CES (International Consumer Electronics Show) 2009

[CTScott]

I just got back from CES 2009. The state of the ecomony was evident with less exhibitors than any of the past years and far fewer attendees. I spent some time in the automotive section and wanted to pass on some of the interesting things I saw.

By far, the highlight of the trip for me was attending Intel's private party featuring the Counting Crows.




I was hoping to see some tricked-out Yari, but the closest thing was a few Scions:








There were quite a few other show cars with this purple thing being the wildest:





Speaking of wild; Here's a 24" subwoofer (the cone has about a foot of travel):



Motevo was the only vender with a Yaris specific item. They had a replacement head unit for sedans with DVD/Nav (http://www.motevomobile.com/
)



FLIR demo-ed their forward looking Infra Red systems for cars and motorcycles. Their system is based around a true longwave IR imager, rather than and IR sensitive camera (http://www.flir.com/US/):






Microvision's PicoHUD was cool - Their heads up display using a pico projector (http://www.microvision.com/vehicle_displays/index.html):




Dynamat showed a new product called Dynamat Superlite which will cover an entire large sedan at 33 lbs. The rep I spoke to estimated that a Yaris LB could be covered at about 20 lbs. Dynamat Superlite will begin shipping in March. The rep said that if there's enough interest we should be able to arrange a discounted group buy (http://www.dynamat.com/products_car_...roduction.html):



Copilot was showing an iPhone running their voice cued navigation software (which, like TomTom they can not release because Apple won't allow any turn-by-turn navigation software, as it supposedly competes with the built-in google maps). On the second day of the show I brought one of my coworkers by, to check it out, and they took down the display because too many people were coming by and getting cheesed off that they can't have it:




Finally, Howard Keys makes replacement transponder keys that are fully compatible with the OEM engine immobilizer. The blank Toyota transponder keys are $7.95 each, which is cheaper than a non-transponder key from a dealer. Their primary target market is the remote starter market, where the key does not even need to be cut to be used in a key bypass module. (http://www.howardkeys.com/pages/transponder-keys.html ).