The electric ID family gets a new flagship. In the summer, VW wants to crown the model series with the ID.7. that shared Volkswagen at the premiere of a near-series study in the run-up to the CES electronics and technology trade fair (January 5 to 8) in Las Vegas.
Even if the prototype still hides its final shape with brightly colored paintwork, the rather conventional sedan cut is already clearly visible. The four-door has a wheelbase of almost three meters and is almost five meters long, but should offer significantly more space inside than the similarly sized Passat. Because the body is also extremely streamlined, the ID.7, which is powered by up to 299 kW/400 hp, has a standard range of around 700 kilometers.
While many tech companies are shedding jobs and preparing for slower growth, CES invites the general public to marvel at the latest trends starting Thursday. The massive job cuts Amazon, Facebook, HP and others should be of secondary importance. It doesn’t want to spread bad news, but good news, and also in its 46th year be the scene of important technology premieres. In the past three years, however, the corona pandemic slowed down the trade fair. This year, 3100 exhibitors from 173 countries are vying for the attention of CES visitors. Key themes in Las Vegas include these trends that may dominate the high-tech year of 2023.
Artificial intelligence everywhere
At the end of 2022, applications with artificial intelligence experienced a spectacular breakthrough. For example, the AI research company OpenAI released the chatbot ChatGPT, which can provide seemingly intelligent answers to questions. Word quickly got around that the text generator can write essays in seconds that, at least at first glance, hardly differ from elaborately researched term papers. The software robot can also imitate Shakespeare or write program code.
Text-to-image generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion can already create impressive art on command. And they keep getting better with every update. The AI trend will continue with full force in 2023. It is foreseeable that the big AI specialists like Google, Microsoft and Meta Challengers like OpenAI are not given the field. But smaller providers and start-ups will also jump on the AI train.
Metaverse not just from Meta
On the one hand, the metaverse refers to a digital and interactive environment that can be entered with virtual reality glasses. In it, users can work, play, meet or shop as avatars. However, the metaverse also includes applications in which digital information is displayed in the real field of vision of the user. “For me, the Metaverse is the next generation of the Internet,” said Steve Koenig, who is responsible for market research at the trade fair organizer, the US industry association CTA.
At the Las Vegas show, it becomes clear that the Metaverse isn’t just an obsession of Mark Zuckerberg, who is so into the trend that he’s even renamed his Facebook company Meta. HTC is expected to offer a product that competes with Meta’s Quest VR glasses. And Sony announced before CES that the new virtual reality glasses Playstation VR2 should be launched this February. Among other things, four cameras are embedded in the headset, which record the movements of the controller and the players, including their viewing directions.
Something is also happening with metaverse applications: This is how the car manufacturers are asking Stellantis and Microsoft are introducing a showroom in the Metaverse at CES. And a company called OVR is coming up with a solution to convey scents in the metaverse. Big movement in the market could still happen in 2023 Apple bring. Some observers are certain that the iPhone group will launch its first headset this year. Apple CEO Tim Cook is enthusiastic about the “Augmented Reality” approach, in which digital data expands the analogue world. However, Apple traditionally does not let itself be looked at at the CES, but relies on its own events.
Autonomous driving
Autonomous cars will move much more safely through town and country than vehicles driven by people. Almost all experts agree on that. But when the self-driving cars will finally be ready for the market is still in the stars. Last year, the “off” for the highly traded start-up Argo AI shocked the industry: Volkswagen and ford stopped funding the Robocar project and wrote off $4.5 billion. But at the CES it becomes clear that the industry has not said goodbye to the vision of automated and autonomous cars. The companies are pursuing different technical approaches. During Tesla For a long time, it relied entirely on cameras to capture the environment, most other players rely on a mix of radar and laser sensors (lidar).
Tesla boss Elon Musk has announced a novelty in the automotive sector, the so-called 4D imaging radar. With this system, many small radar antennas are to be integrated in one system. This is said to achieve a much finer resolution similar to that of a much more expensive lidar system. The coming months will show whether Musk can keep his full-bodied promises.
Nvidia and Foxconn forge cooperation for autonomous driving
The US chip manufacturer Nvidia and the Taiwanese iPhone contract manufacturer Foxconn want to jointly develop electronic platforms for autonomous vehicles. Both sides announced a partnership on Tuesday. Foxconn wants to produce electronic control units (ECUs) for cars based on Nvidia’s Drive Orin chip, which was specially developed for data processing in networked and autonomous vehicles. The control units should be intended for the global automotive market.
Nvidia hopes that the cooperation will enable it to better serve the growing demand for chips for autonomous and networked vehicles. Foxconn plans to use Nvidia autonomous driving technology to build cars at its Ohio plant. The company that makes Apple’s iPhone makes vehicles for electric truck maker Lordstown and is also set to build the second model for electric car maker Fisker.
End of the chip crisis
In the Corona years, many chips were in short supply because, with increased demand for electronic products, important supply chains were interrupted and mistakes were made in procurement policy. According to the CTA manager Koenig, that could change this year. “The huge demand from the pandemic times is decreasing. And that’s good news, because chips are finally available again,” said Koenig. The excessively long lead times are slowly returning to normal, also because more production facilities are starting up operations. For the industry, however, this could also be a harbinger of another problem: “We will develop from a chip shortage to a possible oversupply.”