ODO 7999 miles

Sony

I've never been much of a gadget person so it shouldn't surprise anyone that I haven't followed the Consumer Electronics Show in years past. But this year, news of the happenings at CES trickled in and I was surprised that Monday's keynote speaker was from a car company. I guess it wasn't just any car company, but Dr. Z from Mercedes Benz. I was stuck scratching my head - since when did a car become a consumer electronic? Consumer electronics to me are my yellow Sony walkman cassette player that I got as a gift when I was 12 or the laptop I'm writing this blog on. It never crossed my mind that my car would be in the same category as my walkman, but the times, they are a changin'. So much so that CNET called it "the year of the car at CES 2015" and Business Insider declared "CES 2015 is all about the car of the future."

So here are my highlights {even though I wasn't there in person}. Or rather highlight: autonomous vehicles. Audi sent a self-driving car from 550 miles from San Francisco to Las Vegas. BMW has a watch with an app that will instruct your EV to come pick you up (video). Volkswagen will park your car for you, and used the e-Golf as the base vehicle to demonstrate the technology. 

In EV news, there may be 3 minute charging in the future, if this Israeli start-up is successful. And a electric scooter called the Gogoro Smartscooter with battery swapping infrastructure (well, I know how that worked out for Project Better Place). ChargePoint launched a sleek EV charger, ChargePoint Home, that links to Nest and has an app for additional controls. Ah, the marriage of EV and IoT has come at last.

Now, I'm looking forward to next year's CES, if only to understand what my walkman and EV have in common. For now, I think they are both just really cool.