LAS VEGAS — It’s not gadgets that are making the news here at CES 2016, but cars.
For example, at a press event this afternoon the Korean car giant Kia said all of its cars will be fully autonomous by 2030. Not just its high-end vehicles — all the cars it makes. And that’s just 14 years away.
That means you be able to curl up in the back and sleep while the robot drives — or not be in the car at all. It’ll drive itself to the airport to pick you up.
Kia is joined by dozens of other companies with futuristic visions of the car. Both Detroit and Silicon Valley are here at CES 2016 to talk up future cars, which are mostly electric and autonomous. It includes Ford, VW, Toyota and lots of others.
It’s all good news for Apple, which is widely believed to be working on its own car.
What’s clear from the flurry of announcements here at CES is that the entire auto industry is gearing up for a major electronics revolution, both in the drive train and vehicles’ smarts.
Apple will benefit from this shift in a couple of ways. It will have to have to source most of its car from auto suppliers, just as it does with its current electronics products, leaving it to concentrate on design, software, and marketing. And the car of the future will likely be defined as much by software as hardware, and the integration of the two; another area that Apple excels in.
At the press event, Kia showed a quick video clip of an autonomous concept car parking itself on command from an Apple Watch. The car appears to be here at CES. We’ll get our own video later this week if possible.
According to Kia, all of the cars it makes will be fully autonomous by 2030. Currently, many of Kia’s higher-end vehicles are equipped with a lot of smart driver assist technology, which will evolve rapidly in the coming decade to make driving a thing of the past.
There are Legal and government policy issues remain, and computer controls haven’t quite been perfected. Still, Shashua and others say it’s reasonable to expect cars to take over more driving tasks from humans on the way to full automation in about five years.
In addition to autonomous driving, automakers are also building more electric cars. Three automakers are announcing new EVs at the show: battery-powered Microbus from Volkswagen; General Motors’ long-range Bolt; and Faraday Future’s crazy-looking Batmobile.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
