Day two of CES 2016 and another day of gadgets to blow your mind. Expanding my convention center experience, I made my way over to the Sands Expo, which is a whole “other” convention center to navigate. Walking in to the fitness, sports-tech wing with my old friend Steve Goldstein from Amplfi media, and seeing Fitbit, Vert, Wahoo, Invoxia, and many other connected fitness items, he said, “The smartphone has enabled all of this and helped to create this category. It’s the catalyst.”
Connectivity and mobility reign supreme as the keys to just about everything here at CES. In a conversation with Consumer Technology Association spokesperson Laura Hubbard, she told me, “The automotive companies now refer to themselves as mobility companies.”
We checked out the BMW display and I was awestruck by their concept car the BMW I Vision that provided a preview of the networked cockpit and user interface of the future. The I Vision features something called Air Touch, which has sensors recognizing hand movements along with function control through gesture and voice control. They have three drive modes: pure drive, assist, and auto mode (highly automated).
I spoke with Dr. Ronald Echart from BMW Munich about the I Vision and the fascinating features of the futuristic car and he calmly stated that “even though this car represents the future of connected autonomous driving first and foremost, because it’s BMW it’s still the ultimate driving machine.”
Even though the future is happening before our eyes, BMW still retains a clear positioning statement. Great lesson for radio.
By the way, no date set on the I Vision release.
