For our Day 1 CES 2023 wrap-up we covered many of the mobility experiences that are most visible at the event: big displays, robotaxis, and personalization. Fundamentally, the vision for those experiences remains unchanged from the last few years – the industry is now broadly aligned on how the consumer experience needs to evolve.
At CES 2023 there has been a bigger emphasis on the underlying enablers for delivering those experiences. So, for our Day 2 wrap-up, we are looking beyond the flashy experiences, and focusing on these enablers:
SDV promises pivot to pragmatism The last two CES exhibitions were dominated by OEMs making big commitments to shift towards Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs). Teams within these OEMs are now discovering that transforming vehicle platforms isn’t easy. This year, CES has been flooded with partners looking to help OEMs simplify and accelerate their journey towards SDVs. Tier-1 suppliers like Aptiv, Continental and (interestingly) Garmin have been keen to show off their ambitious SDV visions and platforms. Our discussions, however, reveal a greater focus on pragmatic progress rather than big step changes. ETAS (a Bosch subsidiary) is emphasizing the importance of a ‘crawl/walk/run’ ramp-up towards SDVs, while AWS is showcasing practical ways in which car makers can use virtualized environments to create more flexibility within vehicle architectures.
Chipset suppliers accelerate their upward journey
Chipset shortages dominated the news cycle in 2021 and 2022, but at CES 2023 the headlines all point towards the growing role of chipset suppliers within the automotive space. Gone are the days in which commoditized chipsets sat at the bottom of a tall pyramid-like supply chain. So far at CES 2023, we’ve seen:
· Centralized computing: Qualcomm's new Ride Flex provides a single SoC that allows for Head Unit, instrument cluster and driver monitoring to be run in parallel, avoiding the need for multiple SoCs (and their significant overhead).
· Development platforms: Qualcomm announced its Q Ride Platform, which reduces the amount of ‘on road’ testing required by allowing the running of real world sensor footage in a simulated environment. NVIDIA also announced various new partners (including Foxconn) for their DRIVE platform, an AI-enabled AV development platform.
· Open Source: In 2021, ARM launched the Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge (SOAFEE), an effort to accelerate the abstraction of hardware and software. At CES 2023, ARM, Blackberry, AWS and various other members showcased platforms that support SOAFEE.
Boundary lines between map suppliers become clearer
Mapping was already heating up as a hot topic in the run-up to CES 2023, following the announcement by TomTom, AWS, Microsoft and Meta to launch the Overture Maps Foundation. This week it became clearer what Overture is aiming to deliver: the openness of OSM (Open Street Map) without the headache of decentralized governance. The question now is whether the fiercely competitive history between AWS, Microsoft and Meta can be set aside long enough to achieve their ultimate goal of breaking Google’s dominance in the mapping space.
While TomTom embraced its new-found love of open source, HERE has used CES 2023 to announce a huge transformation of its map platform. HERE Unimap is a ground-up re-design of their platform aimed at delivering greater agility and flexibility for creating, updating and using maps. OEMs can now select only the attributes that matter most to them and create truly custom maps, something they have been requesting for a long time (although, ironically, many may not yet be technically or commercially ready to leverage).
Last but (definitely) not least, Google announced its new HD Map offering, with Polestar being the first OEM to adopt it. While marketed as ‘HD Maps’, the breadth of map attributes isn’t yet clear, making it hard to compare to other HD Map offerings available. However, for Google this represents a natural extension, helping Google Automotive Service (GAS) clients avoid the headache of integrating separate map databases.
So that wraps up our Day 2 coverage. Tune in tomorrow for a look at many of the other automotive-related announcements that have dominated CES 2023!
Click below to check out our earlier CES Wrap-Ups from this week below!