a CES product debut, if you ask me.
AtmosGear was founded four years ago in France, but the company’s principal idea for electric skates is 13 years old.
You wear the battery in a fanny pack, run wires down the inside of each pant leg to the electric motor in the middle wheel of each three-wheeled skate. Range is claimed to be 20 miles. Top speed is a claimed 20 mph. Price is $586, plus $21 shipping from Europe.
This electric car is the latest of VW’s many ID models, all sharing their own version of the MEB electric platform. The ID.7 will have the largest battery of any IDs yet, good for a range of 435 miles, but VW didn’t say exactly what size the battery would be.
“With the new ID.7, we are extending our electric model range into the upper segments. The sedan will offer top-class technology and quality,” said Thomas Schäfer, CEO of Volkswagen Passenger Cars. “The ID.7 is one of ten new electric models that we are planning to launch by 2026. Our goal? To deliver suitable products for our customers in every single segment.”
Even though only one ID model, the ID.4, is on sale here, the company has rolled out six of them for other markets. Looking forward to the ID Buzz microbus in 2024.
There were quite a few vertically oriented transport pods like this one on display at CES, but none of them did this: when the Italdesign Climb-E reaches your building, it attaches to an external elevator and whisks you and your Climb-E transport pod up to your floor. When it gets there, your pod slides horizontally to your condo/apartment, the door opens and you walk in, like a rock star.
Italdesign partnered with elevator maker Schindler Group to create this. Obviously, it would only work in a building that had been designed for it. But if you were a big-time high-rise condo-builder wouldn’t you want transport pods slithering up the sides of your high-rise? I know I would.
You may not be a farmer, but even the most high-falutin’ city slicker will gaze in wonder at the 120-foot-wide boom that took up most of the John Deere booth at CES, mounted as it was on a suitably huge John Deere 412R Self-Propelled Sprayer. That’s 120 feet across—this ain’t for no neighborhood herb garden. We’re talkin’ feedin’ the world, son. The boom itself is made of carbon fiber and rides 18 inches above the ground when in farming use. It has 36 cameras, all pointed straight down looking for weeds. When a camera spots a weed, the hoses that run the length of the boom give the weed a blast of herbicide—just enough to do the job—as the 412R rolls on at up to 12 mph.
“See & Spray Ultimate’s targeted spray technology can help farmers reduce their non-residual herbicide use by more than two-thirds and maintain a hit rate comparable to traditional spraying,” said John Deere’s Franklin Peitz. “For farmers, this decreased herbicide use can significantly lower herbicide costs, reduce tendering stops, and helps them cover more acres per day.”
How much more efficient is this? It records the precise volume of spray used and plots the differences on a computer-based map.
“As See & Spray Ultimate travels across the field, the generation 4 display allows a farmer to analyze savings by seeing how much ground was covered compared to how much was sprayed,” John Deere says. “After a pass is made, a map showing weed pressure within each field is available in John Deere Operations Center. This enables a farmer to compare the weed map to their yield map and make decisions about their weed-control program.”
It’s much more efficient than a hoe.
It may not be statistically proven, but I’m willing to bet that 99% of divorces come about as the result of trying to dock a boat. If you’ve ever hung around a dock you will see T-shirts that say, “I’m sorry for what I said while we were docking the boat.”
“The most stressful thing,” said Brunswick CEO Dave Foulkes. “I have my boat on Lake Michigan, in Chicago, and my dock is right next to a restaurant. Every time I dock my boat, I have like 15 people with a glass of Chardonnay, hoping things will go wrong.”
Well, Brunswick proposes the Future Helm—what boat docking could be five years in the future.
“A lot of boats are controlled by a joystick,” said Foulkes. “Now we have auto pilots and station keeping, but this is kind of a next generation. We’re developing sensor-based solutions similar to automotive ADAS or maybe Level 2-3 solutions, particularly focused around some of the most stressful elements of boating like docking.”
To show off that coming marriage-saving technology, Brunswick had a demo-helm and let me try it out. I was sitting on a beautiful Brunswick Sea Ray 370 with twin Mercury V12 outboards, at least in the simu-helm. I was offshore a bit and aimed at a harbor. So I gunned it and roared toward shore. But as soon as I got near the marina I cut the power. A display on my dashboard showed my all the slips in the marina and identified two that were available. I picked one by touching the screen and from thence onward the boat did all the docking, backing me into a slip with ease. Had there been Chardonnay-sipping landlubbers in a dockside restaurant, they would have cheered. For all the married skippers out there, too bad this stuff is still five years off.
This is what CES should be all about: future dream tech that may or may not ever actually be made but is the stuff of hope anyway. Remember the Moeller Sky Car? How many of us believed it when they said it’d be in every driveway in America, doing its part to eliminate traffic? I know I did. But this one is different. Really.
“Aska A5 is a real flying car that combines the convenience of an automobile with the safety, ease, and efficiency of VTOL and STOL flight,” the company says.
VTOL is Vertical Takeoff and Landing, STOL is Short Takeoff and Landing. In this case, since it’s electric, make that eVTOL and eSTOL. The Aska A5 can do both, and then fold those propeller booms forward and drive around on the streets. It has a range extender it describes as “lithium-ion batteries + engine.” It has a flight range up to 250 miles and a flight speed up to 150 mph.
Does the FAA know about these guys? “Aska is targeted for commercialization in 2026 subject to certification.”
Does the DOT know about these guys? “Our target is to obtain highway certification with a speed of 70 mph while in drive mode. The first deliveries may be limited to local roads.”
Is this ever going to happen? “We are on target for 2026 commercialization, subject to certification approvals.”
And the website says the craft you see here is “a functional prototype.” Well that’s good enough for me!
Davinci company literature says it was founded in 2013 in China to “explore research and development of robotic vehicles.” It says it spent the last seven years working with Tsinghua University in Beijing and launched the DC100 in July 2021. Its manufacturing plant opened last summer, whereafter company operators showed the bike at EICMA in November and now here it is at CES.
“Davinci Motor’s focus is to create an exceptional effortless joyful riding experience for all users, and the DC100 will make you achieve that,” the company said.
The DC100 spec sheet certainly looks promising: 135 hp, 0-60 mph in “3.x” seconds, top speed of 124 mph, 30 minutes for a full recharge, and 249 miles NEDC range (NEDC, which replaced the WLTP scale in Europe, has been described as “wildly optimistic,” so expect range to be maybe 2/3 of that 249 claimed mileage when seen in EPA terms). Curb weight is a robust 562 pounds, but electric motorcycle batteries are heavy, and this one has 17.7 kWh, more than a Mitsubishi iMiEV.
“DaVinci is an artist, but he’s also an engineer,” explained Davinci COO Qi Wang at CES. “We want to combine the engineer and artist together, so we choose this name. Art without engineering is just imagination. So we sought to combine everything together. Not only calculation, not only imagination, but a combination.”
Price will be $27,500 when it comes to the US.
“Hopefully we’re gonna pass the DOT sooner than expected,” Wang said. “And then try to bring them back here. Within this year.”
Unless you’ve ever seen one of these things up close, your brain won’t be ready for the sheer enormity of the Cat 777. Even the biggest brodozer at last year’s SEMA would tremble at the sight of one of these 100-ton behemoths. And the amazing thing about this beast is that it is operated entirely autonomously.
“These machines have operated in the most extreme environments without a driver on board for nearly a decade, with more than 560 trucks at 24 customer sites on three continents—all without a single lost time injury,” Caterpillar said.
The 777 has a payload of 101.1 tons (and you think your 1-ton dually is cool). The beast’s power comes from a 1025-hp V12 Cat C32B, good for a top speed of 40.9 mph.
There were staircases leading up to the cab and into the bed, all packed with eager man-boys wanting to play. In another part of the Cat exhibit, those same CES attendees were able to sit in the seat of a real excavator and remotely operate a backhoe a hundred miles away at Caterpillar’s R&D facility in Arizona. Hard to believe some people actually get paid to have this much fun.