CES 2023 tech to watch: electric cars, the metaverse, NFTs and more

The annual Consumer Electronics Show is just around the corner (January 5-8), and once again it will be a hybrid event, taking place simultaneously in Las Vegas and inside a browser-based virtual meeting room, as was the case last year.

Back in Las Vegas

The expanded size of the physical venue in Las Vegas for the 2023 show is an indication of enthusiasm for in-person interaction despite the continued digital element, said the Consumer Technology Association, the sponsoring organization of the decades-old show.

Over 100,000 participants is the target for CES, according to the association. Participants come from 173 countries, territories and regions, and over 4,700 members of the media are registered.

“I think people are excited about CES, they’re excited to reconnect, they’re excited to be back in person,” John T. Kelley, vice president and acting show director of CES, said in an interview with ZDNET in New York .

“We’re keeping the digital component, but the in-person component is back bigger this year,” Kinsey Fabrizio, senior vice president of membership and CES sales, said in the same meeting. For example, the total exhibition floor is 70% larger this time than last time.

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Exhibitors who couldn’t make the last show are back in 2023, Fabrizio said, with over 3,100 exhibitors. He said about 1,000 of them are first-time exhibitors.

“They’re taking meeting rooms, in addition to the exhibit space,” said Fabrizio of CES’s exhibitors, “which is an indication that they want to do business.”

“We have a record number of submissions for our Innovations Awards program as well,” Kelley said.

Key themes and technology to watch

Electric cars and autonomous vehicles

Among the main themes of CES 2023 are cars and vehicular mobility technology, Fabrizio said.

These categories have been moved to the newly built West Hall (located across Paradise Road from the existing Las Vegas Convention Center) – which in January had CES as its first tenants. The space is sold out in Vesthallen, said Fabrizio.

CES also uses the existing central and north halls, while the south hall has been demolished as part of a multi-part renovation of the centre.

Central Hall is connected to West Hall via the underground tunnel created by Elon Musk’s The Boring Company, which carries passengers in Teslas. Tunnel stations extend past West Hall to the Resorts World hotel, across South Las Vegas Boulevard from Wynn, next to Circus, Circus.

Also: CES 2022 preview: Crowds to return to Las Vegas, but the digital element remains

“You’ll find a lot of autonomous driving technology” in West Hall, and electric vehicles, Fabrizio said, including Light Year, makers of a solar-powered electric vehicle. John Deere and Caterpillar will also be in West Hall, the latter likely with an autonomous tractor.

Along with cars, nautical technology will have a big presence, including electric yachts, Fabrizio said, with brands like Volvo and all kinds of marine technology.

Digital health

Another main theme is digital health technologies, again located in the Nordhallen as it was last time. Areas within digital health include sleep technology, digital therapy, mental health and new diagnostic technology.

“Over-the-counter hearing aids are a big thing we’re seeing,” Fabrizio said. New regulations passed this year by the FDA in the US relaxed access to the devices, meaning consumers can buy hearing aids without a prescription. (Congress had passed a law related to the release in 2017, and President Biden implemented an executive order this year; the CTA was instrumental in working with the FDA on its implementation.)

The over-the-counter approach means “people don’t have to go and have that conversation with a doctor,” Kelley said, removing some of the stigma of self-consciousness or embarrassment that may have made individuals reluctant to get hearing aids in the past.

“A lot of companies that have been at CES are now releasing products for this category,” Fabrizio said, “and actually some traditional hearing aid companies that will be there showing off their new lines of over-the-counter hearing aids as well.”

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Digital health will also include “the emergency room of the future,” an exhibit put together by CTA and The American College of Emergency Physicians.

According to Fabrizio, the Emergency Department of the Future will have “an incorporation of telehealth as well as a lot of remote patient monitoring” to reduce emergency department congestion and “so that people can be triaged differently.”

“And then, just the different equipment in there, image analyzers, things to speed up diagnostics, treatment.”

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AI, robotics and the metaverse

Sharing the North Hall with digital health will be enterprise technology, including artificial intelligence, robotics, FinTech and the Internet of Things.

The Venetian Hotel once again hosts many grouped exhibitions, in what is the old Sands Convention Center, including – for the second year in a row – the food technology exhibition, the smart home category, as well as the very broad category of accessories Products.

Eureka Park, the tech startup cluster that has been going on for years now, will also be in the Sands. A thousand or more start-ups will showcase their wares at Eureka Park this year, from over 20 countries. Ukraine Tech will also have a pavilion.

The metaverse first became a focal point this past CES, Kelley noted, and this year it’s going to be “pervasive throughout CES,” he said. “We actually have a dedicated area in the central hall for Web3 [companies]; you’ll see companies that are mainly hardware-focused there, like Magic Leap,” the augmented reality company that’s now focusing on enterprise use of the technology.

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Microsoft will also be in the Web3 area, and a dedicated studio in the room will “have thought leaders from that community present on stage and discuss digital assets, blockchain technology, the metaverse,” says Kelley.

“I think Web3 will be discussed prominently throughout the program” of CES, Kelley says, “primarily focused on the metaverse and NFTS [non-fungible tokens].”

Web3 is appearing in more and more new applications, Kelley said. For example, startup Olfactory Virtual Reality, or OVR, “adds a sense of smell to the headsets, so now you can smell in the metaverse,” Kelley said. A real-world application, he said, would be emergency preparedness training, like smelling a fire.

A recent partnership is between BMW and chip powerhouse Nvidia to showcase the factory of the future, Kelley said. Such partnerships are “the fundamental building blocks of what the future will look like” in the mix of the metaverse and Web3, he said.

“It’s pretty cool to see how much it’s moved in a year beyond just gamification of everything,” he said.

Also: CES 2020: Best of show? Some of this will last, most will not

“I think you’ll see at the show where companies will show you their physical products, and then also launch a metaverse expansion,” Fabrizio said.

NFTs

There’s a “fairly small” dedicated area in the Aria Hotel for NFTs, Kelley said, to provide “an opportunity for companies to at least get some branding out there so they can be part of that conversation.”

NFT, best known for stunts like The Bored Ape Club, is sprouting new uses in the industry, Kelley said. For example, in the events industry, it becomes an access key for attendees, so something like an after party, for example.

“As a holder of this NFT, you can access the event, which is becoming popular,” Kelley said. That same NFT could become a “unique passport,” he said, for brands to have some kind of connection to consumers different from email. And of course NFTs can be bought and sold on a marketplace.

Main headlines

This year’s headliners at the fair have keynotes by AMD CEO Lisa Su, BMW Chairman Oliver Zipse, John Deere CEO John May, Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian, among others.

On the digital side of the show, as before, keynotes will be live-streamed, and the exhibitors have digital stands where digital-only participants can click to see information about the exhibitor.

“There are two things that we saw as a result of COVID that people really liked,” Kelley said. “One is the ability to watch content after the event, so we’ll have over 100 sessions you can watch after the event.”

“And then there’s also the ability to make better connections with some of the exhibitors,” for example by searching for a vendor before the show and messaging them to set up a meeting” and the ability to have a video meeting at CES digital platform.

Search features — such as searching for exhibitors by category (say, metaverse) — have been improved, Kelley said.

“We’ve refined our tools knowing that our audience has changed a little bit because we have more of a digital audience than where it was all live before COVID-19.”

The magic of a fair

Digital, however, can never fully capture the experience of the in-person fair. Consider the enormous benefits of face-to-face meetings. CTA’s analysis shows that companies at the brick-and-mortar exhibit have an average of 29 meetings, which could mean “29 fewer flights” that companies have to take, Kelley said.

And “things get lost in the Zoom world,” Kelley noted, including the random encounters that can happen.

“You have these serendipitous encounters,” Fabrizio said, “where you’re standing in line waiting for a coffee and you run into someone and you make a business connection.”

“That’s the magic of a fair, these serendipitous moments,” Kelley said.

All the digital features are “a nice addition,” Fabrizio said, “but I think seeing a product in action, and actually getting to touch and experience it, there’s nothing like it.”

For the media, CES begins earlier than the show floor: January 3. On that day, CES 2023 has an afternoon research summary presentation at the Mandalay Bay hotel by CTA’s data people, followed by the pre-show exhibition called Unveiled, where journalists get to see several exhibitors with tables set up in a ballroom.

Then, on January 4, an entire day is devoted to press conferences from exhibitors, where the media scramble to take down details of new product announcements – after usually waiting in long lines to get into each briefing.

CES is not open to the public. It’s for exhibitors, members of the tech industry and press, and there are several prices for attendance (see registration FAQs here).