The CES, a new global auto show? The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which opens Thursday (January 5th) in Las Vegas, Nevada, is the largest technology and electronics show in the world. It gives more and more space to car manufacturers. If electronics still occupies an important place, the electrification of cars appears to be the challenge of tomorrow.
CES, a new motor show
Created in 1967, the CES brings together hundreds of exhibitors every year to promote innovations in the field of Tech. After two dark years, marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2023 edition hopes to return to its pre-crisis levels. The approximately 100,000 participants expected by the organizers will be able to take advantage of various new technologies: artificial intelligence, connected devices, virtual reality…
For several years, the automobile has taken a considerable place within the CES. Las Vegas is benefiting from the decline of traditional auto shows: Detroit, Paris, Frankfurt and even Geneva. In October 2022, the Paris Motor Show thus experienced a timid recovery after a four-year hiatus, shunned by several major brands in the sector. The latter prefer to exhibit their models in events highlighting recent innovations, as is the case in Las Vegas.
For the 2023 edition of CES, an entire exhibition hall will be devoted to the automobile. There are several headliners in the sector who have come to present their new models: Stellantis (born from the merger of PSA and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in 2021), Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, etc. “You will almost feel like you are at a car show”, described to AFP Kevan Yalowitz, head of software and platforms at Accenture. Oliver Zipse, the boss of BMW, and Carlos Tavares, his counterpart of Stellantis, will take the floor to present the future advances of their companies.
Electronics are still popular
But Las Vegas remains Las Vegas. If the event is more and more attractive for car manufacturers, it remains above all focused on Tech. Reason for which the electronics occupies a place of choice in the new models which are presented.
The objective of car manufacturers for several years: the autonomous car. This is how at CES, driverless cars, driven in space by electronic sensors, caused a sensation. Holon, brand of the Austrian equipment manufacturer Benteler, unveils for example a vehicle without steering wheel or pedal, which can travel up to 60 km/h.
However, if electronics is necessarily put forward in Las Vegas, it is less and less central to the concerns of manufacturers. This expensive technology is not profitable enough in the short term and the global supply of electronic components takes time to adapt. Moreover, the occasional crashes of self-driving cars, although “totally exaggerated” according to Marco Kollmeier, the director of Holon, also come to tarnish the results of this new technology.
Bernard Jullien, lecturer in economics, also points to the turning point of the revelation in 2015 of the Volkswagen scandal, which had developed techniques to lie about its polluting emissions: “While the autonomous vehicle was presented as the future before the Volkswagen affair, we realize that this enthusiasm must be tempered”, he explains. Today, the craze around the driverless car is therefore down again.
Electricity, a new concern for manufacturers
“The automobile of the future cannot be developed as before, we are in a period of technological renewal”, adds Bernard Jullien. And now, the new horizon of car manufacturers has a name: electric. Driven by the need to rethink transport at a time of ecological crisis, the electrification of vehicles is developing at full speed. Lagging behind Europe and China, the United States has worked hard on the electric vehicle with the election of Joe Biden and then the adoption of the Inflation Reduction Act.
At the electronics fair in Las Vegas, electricity therefore appears unsurprisingly as the other major area of the future. “There is an optical illusion in Las Vegas, explains Bernard Jullien. In reality, electricity has taken precedence over electronics, it has become the priority of priorities. » This is for example the case for Stellantis, which recalls in a recent press release its objective of“achieve carbon neutrality by 2038”. In Las Vegas, the group presents several electrified vehicles, like the Jeep 4xe.
Stellantis has also just announced a strengthening of its collaboration with the American company Archer to build electric flying taxis. Another curiosity of the great Las Vegas fair: the first prototype car presented by Sony, a Japanese brand specializing in electronics and audiovisual, in collaboration with Honda. The vehicle, whose sales will begin at the end of 2025, will be ultra-connected and… electric.