Are few things in life are certain: birth, death, taxes and tech products not coming to Australia and CES 2023 was no exception.
Chatting to a few Australians on the floor this year, we came to our own decision that’s backed by nothing other than our jet-lagged musings that about 7 per cent of what was on the show floor can be purchased in Australia.
It’s probably not that bad, but we’re cynical because we want what we can’t have. Including an electric boat.
The stuff from CES 2023 we want in Australia
A mermaid Tesla
The Candela C8 is a long-range, all-electric craft that travels silently above the surface of the water. It promises no emissions, and no sound pollution or disturbance of marine life. The Tesla of the ocean boasts an absolute tonne of smarts, from autonomous boating to an exceptional in-cabin dash. Cruise speed is 37 km/h and it has a range of 94km. The company is from Sweden and at the moment, is only looking at Stockholm, Monaco, Miami and Los Angeles as launch sites. It’s gonna cost a cool $US390,000, which translates to around $560,000 in Aussie terms.
World’s first electric flying car
From a flying boat to a flying car and the first fully-functional prototype of the ASKA A5 electric drive and fly Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) vehicle made its debut at CES 2023. The size of an SUV, the ASKA A5 is the world’s first four-seater electric vehicle that can travel by road, and up to 400 kilometres by air on a single charge. The company is also announcing the ASKA On-Demand ride service – neither of those things are coming to Australia.
Home cinema thanks to an 8K laser
Hisense is bringing three new additions to its laser range down under this year, but they’re not 8K. While the 4K L9H TriChroma Laser TV is still leaps and bounds above the laser of yesteryear, the new 120LX is the first 8K Laser TV in the world. Although laser TVs aren’t as popular as say an OLED, when I first saw this thing on the floor of CES, I didn’t realise it was a laser. The screen was neat and tidy like a TV frame is and the picture quality was stunning.
Mapping the brain
The iSyncWave promises to perform brain mental health screening and predictive analysis of potential mental conditions in 10 minutes. You can expect a complete analysis report of EEG (brainwave) and HRV (Heart rate variability) operated by AI deep learning algorithms that are used to assess the condition of brain and dysfunctionality including the early diagnostic insights which could play a major role in discovering a neuro-related diseases in early stages. This gadget doesn’t really belong on this list, because the iSyncWave, as I learned at CES 2023, is actually already being used in Australia for research and diagnostics – let’s caveat it with expanding its availability to consumers.
Bend, no snap
LG had a number of innovations on the CES show floor this year, and a lot of them either aren’t coming to Australia yet or aren’t coming at all. The first of the bunch is the LG OLED Flex. With the Flex, you can go from a flat display all the way to a 900R curve, (and 20 stops in between) via the touch of a button. The screen is stunning, obviously, it’s an OLED, and when it’s flat, you can’t even notice that it can also bend. The pitch for this one is to go from Gamer Mode to Couch Potato Mode (ie, curved for a gaming screen and flat for a TV streaming one). It’s priced at $US2,999, which converts over to $4,360.
A little autonomous shuttle friend
The HOLON mover is a fully electric, autonomous vehicle that’s about to hit the streets of Hamburg, Germany. HOLON, the new autonomous brand of Germany’s Benteler Group, has labelled this thing as an “inclusive mover”, touting it as a “leader in safety, ride comfort and production quality”. The company reckons it’s the answer to traffic problems major cities experience, but we reckon it’s just so gosh darn adorable.
The HOLON mover operates autonomously with a maximum speed of 60 km/h, and it has a range of about 290 kilometres. Although this friend is so small, it can fit up to 15 passengers. I’m not sure how squishy of a trip it would be, but it’ll get you there.
This thing would be tight at Thredbo
Next up on the list of things showcased at CES 2023 that aren’t available in Australia is the MoonBike. The MoonBike is the world’s first all-electric snow bike and is an eco-friendly alternative to a snowmobile. It’s 100 per cent electric and therefore comes with the promise of not only being kind to the environment, but also quiet, easy to ride and, of course, fun.
It travels up to 41 km/h, which although doesn’t seem like much, electric bikes are generally capable of around 32 km/h. Snowmobiles are around the 150 km/h range, but they leave far more of a mark on the Earth than a lightweight electric snow bike will.
A sliding, folding screen
At CES last year, Samsung had fun folding its displays, and in 2023, Gizmodo Australia got to see it slide one. Among the innovations Samsung showed this year was the ‘Flex Hybrid’ which combines both foldable and slidable capabilities into one display and large-screen slidables, which will be the prototype of future laptops.
The slidable display has two concepts, Flex Slidable Solo, which can expand the screen in one direction and Flex Slidable Duet, which expands the display in both directions. The display is very portable at only 13-14 inches but can be expanded to 17.3 inches for multitasking purposes, playing games, or watching movies. We want in Australia, now.
Skate on outa here
French startup AtmosGear this year showed off its electric roller skates that have a motorised frame that’s designed to fit any roller boot. They’ll get about 20 kms off a single charge and will go as fast as about 25 km/h. You can pre-order the Atmos Gear skated for €500 (which translates to around $775). The company has reportedly said that it will begin production of its electric skates once it’s received 200 preorders and as of Saturday, it had received 150.
Translation literally before your eyes
TCL has debuted a pair of augmented reality (AR) smart glasses that have made me reconsider this specific wearables space I previously labelled a ‘gimmick’. The TCL RayNeo X2 AR smart glasses boast binocular full-colour Micro-LED optical waveguide displays and the glasses themselves are lightweight, albeit a little too big for my head, and boast a tonne of interactive features, such as live translate and photo taking.
The TCL RayNeo X2 AR smart glasses are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 platform and will be available to developers by the end of Q1 2023 before being up for sale to the public in around July. Hopefully at this time they can be removed from the list of cool tech from CES 2023 we can’t get in Australia.
There were so, so many more things on the show floor at CES 2023 that we would love to see in Australia, but these are the ones we couldn’t stop thinking about. Hope you enjoyed the tour. Check out our list of ‘silly’ CES 2023 stuff while you’re here.