Autonomous car tech on display at CES 2017
Autonomous cars are taking a central role at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, reports Bloomberg. CLEPA members especially were very well represented and provided numerous demonstrations and explanations on their coming products and services.
More than 130 companies that provide some sort of automotive technology will be present at the show, making up one-fifth of total exhibitors.
These companies will boast their vehicles and products, demonstrating the practical capabilities of today’s autonomous cars and shift toward market viability.
Among the exhibitors at CES are Alphabet’s Waymo, Delphi, and Volvo. Automotive exhibitors run the gamut from add-on designers, to full-system suppliers, to traditional automakers. All of these companies, though, are showing off some piece of technology that’s helping to transform the car into a connected and autonomous platform. Bloomberg notes that these companies are all vying for a place within that platform, and that decisions on suppliers and technology will be made in the next year that will shape the automotive landscape in the early 2020s, when autonomous vehicles come to market en masse.
CES is another venue where autonomous driving companies will be looking to show that their technologies are ready for the roads. Waymo, Uber, and others already have fully autonomous cars participating in field trials, while thousands of Teslas boast semi-autonomous capabilities. Delphi and Audi are using CES as a platform to show off their joint efforts on the self-driving car front, offering test rides near the show that take riders over a rugged course that demonstrates the full capabilities of the vehicles’ autonomous systems. All such tests serve a dual purpose: They provide data for the developers’ engineers, and they serve as an opportunity for the company to generate news and publicity and attract potential customers.
The makers of autonomous cars are moving more from the former test aim to the latter, still generating useful data but now more and more serving to showcase the abilities of the autonomous platform. Self-driving cars are maturing, and their place at CES is one of the best indicators of the pivotal role they’ll play moving forward.
Source: Business Insider
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In: CLEPA News