More Cool Stuff from CES

You may know that Hyundai also makes ships. Not boats, ships. Those huge things that cross oceans packed with containers full of cheap plastic kay-wrap that you'll pay for at Target then throw away in three months. But Hyundai isn't content to just keep making the same kinds of ships. It is progressing to more eco-friendly craft that will include hybrids, H2-fueled, and sail-assisted.

"Eco-friendly transport of sustainable energy, electrification of our vessels, solutions for unmanned shipping," Hyundai said of its goals. "HD Hyundai has 50-year(s of) leadership in (the) global shipbuilding business. (Our goal is) safer and greener ships."

The mockup you see here is about 30 feet long and had six sails—more like vertical wings—that could be raised and lowered as needed. The sails would help push along the ship to save energy and reduce emissions. That will help Hyundai's goal of being carbon net-zero by 2050.

But it's not just sails.

"We're leading the decarbonization of our vessels with a wide range of low-carbon or zero-carbon ships to carry sustainable energy sustainably," Hyundai said. That includes liquified hydrogen-fueled or LNG-fueled internal-combustion engines and hybrid-electric drivetrains in ships. There are even plans for solid-oxide fuel cells with hydrogen to power ships.

The sails, or wind-assisted propulsion system, consists of both a pole-like "rotor sail" and the windsail you see here, the latter good for a 20% to 30% improvement in fuel efficiency. Hyundai is also developing an LNG carrier with an aerodynamic shape in the front of the ship that can reduce wind resistance by almost 30%.

Bugatti's prices start at somewhere around $1.7 million and go up to $18.7 million for the Voiture Noire, but that's for the cars. You can get into (or onto) a Bugatti scooter for around $1200.

Yes, a Bugatti scooter. A year ago Bugatti joined forces with a company called ByTech to make one of those Razor scooter-looking things badged as a Bugatti. The brothers Bugatti are rolling in their respective graves. At CES this year Bugatti debuted an improvement to that—the "Premium Electric Scooter."

It gets larger-diameter wheels—10 inches instead of nine—and a larger deck area. In fact, the whole thing is a little larger. The new wheels are wrapped in pneumatic tires with "an advanced built-in glue repair mechanism that self-repairs punctures."

Its 1000-watt motor is mated to a 36v/15.6Ah battery good for a claimed 35 miles of range. The charger for this is shaped like the letters "EB." A puddle light shines another "EB" into the murkiness. Top speed of the independently sprung scooter is 22 mph.

Should you buy one now? Consider that if you'd bought a Type 57 Atlantique at the right time, your investment would be worth thousands more now. If the value doesn't go up, at the very least you will have the coolest scooter in the skate park.

Tucked away at the back of the Ram Revolution electric pickup concept was a little Roomba-like battery that automatically popped itself out from between the Ram's frame rails, scooted across the garage floor, and plugged itself in to a charger.

"As part of the Ram brand's focus on providing consumers a growing and vast array of leading-edge advanced technology, Ram is showcasing a new inductive robot charger—or Ram Charger—at CES 2023, that will make home charging as easy as possible," Ram said.

"It detects the vehicle's presence and its charging needs, and automatically moves into position and aligns itself under the vehicle. Smart-charge capability will allow charging during off-peak time, providing more convenience and peace-of-mind for our customers."

It was barely acknowledged among all the other Stellantis news at CES, but it was really cool. Let"s hope Ram makes it available as a cool option for tech nerds.

Brunswick is the parent company of boat brands like Boston Whaler, Sea Ray, and Mercury. Just like every other transportation-related company in the world, it is making the transition to electric power. In addition to a line of electric outboard motors, Brunswick chose CES to reveal its new Veer line of boats, all made with electric propulsion in mind.

The electric motors are an extension of the Mercury brand and will be called Avator electric outboards. Right now, the outboards are meant for smaller boats like the 13-foot, two-person Veer at the Brunswick CES stand, positioned across the Brunswick space from a fabulous, million-dollar Sea Ray 370 that itself was powered by a monster pair of gasoline-fueled Mercury V12 outboards.

The Veer line of boats will be available this spring starting at just under $12,000. The Avator motors on the stand at CES were a 7.5 E (the equivalent of a one-hp output), the three-hp 20 E, and the biggest electric outboard on the stand, the 35 E, which equals about five hp. "They (the outboard motors) will gradually get more and more powerful as the technology evolves," explained Brunswick CEO David Foulkes, who himself owns a Boston Whaler.

This was perhaps the flimsiest demo-craft we've seen at CES or anywhere. Wavy aluminum panels were welded onto what appeared to be a rickety boat frame that nestled batteries in its hold to power electric motors to make the boat go. But it made economic sense. This was the R&D boat, made for engineers to experiment on.

"I can make it sexy for CES but it costs me $2 million, then what am I going to do with it? Park it in the lobby?" asked CEO John Vo. "So we're putting the money into R&D."

The finished 30-foot R30 will get an 800-hp dual-motor powertrain good for 45 mph, Blue Innovations says. It's powered by a 221-kWh battery weighing 2000 pounds. Normal run time is expected to be eight hours but that will be augmented by a 2.7-kW solar array on the roof of the boat. Purchase price is listed at $300,000. Look for deliveries in the second quarter of 2024. Production boats will look a lot better, they tell us. Looking forward to it.

The goal of Alexa is simple: "It's always been our mission to enrich people's lives… into a seamless journey that proactively adapts to your routines," says a soothing robot voice during a 90-second demo at the Alexa stand at CES, a space shared with a lovely Lucid Air, yet another car equipped with Alexa. The electronic AI helper is in just about everything on wheels, so if you're not familiar with it, you will be soon, Alexa promises.

"We're in almost every brand of vehicle available," said Arianne Walker, "chief evangelist" for Amazon Smart.

It's all aimed at helping people in their daily lives. For example: "Among Alexa's helpful abilities, we want to help customers reduce range anxiety with their electric vehicles, so customers can actually use their voice to ask Alexa to help them find and navigate to charging stations, in fact, over 150,000 public charging stations," said Walker. "The announcement that we made with EVGo was specifically for a full end-to-end experience being able to use your voice all the way through to the payment portion of the charge. And that's launching later this year."

More Alexa to come to a car near you. Maybe even the car in your driveway.

The Indy Autonomous Challenge continues to get faster and raced again at Las Vegas Motor Speedway oval in conjunction with CES. The series is comprised of college teams from around the world each tuning their own Dallara AV-21 autonomous open-wheeled race cars. The cars look very much like Indy Cars except that there is a big computer brain where a driver usually sits.

"The IAC Dallara AV-21 is the most technologically advanced, fastest autonomous racecar ever assembled with a bullet-proof package of equipment, including a host of lidar, radar, and optical cameras sensors, converging with screamingly quick on-board rugged-edge computing and communications, coupled with cutting-edge artificial intelligence algorithms," the IAC website says.

This was the third year teams raced at LVMS while CES was going on just down The Strip, with one team setting a record of 180 mph, the fastest ever for an autonomous race car on a race track. Earlier last year a team set a land speed record for autonomous cars of 192.2 mph on the runway at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This year the IAC combined team of PoliMOVE, from Politecnico di Milano, and the University of Alabama won, setting that 180-mph record along the way. PoliMOVE/Roll Tide competed against a field of nine teams from 17 universities coming from six countries around the world. TUM Autonomous Motorsport from Technische Universität München (Germany) took second place. What do you think, is the world ready for racing without drivers?

The Moonbike is easily the coolest winter conveyance ever made. The little electric snowmobile costs $8900 and can make your perception of winter go from dread to enthusiasm as quickly as the Moonbike rips across the tundra. The 3-kw, 4-hp motor makes a whopping 125 lb-ft of torque to hit a top speed of 26 mph. The motor is mounted at the rear of the belt drive so there are no chains or driveshafts to sap power. You can get one or two of the 2.1-kWh batteries. With two batteries you can ride for three hours. The batteries come out so you can take them inside for recharging.

Things are good at Moonbike, with sales going from zero to $3.2 million over the last 18 months. Staff has gone from zero to 35 people in North America and Europe. Moonbikes are made by Bosch at a facility in the French Alps and distributed to 25 countries around the world. You can get yours by ordering online at Moonbikes.com. The company is also working on partnering with ski resorts so you could rent one.

John Deere finally joined Volvo, Komatsu, Bobcat, Kato, Hyundai, JCB, and other manufacturers by unveiling an electric excavator. While it carries the John Deere name, the electric excavator will actually be made by Wacker Neuson in the US and Europe to John Deere's specifications.

"Deere's new electric excavator, powered by a Kreisel battery, will improve reliability, performance, and safety in construction," the company said. "Its use on construction sites will result in fewer moving parts, less noise pollution, and fewer emissions."

It also promises lower operating costs and increased reliability. Some problems that John Deere didn't address were how to recharge the thing on a job site and how much they will cost to buy. But it's a good start to a cleaner world.

Zoox has been around a little over eight years, focusing on the same message: "We've always been focused on On-Demand mobility as a service," said Chris Stoffel, director of studio engineering. "And our approach to that is, of course, to develop the full stack, right? The technology, the hardware, the vehicle, the customer experience of service and operations through at the end of the day, deliver this to our riders to deliver amazing experience."

The Zoox transport pod seats four, is electrically powered with a 133-kWh battery good for "all day," according to Zoox, and it is all done autonomously. Summon your Zoox from your smart phone, climb in and enjoy. I sat in one and it was comfortable. The four seats face each other, and despite the safety autonomous cars promise, you still have to wear a seat belt.

When is this transportation revolution coming?

"We're not ready to announce the timing of that yet," Stoffel said. "But we brought the real vehicle here, one of our pre-production test vehicles, we took it off the fleet here to come show it to the world."

Meanwhile, three Zoox Toyota Highlanders continue to circulate around the Silicon Valley gathering data and refining their operations. The news at CES was that the pod you see here is the one that will be used once Zoox is on city streets and giving rides.

"It'll be in this vehicle," said Stoffel. "This vehicle in the near future will start to go through public roads development as well. Right now it's going through full validation testing. A very similar vehicle has been fully homologated last year, in 2022. We work with local municipalities as well, and DMVs, to make sure that we're meeting all their requirements to get that on public roads as well. And that work is ongoing. And in the near future, we'll be able to announce a little bit more of that."

While you may not have heard of Yadea, the scooter, e-bike, and electric motorcycle maker is one of the biggest in Asia. It showed off some new models at EICMA last November, and made its US debut at CES.

Yadea also sells scooters, and they asked if I could talk about the scooters instead, but I kinda liked the motorcycles. So far they have one dealer in the US, in Los Angeles, but the company is still working on US DOT certification, which they expect to have by April.

"Yadea is a global leader in developing and manufacturing electric two-wheel vehicles including electric motorcycles, electric mopeds, electric bicycles and electric kick scooters," the company says. "To date, Yadea has sold products to 60 million users in over 90 countries, and has a network of 40,000+ retailers worldwide."
But it's just getting started in the US. On a crowded patch of floorspace in the North Hall, Yadea dislayed: a 10-kW motorcycle, a 1500w standup foldable scooter, a three-wheeled standup scooter, and a foldable electric bicycle with a claimed 56-mile range.

Our interest was mostly in the Keeness electric motorcycle, which has a 13.4-hp, 207-lb-ft electric motor that'll rocket it to 32 mph in four seconds and to a top speed of 62 mph. Okay, not Ducati Panigale V4 numbers. The Keeness competes with equivalent internal-combustion motorcycles in about the 125cc range. It'll go just under 75 miles on a charge. This would be a good bike for commuting to work or school. It's styled nicely, and it may be reasonably priced, though pricing has yet to be set.

Looking forward to riding one in April.