In between fantastical distractions at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show like Faraday Future’s 1000-hp electric concept and car?drone integrations sat a very real auto-industry awakening to the massive show’s importance. Automakers have for years attended CES, one of the most-attended trade shows in the country, but 2016 marks the first year every attending automaker treated the event as a de facto auto show. General Motors CEO Mary Barra personally unveiled the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV; VW rolled out its highly anticipated electric microbus redux; and Kia announced a new sub-brand for is autonomous-driving features. More important than those headlines, automakers and suppliers trumpeted a chorus of future-tech themes, so after a week of being assaulted with autonomous driving! mobility! connectivity! and The Internet of Things!, we’ve distilled what the show really means for you and the cars you’ll buy in the coming years.
It doesn’t really matter whether automakers chose to go full buzzword at CES this year because they felt it made them fit in among the Silicon Valley set, or simply because inscrutable jargon sounds “techy.” Their bleating can all be boiled down to a simple goal: To inter-connect vehicles, smartphones, wearable devices, and even your home while also giving the car more autonomous capability. This, it’s said, will make life easier by removing the effort humans must put toward pretty much ...