CES 2024 Live Blog: More News, Gadgets, and Photos From Tech’s Big Show

Kia’s Getting Into Autonomous Ride SharingKorean car manufacturer Kia is back at CES for the first time in five years, and it has a new type of EV in production, as part of the company’s “Platform Beyond Vehicle” program that aims to put a fleet of autonomous vans to your city’s streets.

Visually, the concept PV series is competing with the autonomous vehicles like Zoox for that boxy toaster look. The vehicles come in three flavors, the smaller PV1, the slightly larger P5 meant for ride hailing or shorter delivery services, and the large PV7 which has more interior space and a longer driving range. For further confusion, there are three versions of the PV5—one basic, one with a high roof, and one more van shaped. So five total options, though none of those subcategories have names quite yet.

Kia says it has some big future plans for the vehicles, though it’s not clear when exactly they’ll take place. (CES announcements tend to lean a bit on the make-believe.) The first phase, Kia says it plans to focus the vehicles on ridesharing and delivery services in cities, much like rival companies like Waymo, Cruise, and Zoox. From there, it wants to evolve its services to incorporate AI features. Yes, these vehicles will someday likely include some generative AI voice assistants.

Razer’s Newest Gaming Laptop Has an Insanely Smooth DisplayI already loved the 240 Hz IPS display on the Razer Blade 14 and now Razer is upping the ante with the newest Razer Blade 16. It comes with a 16-inch 2560×1600 resolution OLED panel—meaning it will likely have even better black levels than the already impressive screen on the Blade 14—with an ultra-smooth 240 Hz refresh rate. The Blade 14 is also getting a refresh with an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS processor option, and up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU upgrades.

The Blade 16, shown here, starts at $3,000 and is available now. Pricing and availability for the new 14-inch Blade will be revealed later this year.

Hyundai: Software Will Eat Your Car, and Your Car Will Eat Your GarbageMuch like Bosch, which is working on a hydrogen car engine, Hyundai has announced that it too is doubling down on hydrogen, presenting what it calls a blueprint for a hydrogen energy ecosystem. Hyundai has the world’s highest market share in hydrogen-powered vehicle sales, though that isn’t nearly as impressive as it sounds, of course. Hyundai’s future hydrogen solutions will supposedly go beyond passenger cars, trucks, and buses to include things such as trams, ships, power generators, and planes.

At its press conference today, the group announced it is working on tech that aims to transform pollutants into clean hydrogen. Hyundai has two approaches for this: Waste-to-Hydrogen (W2H) and Plastic-to-Hydrogen (P2H). W2H involves the fermentation of organic waste (food waste, livestock manure, etc) to generate biogas. This biogas is then treated to capture carbon dioxide and produce hydrogen. P2H involves melting waste plastics that cannot be recycled, gasifying the molten plastics, and then producing hydrogen from this by removing “unnecessary elements”.

The other main focus of Hyundai’s CES announcements was on software, continuing the auto trend we’re seeing this year where new hardware is taking something of a back seat. A new Software-Defined Everything’ (SDX) strategy will focus on, of course, AI.

The SDX strategy inevitably includes software-defined vehicles (SDVs). Apparently, the idea is to “decouple hardware and software” in its cars, leading to better, faster, and wider updates. Such a scheme leaves you wondering if this wasn’t done already, then why wasn’t it? Indeed, the sharing of tech between Hyundai and sister-brand Kia is already extensive, so it is unclear how this new initiative moves things further, though “software-defined fleets for businesses” were mentioned.

Hyundai also said it intends to transform its vehicles into “AI machines” so it can personalize user experiences and deliver “added-value”. But we’ve heard this before many times from other manufacturers. All of them want to do this, but few seem clear on exactly how to do it successfully. Part of the group’s efforts to achieve this involves writing its own software for its user interface and developing a new infotainment system complete with the obligatory app marketplace. And, unlike Volkswagen, which has opted to integrate ChatGPT into its coming cars, Hyundai group is now developing its own LLM to put in its vehicles. All this is going to take time, though, so don’t expect the first software from this initiative to drop until 2026.

Sennheiser’s New Sports Buds Track Your Body Temperature and Heart RateThe Momentum Sports biosensing buds.

With so much focus at CES on TVs and high-end audio, more consumer-friendly audio gear can sometimes go overlooked. Sennheiser is bucking that trend this year with three shiny new headphone models, including the latest iteration of its popular Momentum earbuds, the Momentum True Wireless 4 ($300), the new Accentum Plus over-ears ($230), and a new workout-ready model, the Momentum Sports ($330).

It’s the last of those three that really draws the eye thanks to a rugged design that’s loaded with tech, including built-in sensors to track both your body temperature and heart rate. True wireless earbuds have always been an ideal vehicle for biosensor technology, but manufacturers have largely been moving away from it in recent years, opting instead for more audio-centric features like 3D spatial audio and ever-improving noise canceling.

They’re not cheap: $330.

Sennheiser claims the Momentum Sport “seamlessly” integrates with health apps from devices like the Apple Watch, Garmin Watch, and Peloton. The company also claims the buds are the first third-party product to work with Polar’s biosensing and data analytics. Other features include IP55 dust and water resistance, shock resistance, adaptive noise canceling, and more. We’ll be interested to try all three models, but we’re especially excited to put these pricey new sports buds to the test.