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Welcome back, guys. Today, we have a very interesting blog post. I am covering the top most exciting technologies that I saw at CES 2023, specifically those related to the tire industry. For those of you who are not familiar with this convention, this is a convention where the newest and most promising tech/electronics are displayed. All of these technologies I will talk about relate to the automotive/tire industry and I will leave the links of the companies below in case you want to learn more about these companies you can reach out to them. Also if you are a more visual learner, you can see this content in video form on the link below.
1: Bridgestone Sustainable Rubber Plant
First up, let’s talk about Bridgestone’s Natural Rubber Plant. Tires are primarily made with rubber which is sourced from countries like Thailand. Bridgestone is investing in a plant that is heat tolerant and considered a desert shrub that can produce rubber as an alternative option to current supplying ways. The reason this is important and fascinating is because normally traditional rubber-generating trees require much work, and water, while these smaller plants can be planted and produced domestically, reducing the costs of tires.
According to Bridgestone using the Guayule plant not only reduces waste but it also has the potential to lower the carbon footprint of the tire industry significantly. They already make a tire using this type of rubber and that is a racing tire, so it shows that this type of rubber can be durable and of high performance.
2: Cerebrum Intelligent Tire Sensors. / Smart Tire Sensors
Next up, we have Cerebrum Sensor, which is a Smart Tire Sensor. These sensors are embedded into tires and provide real-time data on tire pressure, temperature, and other important metrics. This information is then transmitted wirelessly to a portal or gateway on the vehicle. This information can help improve performance, safety, and efficiency. Just think about it, if you are a trucking company or you have a customer that has a large fleet, you can then install these sensors on their tires, and you should be able to run a report on which tires are running low on tread or have low PSI. I think would be a great tool to have especially if you are managing the maintenance of tires for a specific fleet.
Now the installation is like a patch, and then the sensor can be replaced, so technically, you are installing the housing of the sensor, and then the sensor can be swapped once the battery dies. Very interesting concept indeed.
Now note that Bridgestone is also developing its own tire sensor, and I’m not 100% sure, but I think they are just working together with Cerebrum since the features are fairly similar. But overall, they also were showcasing their sensor and smart shocks, which would communicate with the smart car how much weight is on each side of the car and properly compensate the suspension for a better and safer drive.
3: Translator Earbuds by Timekettle
Another exciting technology on display at CES 2023 is Translator Earbuds. I have been to China over 10 times, and every time I go, the language barrier is real. So Having something like this, that’s portable and quick to set up is very helpful. You get two earbuds, one person put one, and you put the other. It translates using the internet, however, they do have an offline version, too but it's not very good. I think in most places where you may have a meeting internet exists. I’m really looking into buying a pair myself to test once I go to China next time.
4: Airless Tires by Smart Tire
If you’ve ever had a flat tire, you’ll appreciate this next technology – Airless Tires. The company behind it is called smart tires, they claim that they build the tires on the rover, and well, they had some nice demos to watch. I didn’t see any passenger tires yet. However, they did have a bike with an airless tire and claim that very soon they will have a tire for passenger vehicles.
5: AR Imaging Tools for Tires by Kiri
Next up is Kiri; I added them because they make it easy to scan items into an Augmented reality product. Imagine you are selling tires to your customer online, and you have the ability to let them see how the tire looks in AR (Augmented Reality), or even fitted into their vehicle. This would be a next-level shopping experience, and well, I have some interesting ideas I may be collaborating with them or a similar company like this for future projects.
6: Solar Car by Lightyear
At number 6, we got lightyear solar, this is a solar car, and while the concept of a solar car is really cool, I thought the tires and how they looked were even cooler. It seems that this car would not have a traditional wheel on it, since the wheel is actually a motor, and the tire would be mounted on a ring-like wheel. Lugs would then be bolted around the ring to be attached to the vehicle. I did feel the lug bolts looked a bit thin, but overall I do like the concept and how companies are changing things a bit from the traditional way of doing things.
Do you like this type of wheel ring?
7: Easy Rain, Tire Traction while on rain
The next company we got is Easy Rain. When it rains, it can be difficult to drive safely, but the Easy Rain technology aims to change that. the idea is simple, push air to the road so that the tire gets a dryer surface to drive in. There are questions I do get, like how loud would this be, and also how would this impact range on electric vehicles, but other than that I thought it was an excellent idea and a potential solution to help reduce the risk of accidents and improve overall safety when driving when raining.
8: Virtual Employees Holograms
This next piece of tech solves a problem many of us have been facing, finding talented and reliable staff. This company wants to help you have a Virtual Employee Hologram. These holograms allow businesses to create virtual representations of employees that can be used to interact with customers and perform various tasks. This will help in reducing physical employees, but it also has the potential to improve overall satisfaction. If you are familiar with Chat gpt, sometimes these AI bots are much smarter and better than your average CS agent, and well this could be a glimpse of the future. Imagine walking into a tire store and all the tire questions you have for the mechanic, tire tech or service advisor can be answered by this hologram employee correctly and promptly. I’m sure all customers would be very happy.
9: Robot Arms
Finally, we have Robot Arms. If you haven’t noticed already, there is a company called Robotire that used robotic arms and machine learning to remove tires from vehicles and transfer them over to an autonomous tire-changing and balancing machine. I was curious to see potential suppliers at CES for this type of tech and see how it would be possible to build a robot arm designed to aid tire techs in removing and install lug nuts. Many of them said it would be easy. These arms could be designed to assist technicians with tire-related tasks, so we should expect more on this tech in the future.
Eventually, you have to understand that automation is what we are heading into, and well we need to think of how can we automate everything, from the sales rep, to the tire tech. But what do you guys think? is this going too far? I personally sometimes am a bit scared…
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