The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has been quite the event for electric cars for the past few years. While CES 2020 wasn’t as crazy as some previous years, we still saw many awaited announcements and some surprises. Today we’ll be looking back at the most important announcements we saw at CES 2020.
Sony made a car?
One of the most surprising and most reported things to come out of CES this year was Sony’s new Vision S concept car. The car includes dozens of sensors for automated driving features, a massive infotainment screen, and many futuristic features like detecting the alertness level of the driver.
It’s unclear what to expect from the electronics giant after this announcement. Sony has been producing components for cars for years, but many people believe this could signal an effort by the company to move into the automotive industry and start producing the whole car. As more tech-oriented companies begin to dictate what the future of transportation looks like, this seems like an obvious move to many.
Personally I don’t see Sony trying to break into the highly competitive automotive industry. Sony put a lot of emphasis on 2 things with this car, the infotainment system and the sensors for autonomous driving. I think Sony has seen the rise of more teched-out cars in the past few years and wants to put their technology at the center of many cars in the future.
More cool concept cars
It wouldn’t be CES without plenty of concept cars to get us excited about the future. While Sony’s car certainly made the biggest splash due to how unexpected it was, I think we should all be a lot more excited about the Nissan Ariya concept car.
The Nissan Ariya concept seems to be pointing towards a more luxury-oriented EV on the horizon. It’s being positioned as a high-performance crossover to serve as a big brother to the Nissan Leaf.
The most exciting thing Nissan has teased is the impressive 300-mile range of the Ariya. I’m very excited to see Nissan looking into expanding its electric lineup. The Nissan Leaf is a very attractive choice today and is a very popular car being the 4th most sold EV in the U.S. I can’t wait to see what comes next from Nissan, because more choices for consumers could help EV adoption greatly.
Announcements
We’ll finish this roundup with some of the announcements of production model cars we saw at CES 2020.
We’ve already reported on the new Fisker Ocean, but if you haven’t seen that here’s the summary. The Fisker Ocean is a luxury electric SUV without the luxury price, coming in at only $37,499 before the federal tax credit. It sports a solar panel roof and a 300-mile range. With Fisker gearing up for global production of the Ocean soon I could see this one becoming a very attractive option for consumers.
We also saw three new plug-in hybrid vehicles from Jeep. These are plug invariants of the Jeep Wrangler, Compass, and Renegade. With a 30 mile electric range and the same sleek design of their gas counterparts, I think these options from Jeep could be very popular for people wanting to get the benefits of electric without any compromises.
Overall 2020 is already shaping up to be an exciting year for EVs. With more competition than ever and steadily increasing sales, I think we can expect more good options for consumers to come and for EV adoption to continue taking over.
