CES 2023 is the year the car stops being a vehicle with software bolted on and becomes a computer that happens to have wheels. The headline is Sony and Honda’s new joint venture, which pulls the sheet off Afeela, a sleek electric sedan bristling with 45 cameras and sensors and clearly built around the screen and the chips first.
Neue Klasse and an electric Ram
BMW shows the i Vision Dee, a concept that previews its Neue Klasse design language and leans hard into voice and an augmented-reality windshield. Ram rolls out an electric pickup to stake its claim in the EV truck fight. The pattern across the floor is unmistakable: every serious automaker is now pitching the dashboard, the sensors, and the operating system as the actual product.
The trend for the year ahead
The software-defined car arrives for real, and the question shifts from horsepower to whose silicon and whose software runs the thing. Expect the chip companies and the carmakers to get a lot closer this year.
Afeela is the one I keep coming back to. Sony and Honda together is a serious pairing, and a car designed around sensors and screens from the start is a very different animal from a traditional automaker bolting on a touchscreen. This is the direction, like it or not.
Part of 20 Years of CES Through My Lens, my year-by-year diary of the show.