Las Vegas city is surrounded by great views of the Nevadan desert, and is best known for its gambling, shows and nightclubs, but for one week every year in early January, everything revolves around the tens of thousands of visitors from all around the world, who come to witness the latest and greatest in technology. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is truly the mother of all technology exhibitions, and companies both large and small invest in a booth and parade their innovation and products.
This year, CES celebrated its 100th Anniversary. The walls of the long corridors showcased the many inventions which first appeared at this feted show. Walking along the halls is like reliving the advent of the many technologies that have appeared during our lifetimes and changed them irrevocably.
In recent years, automotive-related technologies have grown their presence greatly at CES. Colleagues and partners showcased impressive innovation in the West Hall of the LVCC Las Vegas Conference Center, and much of the North Hall too.
This year at CES, we were proud to be able to present at our booth, for the very first time, vehicles from our customers BMW and Volkswagen: The BMW i7 series, which can be pre-ordered already, and will be delivered to the first customers in Germany in March this year, took pride of place at our stand. The BMWi7 will be driving autonomously on the highways of Germany, the first car from BMW to have “Level 3” autonomous function, enabled by the LiDAR developed by Innoviz’s incredible team of engineers. The BMW cars use Innoviz’s first automotive-grade LiDAR, InnovizOne. The next BMW model to appear with our LiDAR will be the BMW i5 which will be released in China in a few months from now.
Alongside the BMW was Volkswagen’s ID. Buzz. This 7-seater Long-range Electric MPV has on its roof 3 units of InnovizTwo, our latest automotive-grade LiDAR, selected by the Volkswagen Group in 2022 for their cars. Innoviz is the Tier 1 provider of LiDAR for these vehicles, and is working closely with Cariad, the VW Group’s Software company, to integrate Innoviz’s LiDAR solutions into other vehicles in the VW Group.
At our booth we also showed live demos of our latest products, and passersby enjoyed posing for the LiDAR and getting 3D magnets of themselves. Visitors were also impressed by BMW’s videos and videos created by our many partners showing their use-cases with our LiDAR and their software.
Throughout the 4-day show, the Innoviz team met with our existing OEM customers and with many potential new customers, who are preparing to issue RFIs (Requests for Information) for LiDARs for their vehicles. Meetings were also held with leading robotaxi and shuttle companies, autonomous driving platform developers, mapping companies, distributors and industrial customers, analysts and media, as well as other partners from the automated and autonomous driving sector. Despite over 60 meetings set up in advance, the impromptu meetings with many potential customers and partners who passed by our booth and were impressed with what they saw were no less an achievement.
But CES isn’t all work. It would not have been the same without our traditional “SUSHI NIGHT”. It was extremely satisfying to have all 19 members of our team gather and celebrate a very successful show. See you next year!