They said CES2021 was going to be lame when it came to cars and car tech, they were wrong, here's why.
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True we didn't get something like Faraday Future FF0 like we got at CES back in 2016, but if I want vapor I can boil water.
Nothing is more real than what Caterpillar showed a 285 ton mining dump truck driving itself.
It's part of a drumbeat of autonomy moving fastest at turns out in professional, commercial and fleet vehicles.
As opposed to something we're gonna to try and sell you.
But I'm sorry nothing that big should make up its mind about anything.
Now from dump trucks to tractors was interesting.
JOHN DEERE showed how they'll be using VR to transport buyers or other interested parties into the cab of their large farm machinery.
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Without said person having to make their way to a large farm, it occurred to me this might also be a very interesting moment for companies like Nissan, which just before CES announced Nissan at home, a major factory sponsored effort to move car sales on to the web.
Finally, at CES this year, it appears the car biz is getting serious About dash cams gentex the dominant maker of factory rearview mirrors rolled out one with slick built in dash cam functionality.
Front rear and interior views can all be rolled onto its built in DVR goodbye nasty suction cups and little wires that you have to string along around your windshield trim.
It's about time carmakers.
Adopt this, but overall GM pretty much own CES on the car front.
A couple of days before the show they rolled out a new logo for the first time in ages.
It looks like an electric plug.
And they got Malcolm Gladwell, the tipping point guy to stand on one of their electric chasse ease and proclaim that now Everyone's in on electric,>> You can resist it, be left behind or embrace it and move forward.
Then GM proceeded to put its money where its mouth is.
Although a lot of it was shrouded in kind of sneaky preview shadows.
They teach an electric Chevy pickup, so Ford won't be the only one pulling freight trains around.
We got three sneaky views of the new bolt EUV, electric utility vehicle.
It takes the best selling EUV that doesn't have a Serbian name and makes it a compact crossover, the body style most people want.
Then Cadillac talked about a new hand-built model.
It's gonna be called the celestiq.
They like spelling things with an IQ lately.
It'll be coming out along with the lyric electric utility vehicle.
And that features what is rapidly becoming the thing of the twenties full with glass dash panels that are mostly display.
Mercedes MBU X design is also one of these Is coming soon to the EQS electric S Class.
The Cadillac Halo is a concept of an autonomous pod vehicle but about the farthest thing you would have ever associated with the Cadillac name until CES.
Then there were a couple of new Buick electric utility vehicles kind of hidden back in one of those shadowy coming soon photos behind GM's design head Michael Simcoe.
Looks to us like there's almost a little bit of Corvette DNA in the face.
And then off to the right of that same photo is another yet to be detailed car that's so deep in shadows.
We're not quite sure what to make of it.
Then GM took us a whole nother direction with a new venture called bright drop.
It's going to make a couple of things for the freight handling business one is an electric pallet To move 200 pounds of stuff around warehouses without you having to break your back doing it yourself if you work there.
They'll also bring out an electric delivery truck with the first customer being FedEx later this year.>> Between that and the Amazon rivian deal for 10,000 Electric delivery trucks.
I'm starting to get pre nostalgic for the roar of those big brown ups trucks.
Roll all of this up with the electric Hummer I told you about shortly before CES and you see that GM is definitely electro obsessed.
But then came the kicker, no tires, no wheels, but it's got four rotors.
GM is first flying well not really a car, a passenger drone.
Are accurately called an electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle and EVTAL.
A Cadillac branded aircraft that they think can stretch their coming altium battery technology.
So far, it'll eventually make Tesla the TiVo of EVs.
I'm still real skeptical though about flying transport that isn't commercial airlines or the occasional executive helicopter.
I'm just not buying it.
Not to be outdone fiat-chrysler kind of quietly announced that they're working with archer Aviation to do an EV tall as well.
Is everyone doing one of these I'll leave you with one last thought the thing that I thought was perhaps the most under sunk our Tech announcement of CES was Panasonic saying they're working with a company called and visits which has a laser holography company in the UK.
The two of them are going to work on a augmented reality engine to use the windshield as an AR display space of relatively large size and really start to label things out there in your drivers view.
I think this is a really overdue trend that's going to revolutionize the information display.
Driving in context, not the only company doing it Mercedes recently announced how they are also on the precipice of rolling out large scale AR HUD technology in their cars.
I get particularly excited about Panasonic though because they're a heavy hitter in the cabin tech business and providing it to carmakers.
Bottom line CES 2021 was for me a hit when it comes to high tech cars and modern driving.
