CES Comes to Las Vegas in 2023, Unrestricted by Covid

As each New Year emerges, so the longest run­ning glob­al tech-relat­ed event arrives, usu­al­ly in the first week of Jan­u­ary, and usu­al­ly held in the Las Vegas Con­ven­tion Cen­tre in Win­ches­ter, USA. If you rep­re­sent a com­pa­ny on the cut­ting-edge of tech­nol­o­gy or are a proud “techie”, the Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show (CES), organ­ised by the Con­sumer Tech­nol­o­gy Asso­ci­a­tion (CTA), is the place to be. This year the occa­sion runs from Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 5th to Sun­day the 8th.

Found­ed in 1967, the first event attract­ed 200 exhibitors with 17,500 peo­ple attend­ing. In 2023, these fig­ures have swelled to 3,200+ com­pa­nies from 173 dif­fer­ent coun­tries and regions along­side an expect­ed pub­lic atten­dance of close to 200,000. What makes this year’s exhi­bi­tion so impor­tant is, it is free from Covid con­cerns or restric­tions which have dogged the show dur­ing the last two years.

So, who from the eVTOL and Drone-relat­ed indus­tries are exhibit­ing this year?

Back in 2020, Hyundai and Uber announced at CES their col­lab­o­ra­tion to devel­op an eVTOL. This has now moved on to the Super­nal project. So, the event is tak­en seri­ous­ly by the eVTOL indus­try.

Aska A5 Fly­ing Car (image: Aska)

On Thurs­day, major news was announced from the fly­ing car man­u­fac­tur­er, Aska, who unveiled its eVTOL A5 hybrid-pow­ered vehi­cle at CES. This is a seri­ous con­tender with­in the high­ly spe­cialised fly­ing car indus­try.

Rough­ly the size of a typ­i­cal SUV, it is described as “the first four-seater elec­tric vehi­cle that can trav­el by road and up to 250 miles by air” on a sin­gle charge due to its gas-range exten­der. While viewed as more of an airplane/ heli­copter than a tra­di­tion­al motor car, the A5 has wings and pro­pel­lors that can fold away when­ev­er it is dri­ven on a road.

While the A5 can take off ver­ti­cal­ly, it has the flex­i­bil­i­ty to use a run­way like a tra­di­tion­al air­plane. When fly­ing, the wings and six rotors unfold. Aska notes the wing has been opti­mised for “glid­ing, smooth land­ings and effi­cient ener­gy con­sump­tion.”

The com­pa­ny states the fly­ing car is pow­ered by a pro­pri­etary pow­er sys­tem com­bin­ing lithi­um-ion bat­tery packs and a gas-dri­ven engine act­ing as an onboard range exten­der. The A5 has four in-wheel elec­tric motors to pro­duce all-wheel dri­ve trac­tion which improves the aero­dy­nam­ics and max­imis­es the inte­ri­or space. The craft has a flight speed of up to 150 mph and 70 mph on roads.

Guy Kaplin­sky, Co-founder and CEO of Aska, said at CES, “Our unveil rep­re­sents some­thing that has nev­er been accom­plished in the world, but which humans have dreamed of for decades: a ful­ly func­tion­al, full-scale pro­to­type of a Dri­ve and eVTOL — a real fly­ing car.”

He con­tin­ued, “Aska is posi­tioned as a new gen­er­a­tion vehi­cle that com­bines the con­ve­nience of an auto­mo­bile with the ease and effi­cien­cy of VTOL and STOL flight. It is a vehi­cle that address­es not only con­sumers, but also sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness poten­tial in emer­gency response and mil­i­tary use.”

A5 Dri­ver’s Cab­in (graph­ic image: Aska)

Apart from sell­ing the A5 pri­vate­ly, Aska plans to launch an on-demand ride ser­vice in 2026. To order one there is an ini­tial USD5,000 deposit required. The cost to buy the A5 is USD789,000.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.askafly.com

Not to be out­done, the drone indus­try also made a major announce­ment at CES on Thurs­day.

U.S‑based, Aca­di­an Ambu­lance, one of America’s largest pri­vate­ly owned med­ical trans­port com­pa­nies, stat­ed it has select­ed Blue­flite’s drone and dig­i­tal plat­form to devel­op “a first-of-its-kind, drone-based emer­gency response solu­tion for life­sav­ing med­ical deliv­er­ies.”

This will be a joint devel­op­ment to pro­vide much faster deliv­ery of med­ical equip­ment and med­i­cines around the U.S than what is pos­si­ble using present con­ven­tion­al trans­port.

Based on Blueflite’s advanced logis­tics drone plat­form, with R&D sup­port from sur­vey and engi­neer­ing firm, Fen­ster­mak­er, this part­ner­ship will pro­vide fast response by deliv­er­ing crit­i­cal equip­ment to emer­gency sites.

Blue­flite Drone (image: blue­flite)

Frank Nop­pel, Blue­flite’s CEO, com­ment­ed at CES, “When every sec­ond counts, using drones will short­en emer­gency response times con­sid­er­ably, save lives, and reduce cost in health­care.”

Ben­jamin Swig, Direc­tor of Health­care Inno­va­tion and Strat­e­gy at Aca­di­an Ambu­lance, added, “This is the next step in the future of med­ical response, and we are excit­ed to fur­ther its devel­op­ment in con­junc­tion with Blue­flite and Fen­ster­mak­er.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://acadianambulance.com/

http://www.blueflite.com

Home­page

All major exhi­bi­tions have the oblig­a­tory keynote speak­ers and CES has attract­ed a wide vari­ety of notable peo­ple this year.

eVTOL and Drone indus­try-relat­ed exam­ples include Rajeev Chand (Wing Drone Deliv­ery); Car­los Tavares of Stel­lan­tis (part­ners with Archer Avi­a­tion); and Ed Bas­t­ian of Delta Air­lines (part­ners with Joby Avi­a­tion).

From the oth­er 895 speak­ers involved at the show (!) exam­ples include JoeBen Bevirt (Joby); Beth Flip­po (Drone Express); Robert Hamp­shire (U.S DOT); Tom Muniz (Archer); and Gre­go­ry Bowles (Joby).

I won­der what oth­er break­ing news will be announced over the com­ing long week­end?

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.ces.tech

(Top image: CTA)