The smart TVs, Matter gadgets, and concept cars from CES

The Verge’s Alex Cranz, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, Chris Welch, and Andrew Hawkins discuss the best TVs, cars, and smart home gadgets they saw at CES 2023 — from a color-changing car to a vacuum suction system on an OLED TV. Further reading: CES 2023: Verge Video’s best of Why Matter mattered at CES The $3,000 totally wireless Displace TV is the definition of CES absurdity Roku does the obvious thing and announces its own TV line TCL’s 2023 TVs have new branding and are gaming powerhouses Samsung’s 2023 TV lineup bets everything on picture upgrades and AI tricks LG’s latest Signature OLED TV receives all of its audio and video wirelessly LG’s 2023 OLED TVs are brighter (again) and make webOS smarter LG wants to reinvent how you think of TV picture modes Sony breaks from tradition and won’t announce new TVs at CES 2023 Sony and Honda just announced their new electric car brand, Afeela The Peugeot Inception concept is an EV knife aimed straight at the future The BMW i Vision Dee is a future EV sports sedan that can talk back to you Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:41Alex Cranz?

  Hello, and you're listening to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of recovering from the CES funk. I'm your host, Alex Cr- no, I'm your friend, Alex Cranz, and I am joined with the lovely Gentooey. Hello. The lovely Chris Welch, and the lovely Andy Hawkins. Hello. Two of the three of these people were at CES last week, and so we're going to be talking a lot about CES today. We're going to be talking about smart homes, we're going to be talking- About TVs. And as you probably guessed from Andy being here, we're going to be talking about cars. And next week, we're going to have another special episode, still getting into CES, where we're going to be talking with Monica, all about the laptops and their weird dual screen laptop that she's actually obsessed with.

• 2:25Alex Cranz?

  We're going to be talking with Victoria Song about all kinds of health stuff that happened at the show. But today, we're talking about what really matters. Matter.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  That was my segue there, wasn't it?

• 2:35Alex Cranz?

  That was your segue. But let's, let's just get started because Jen, it feels like we, we voted matter as like the thing of CES. This was, this was the big thing at CES. You, you made a very passionate case for it. Now you have to do it again for all of our listeners.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I did not. It was not my suggestion. I just want to point that out. I, I held back. I mean, not that I didn't agree, but you know, it was kind of obvious coming from me. But the rest of the team actually was like, you know, it was kind of the thing. We couldn't escape it. Even Chris was like, the Samsung booth was terrible. Cause it was all smart home. So, okay, weird. He said it was weird, not terrible. Sorry.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  It was different because you expect like every year you go there and it's like TVs and gaming monitors and all this flashy stuff and hardware. And this year, some of that stuff was there, but like on the whole, I just like Jen saying it was all matter stuff and smart things, this and that. And it was just very different.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  It was very notable. I mean, the last, so the first CES I went to, I want to say it was 2019. And I remember going to the Samsung booth, which was the, which was, you know, the, the place that Chris loves. Huge TVs. It was, I think, when they debuted the wall. And in one little corner, I managed to find a smart things hub and a few sensors. And then this year, the entire booth was smart things. And you literally had to go find the TV that was hidden in a room somewhere. I mean, it was, it was notable. And that's not the case for everyone. But you know, the LG's booth still had the giant walls of TVs and, but Samsung really went all out with smart things and the smart home. And in general, so for people that aren't familiar, CES is in two venues.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  So there's the big Las Vegas Convention Center, which is where the Samsung and the LG booths are. And then there's the Convention Convention Centre formerly called The Sands, which is where the smart home had always been put. And again, it's sort of been in a corner in the conference room in the major sort of conference space. And now again, you walked in and it was the first thing you saw and it took up half the show floor. It was, it was definitely smart homes year and matter obviously is a big topic in the smart home right now. So matter was everywhere. I mean, literally I took our video director to try and sort of shoot some footage because when we announced that matter was the best in show. He said, what am I supposed to shoot? It's not a TV. What do I shoot?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  So we went around looking for the logos and yes, the dongles and they were everywhere. I think, as I said in my piece, it was like the easiest game of where's Waldorf ever? Because they were just matter logos, just

• 5:09Alex Cranz?

  Just everywhere.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  proliferating, yes. But and you know, it's not like now matters here. It's ready and we can all just run off and enjoy this great new smart home. It's still early days, but the sheer number of announcements, the sheer number of new products, the real concrete details we're getting about how this smart home protocol is going to work in our homes. Definitely made it feel like something much more tangible than it has been for the last three years. So that was one of the reasons we kind of gave it this big accolade.

• 5:38Alex Cranz?

  Well, kind of walk us through those details because honestly, I was surprised to see Samsung's smart things come back. I feel like it has a really passionate, really small user base. And now it seems like Samsung's like, oh, wait, we still have this. We should do something with it matters here.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, so from the smart thing side, I mean, the smart things you see today is not really the smart things you're thinking of. Not the original kind of groovy based smart things for the tinkerers. That's still there and they're very keen to point out that, you know, they haven't got rid of that, although they are transitioning. But what smart things really is now today is Samsung's connectivity platform for its home appliances and TVs. But they have remained open. So it's always been the most open of all the smart home platforms because it, it works with Zigbee and Z-Wave and a whole host of cloud provided smart home integrations too. So, you know, you can use, I am allowed to say things like Alexa or are people going to get mad at me?

• 6:39Speaker 02

  But you can use the Amazon Smart Home Assistant, the Google Smart Home Assistant, or with SmartThings. It's very open, it's very interoperable, and they're keeping that. And then Matter, obviously, is making it even more open. So it means that now things will work with Apple Home as well as Samsung SmartThings. You know, and Apple, obviously, wasn't on the show floor, but it was a big part of what's make, you know, the push for Matter. They created Matter along with all of the other companies we've mentioned. And as they like to say, they contributed the main framework of HomeKit to the Matter protocol. So it feels a lot like using Apple HomeKit when you use Matter products, which I've done, managed to use a few. And it is, it does feel a lot like using Apple Home with a sprinkle of SmartThings and a sprinkle of Amazon and a touch of Google.

• 7:23Alex Cranz?

  So you, it felt like Apple was still kind of there at the show, even though they weren't actually.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Isn't that always the way?

• 7:31Alex Cranz?

  But they don't have a booth. There's not like a special room where you go and meet with Apple people unless you're doing, like, talking about monitors that you want to own.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're not there. There's no HomeKit presence. But a lot of new products that were announced were from companies that traditionally hadn't worked with Apple Home. And now, because of Matter, are going to be able to work in that ecosystem because Apple is fully in on Matter. So if your device works with Matter, it will work with Apple Home. And then there's the vice versa. Products that only worked with Apple Home will now work outside of Apple Home, like Eve, which we've, who we've covered quite extensively. But for example, like Govi and Ye Light and GE Sync are all brands that have Lightin. Because Lightin's big in Matter right now because it's one of the first device types

• 8:19Speaker 02

  supported. Those companies all announced products that will now support Matter. That means you can buy those inexpensive, which is not normally something that you associate with Apple Home products. Those inexpensive devices will now work with Apple Home if you want to use that as your main Matter interface. And you know, that's quite exciting for a lot of people that like Apple Home because it is traditionally been an expensive smart home space to play in. And you know, Amazon, on the other hand, you can use its smart home assistant with many inexpensive brands that you can find on Amazon of dubious quality in some cases.

• 8:55Alex Cranz?

  But yeah, like I think I gave up on using Amazon as my smart home because it just, I moved houses and it was like, okay, you need to manually delete every single light and then manually re-add every single light. And I had like 20 lights on there. And I was like, no, I'm just stop. I'm just done here.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  They've fixed that. They have fixed that or about to fix that. That's quite exciting. It's not really to do with Matter. I'm hoping it will become a thing with Matter though, because there could be a lot of duplicates if you start using multiple smart home platforms. And that that could be one of the problems, but hopefully. So what's kind of happening with Matter is that each company is doing something new or bringing a new sort of slant to it. And we're kind of waiting to see whether the other companies will all follow track because the whole point of Matter is that everyone should be able to be interoperable in the same way. So for example, the Amazon feature is they're now working with device group sync. So if you have, if you add a device to Amazon and you also, you know,

• 9:56Speaker 02

  say it's a Hue bulb, rather than it being called Kitchen Light in Hue and then just Light One in Amazon, which is for some reason, the way it defaults, now it will sync the name across, which is going to be really useful because you know, when you say, hey, A, turn on the lights and it's like, you have 500 devices named Light. Which one would you like to turn on? And this will help with that. And you know, that kind of just keeping your smart home a bit tidier because you're so right. You should see my Amazon Alexa app. It's kind of scary how many devices you have in it.

• 10:27Alex Cranz?

  I think we're going to save that one for the Halloween episode, like. We can't show that right now. It's too sensitive, too scary.

• 10:34Speaker 04

  I have a question.

• 10:35Alex Cranz?

  Yes, and?

• 10:36Speaker 04

  As a smart home agnostic, I don't have any smart devices in my home and I'm generally wary of handing over my personal data to companies like this. And I have, you know, sort of like the the basic laundry list of concerns that people have for not for not, you know, installing any of these devices in your home. Did you get a sense from the show that the companies that are building these these products are getting better at bringing new people in as consumers? Or they do you feel like they're preaching to the choir and still continuing to send sell things to like the people who are already like invested in turning their home into a smart home?

• 11:11Speaker 02

  That's an excellent question. And actually, one that was definitely on everyone's mind, because it is the latter, because Matter isn't actually going to be that great initially for people who are already invested in the smart home. It isn't as functionally advanced. So you won't be able to do things like adaptive lighting. So you know, where you have your lights change color with in sync with the sun or dynamic lighting effects, like, you know, your Hue lights will kind of flash with your TV, those kind of things. Those features aren't available in Matter. And so it doesn't mean you won't be able to use them. You'll just have to use the relevant company's app to get to that function. So really, what Matter is designed for is to be really simple for people who've never

• 11:56Speaker 02

  used a smart home before. So that when you go to the you go to Lowe's or you shop on Amazon or Best Buy, and you're like, well, I need a new thermostat, and maybe I need some new light bulbs. And you buy them. And as long as they work with Matter, then you can set them up with any smartphone, any ecosystem, any smart speaker you have in your house. You don't have to look for all the little works with badge to see whether it works with your phone or works with your voice assistant. So that's really the sort of core purpose of Matter is to make it really simple, so that everyone can use it. Because right now, the smart home is not simple. It's far from it. Which is why I have a job, really.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  Well, thank God for that then.

• 12:37Alex Cranz?

  It's like Gen, Homebridge, Hoobs, these guys are like, we need, we need it to be super complex for as long as possible.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and Matter does work with those platforms too. So, you know, it's less exciting right now for people who are already really deeply involved in the smart home. The most excited group was probably the HomeKit users because they're getting access to devices that they didn't have and they won't have to use devices, they won't have to use Hoobs and Homebridge to bring those devices into their ecosystem. Like your Nest thermostat will work in HomeKit natively now. Your new one, though, not the old one, which is really annoying because I want the learning thermostat in my HomeKit. But anyway, digress. Yes. And that's where you hear a lot of complaints about Matters. People are like, oh, it's really not that exciting. It doesn't really add any new features.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  It's kind of boring. Well, that's kind of the point. It's plumbing. Yeah. It's roads. It's infrastructure. It's just making everything work properly, which it hasn't done for a long time.

• 13:36Alex Cranz?

  Chris, you saw a bunch of TV stuff. Were you seeing any like that, was Matter trickling in there too for you?

• 13:43Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I think they said that all the LGs are now supporting Matter. They did last year too, I believe, but this year that's there again. And I think some other companies are also on board. But so yeah, it's definitely kind of like naturally making its way across all the big brands. Not sure what that'll look like in TVs necessarily. Like some might have hub apps and stuff like that, but they will support it like at the core, which is nice to see.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Hysense just announced that it's supporting Matter. It just announced it at CES. And basically, I think ultimately TVs can be Matter controllers. So you wouldn't even necessarily need a, any kind of hub device separately. And that's another part of Matter is the idea being that these hub devices will already just be built into what you own or buy. So you're not going to have to buy extra little dongles and what's its names to, to make your smart home work. And then Samsung actually announced that going forward, it's going to build Matter and Thread directly into its products. So all TVs, monitors, and their smart fridges will have

• 14:42Alex Cranz?

  Refrigerators?

• 14:43Speaker 02

  And the fridges.

• 14:43Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yes, they'll all, so they all currently have smart things, software hubs in. And then they will also get a Matter Thread chip, Zigbee, Matter Thread Zigbee chip, nosey wave.

• 14:55Alex Cranz?

  How far do these upgrades go back? Cause like, I know I've got a 2017 LG that I'm trying to bully Neelai to also replacing his. And we're stuck on the pre-homekit, pre-smart home stuff right now. They're like, no, we don't have support for AirPlay. We don't have support for Chromecast, sucks to be you. And we're probably not going to get that support now, right? Like, like these older products just aren't going to get it. You're just going to be SOL.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, yeah, unfortunately, there's, there was a lot of talk about backward compatibility. And for connected devices, in some cases, there will be bridging opportunities. So like Philips Hue has a Matter Bridge, oh, sorry, its bridge will be updated to support Matter. And it's proudly said, and rightly so, that its original Philips Hue bulb that you could have bought 10 years ago, will support Matter through that bridge. So that's great. But there's not a lot of, you know, it's going to be down to individual manufacturers to support that, to add Matter to their bridges, if they have devices that connect to the bridge that can then connect to Matter. But in general, most of the benefit of Matter is going to be going forward.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  When you buy new devices, you're going to see an easier setup and easier connectivity and easier interoperability. One good sign for your old TVs though, and old fridges and old washing machines, if they have any kind of Wi-Fi compatibility. So, you know, going back about 10 years, most appliances have some compatibility with Wi-Fi. There is this, the new Home Connectivity Alliance is working to do sort of a similar thing to Matter, but cloud to cloud, because Matter's local, which is something we didn't mention, but that's one of its sort of selling points. And this new alliance, which is run by Samsung and includes LG, HIA, which is like GE. And it's like 80 to 90% of the home appliance industry, which is what, like five companies?

• 16:50Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Are all on board with this Home Connectivity Alliance. And they have said going, any device that had Wi-Fi capability will work. With HCA, which means that you can control it through any app that you like. That is, so like if you have an LG ThinQ app and a Samsung TV, you can control your Samsung TV through that LG ThinQ app. So you could use, you could have all your devices in one app, all your home appliances.

• 17:15Alex Cranz?

  So theoretically.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Theoretically, that's a good point.

• 17:20Alex Cranz?

  Well, like, because I mean, I definitely have that horrible LG app and it is truly the worst.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  It's quite bad.

• 17:26Alex Cranz?

  One of the worst apps on my phone. I only use it like when I can't find the remote and I'm too late and too tired at night to like, look for it reasonably. And even then I cry when I use it. But they don't care about those apps, right? They, they haven't cared about those apps for years. They've kind of just like, they did them, they made them and they're like, all right, it's here. Enjoy your slop. Do you think we'll start seeing other like third parties making apps to be like, okay, here's your app to control all your 10 year old appliances?

• 17:53Speaker 02

  So yes, I think we'll, we may see that, but with the HCA, it has to be one of their appliance companies. But where you will be able to use it is SmartThings, because that's Samsung's. So you'll be able to control all your old LG appliances with the SmartThings app. So you're all in on Samsung now.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  You look really thrilled about that idea.

• 18:14Alex Cranz?

  Whether you want it or not, you're all in on Samsung.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  There is a chance though, that the Home Connectivity Alliance and Matter will get together at some point. I mean, they are talking to each other. So it is, and white good appliances and televisions are in the Matter spec. So, you know, there's going to be some more political shuffling going on, but I wouldn't be surprised if, if eventually they converge. Um, I did hear the, the chairman of the HCA joke that they were just waiting for Matter to pay, buy them for a billion dollars. Which is kind of funny when CSA is a nonprofit and Samsung runs the HCA. So I'm not sure which should buy which, but.

• 18:55Alex Cranz?

  Well, okay, so it was a lot of matter. What was like the coolest Matter thing you saw? The coolest implementation that had you really excited?

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Oh, there are a couple of things. I think most exciting for me was probably the MUI board. And it's not that it is necessarily a sort of whiz-bang technologically exciting device. It's more of a sort of shows what Matter could bring us, which is because companies don't have to develop for all different platforms now and they don't have to startups, don't have to spend, you know, 90% of their budget with their engineers having to develop for five different platforms. They can really focus on innovation, that we might start to see some more interesting devices in the smart home. And the MUI board is a piece of wood with LED lights behind it that just is touch sensitive. So you can, you know, you can

• 19:46Speaker 02

  touch it to turn your lights on and off. You can draw on it. It's just, it's a sort of delightful device. It doesn't feel like technology. And that's something if anyone's been following my coverage, they'll, you know, I have a real, I don't like smart home tech that feels like technology. I think it's important that your smart home tech needs to fit into your home. And, you know, Google's been trying this with all their sort of fabricy mesh things. And there have been numerous sort of shifts in the way smart home technology looks so that doesn't sort of stand out too much in your home. But that's what the MUI board does. It's, it's not really a product. I mean, they say you're going to be able to buy it. It's going to be on Kickstarter. It's more of a kind of concept, though, you know, like this is what we can do. And that's what I'm excited

• 20:30Speaker 02

  about with Matter, that we'll see more of these things because now that you just have to develop for one protocol, it's going to be a lot easier for startups and inventors to kind of come up with cool ideas for the smart home. And, you know, there's, obviously there's some fun stuff, like I actually think some of the new hubs we're going to get are kind of fun. Like Samsung came out with the SmartThings hub, which was a shocker because they had stopped making SmartThings hubs years ago. But it's a three and four in one device. It's also a wireless charger. It's also a Find My or Samsung's Thing Finder, whatever their name is for Find My. So it has, you know, multi-function and that's something we saw a trend of. There were four or five new devices that were announced as Matter controllers.

• 21:13Alex Cranz?

  It's because they kind of haven't broken out of that mindset that hubs need to happen. But now they're like, oh, but hubs can't just be hubs.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Yes. So that that's the thing. Hubs no longer are just going to be hubs on their own. They're going to be in your TV. They're going to be in your wifi router. They're going to be in your wireless charger. They're going to be in your temperature sensor.

• 21:32Alex Cranz?

  Will they be in your car?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  I don't know, Andy. What do you think?

• 21:36Speaker 04

  They've been trying to stick smartphone operability in cars for years now with like, I would, I would argue less success than they've had in the home. It's all basically about, right, like controlling your car from your home, but not vice versa. I don't, I think. And I think maybe they're starting to pick up a little bit on doing home stuff from your car. But there is a sense that like, oh, you're in your home. You've got a, you know, Tesla sitting out in the driveway. Maybe you should get the battery started on that car. It'd be nice to be able to do it from your bedroom as opposed to, you know, while you're sitting freezing your buns off in the car itself. But you're dealing with all these companies that have all, you know, that everyone wants to, you know, lock everyone in their various, you know, walled gardens.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  And I think that they haven't quite figured out how to move forward from that.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Well, that's what they need then. Matter's all about

• 22:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  breaking down the walled gardens. So, and the CSA, which is the Connectivity Standards Alliance, who promotes and runs Matter, has said that they are very much looking at bringing Matter to other parts of the connected world, including cars. They need to get the home sorted out first, but hopefully they'll move in, you know, and that's the natural next step would be automotive. Because there's so much connection between the home and the car. And in particular, because one of the things that Matter hopefully will really help kickstart is home energy management. It should make it a lot easier for apps and infrastructure for energy to sort of talk to each other and gain data to be able to.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Understand energy usage and obviously cars and EVs are kind of key to that when it comes to home energy management. So I could definitely see some integration that's kind of going to come along in that space to make it easier from the energy standpoint. And then that could also make it easier from a user sort of interface standpoint. I mean, I actually did see, I did a demo with Apple CarPlay in the Amazon booth where I could talk to both Alexa and Siri at the same time in one device.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Oh, that must have been a fascinating conversation.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  It was, it was very cute because it was the way Amazon was going, look, you would ask Siri for these things and then you, these things you would ask Amazon for. I'm like, but I could ask Siri for all those things too, you know, don't really need, don't really need Alexa. But, but their point was if I like to use Siri and all, and my husband likes to use the Amazon assistant, you know, you can do it all in one device. But you could go back and I said, but can I, can I talk to them both at the same time? Cause you know, that sounds like fun. And they're like, yeah. So that was, that was kind of interesting.

• 24:14Alex Cranz?

  Chris, how angry do you think Sonos is that these car companies and stuff are getting to like

• 24:21Speaker 04

  Good question.

• 24:22Alex Cranz?

  proper voice integration when Sonos has like struggled with it for five years?

• 24:27Speaker 03

  I think they're mostly, mostly happy with being in the home. They've had some car partnerships. I think they did one last year pretty recently. So I think it's more of like a, hey, we're here. Just have like some, some kind of Sonos branding in the car. But I think on the home, on the whole, they're very happy to just, you know, focus on your home, home theater and maybe headphones down the line and who knows what else. But I think cars are like a secondary thing for them.

• 24:51Alex Cranz?

  That's way back in the back. They're like, it's in the rearview mirror for them. I'm so sorry. Neelai somewhere groaning.

• 25:01Alex Cranz?

  Like Sonos isn't part of Matter, right? Like they, because it doesn't have the, the audio integration yet.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  So they are a member of the CSA, if I remember correctly. But from conversations that we had in Amsterdam, which is where they had a Matter kickoff event last year, they're sort of just there for the view at the moment. You know, just kind of looking around, seeing what's going on.

• 25:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's true of a lot of the sort of speaker manufacturers outside of the smart speaker, voice assistant manufacturers, because for them, especially for Sonos, who already has their sort of home audio, multi-room audio pretty nailed down, there isn't really much benefit that they can see at the moment. Right now, speakers are not part of any Matter spec. So I know one of the questions people kept asking me was, oh, now can I add my Google Nest Hub to my Apple Home Kit? And, you know, that, that, that stuff isn't going to work yet. But I think in the future, they are trying to move that way. I think there's resistance though from, because the way, the way Matter works is they create tiger teams. Wow.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Um, where they get all the people from each group together who are, you know, so like Sonos and Bose and name me some speaker companies, Chris.

• 26:22Alex Cranz?

  JBL. JBL, sure.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  We'll get together in a room and talk about how they want Matter to work with their speakers and then they go to the CSA.

• 26:33Alex Cranz?

  And they don't.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Right. And that's the thing, they don't do that. So that hasn't happened yet, from what I've heard. So it would need some consumer pressure, I think, to move it along.

• 26:41Alex Cranz?

  All right, well, we're gonna take a break. And when we're back, Chris is gonna tell us all about the TVs that truly sucked at CES. I'm so sorry. I will not stop. Stay tuned, we'll be back.

• 26:59Speaker 05

  Company spend can be complicated. Managing it shouldn't be. Amex Corporate connects cards, expenses, and payments all in one place. That's less time managing work and more time doing work that matters. Built to simplify, designed to scale. This is Amex Corporate. Get started at go.amex slash Amex Corporate. Terms apply.

• 27:27Speaker 06

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing and wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.

• 28:00Alex Cranz?

  And we're back. Chris, I know this was like, this was such a big CES show. Jim was having an awesome time seeing everything. And TVs were kind of like a little quiet this year. There wasn't as much big stuff happening in that space.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was pretty low key. I think we finally got over that hump of like two years ago where like some of like all these HDMI 2.1 features like 4K, 120, VRR. Those are finally fairly widespread across all TVs right now. So if you spend like 700 or like $800 on a TV, you're going to have those features now. That really wasn't the case necessarily two years ago or even last year in some cases. So I think that's finally settled. And this year we saw like a focus on brightness, especially with OLED. Those are getting brighter and trying to close the gap with mini LEDs. So both Samsung and LG said they have the brightest OLEDs yet they've ever made. So they're trying to close that gap with mini LEDs from TCL and Heissin and just get the best of both worlds. But on the whole, it was like software. They're saying, oh, we can, you know, pick out the subject and scenes now and give them

• 28:58Speaker 03

  more depth and make them feel more lifelike. There were quite a few tricks using AI.

• 29:03Alex Cranz?

  What does that mean?

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, just making things feel more lifelike.

• 29:10Alex Cranz?

  That's one of those things I always hear. I don't know. I come from the, I want it to be exactly what the director intended, even though I don't have a 30,000 reference monitor.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Right. And they always say, well, you can turn all these AI features off if you want.

• 29:25Alex Cranz?

  But why put them in there to begin with? Jen, Andy, do you guys use the AI features on your TV?

• 29:30Speaker 04

  Oh, hell no.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  I don't know if mine has.

• 29:34Speaker 04

  I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if mine does honestly either. I assumed you were talking about motion smoothing, right? That's what we're talking about? No, I'm kidding.

• 29:43Alex Cranz?

  No, but motion smooth, like I just, I like, Chris, why do they keep putting all of these crappy things that we don't actually want on our TVs onto our TVs? And then you always get at least one person who's like, well, actually I like the motion smoothing. It makes the ball look fast. And like, that person's dumb.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  There are sickos out there who love motion smoothing, but I think, but I think all TVs are really pretty good now. It's like manufacturers are just trying to come up with ways to differentiate and like get you to upgrade after five or six years, or however long people keep TVs nowadays. So it's all software, software, software, and like very gradual picture refinements too. So that was the case this year, but it was nice. We saw a lot of very nice TVs and quite a few gimmicky TVs as well.

• 30:27Alex Cranz?

  We should talk about the gimmicky TV because this was one of my favorite things to come out of CES. And I think the worst part was I was reading your story earlier and I was like, wait, I, I almost want to buy this TV. Can you, what was it called? It was called like, it used a vacuum, but I cannot remember the name of the TV now.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a startup called Display. So I think this was their first time at CES. I haven't seen them before. But I saw like earlier in the show, there were some tweets about it and I was like, oh, this is gonna be the thing that everybody kind of like, oh, gets excited about is some kind of silly gimmick. So it costs $3,000. It's a 55 inch 4K OLED TV that is totally wireless. And so there are four batteries that you can hot swap around and charge and keep it running at all times. There's a base station where you plug in all your stuff, same sort of. Thing is the LG wireless thing that we talked about a few last week and but this one is totally wireless. Even the power is handled by batteries and it lasts. So if you watch TV for six hours a day,

• 31:27Speaker 03

  then it'll last a month and you can watch for seven point seven point five days straight through. And I've seen like already on Twitter, people are like, those batteries are nowhere near big enough to like have that kind of a charge.

• 31:38Alex Cranz?

  But there was a key thing about the batteries. Yeah, because it sucks. It sucks itself on.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:44Alex Cranz?

  To the wall, right?

• 31:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. So there's a vacuum suction system. So you hold the TV against the wall and after a few seconds like words up, you can hear it and then it just kind of like sticks to the wall and you just kind of back away and it's on there. You can like pull at it and tug pretty hard and it stays on there, but that is also battery powered. So in the event that all the batteries run out, your $3,000 TV will just fall to the floor.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  That's where we're at with the CES gimmicks.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  I'm all for the wireless stuff, though. Ultimately, you know, I don't think we'll one day we will have no wires in our home whatsoever. Anyway.

• 32:17Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  You know, our lighting doesn't need wires, you know, things just don't need wires. We have wireless power. I mean, that's something we saw the wireless power, which I know has been around. They've been promising for years, but it seems like it's getting closer.

• 32:29Alex Cranz?

  They'll get there one day.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah. Patience, patience, y'all. Just don't force the hand. You know, you've got both LG and this company doing it this year and it's like, you know, Wi-Fi is not there yet.

• 32:39Alex Cranz?

  Do you think like next year, Displace in partnership with the guys who who've been doing the wireless power for years, trying to keep that TV up on the wall, but just did they explain what they expected to happen? If the batteries ran out, like, were they? Were they like, oh, no, people will always remove their TV when not in use and put it in the closet?

• 33:00Speaker 03

  I mean, they're hot swappable. So I guess the idea is you'll always be like popping one or two in at a time and switching them out. And who wants to maintain that schedule, you know?

• 33:07Alex Cranz?

  That's so much work.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Having to remember that. And there's like a base station that charges all the batteries. But it's just like more and more anxiety that like, isn't even there right now. Who wants like, you know, like battery charge status for your TV?

• 33:19Speaker 02

  It's like range anxiety for your EV.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Right. It's the same exact thing, but for TVs now. Suction anxiety.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Yes, we have to pause a minute for that one.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  I'm so worried that my TV isn't sucking well enough.

• 33:38Alex Cranz?

  How do you go to bed at night? Like, oh no, I can't like, I would wake up every, every 30 minutes being like, is my TV still on my wall? I could just take it off.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Honey, did you take it down? I didn't take it down.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  Maybe we just need to position like a bunch of pillows under the TV so that it can fall gracefully. Some sort of net.

• 33:58Alex Cranz?

  I'm just thinking of like the person who has this and then also has all the Ikea blinds. And then they just have another room for all of the battery packs. They have to keep constantly charged. So they're, they're super smart of the future home works.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it's kind of, so I think they know it's a concept thing. They're only going to sell a hundred of them. So they're not saying, oh, this is going to be like a mainstream TV, but, but it got a lot of buzz on the show floor and was very CES.

• 34:22Alex Cranz?

  That TV without the suction, that's like a thousand dollar TV, right?

• 34:26Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah. It's just your standard like LG display, OLED panel, probably not even 55 inch, $700 or so. So.

• 34:33Alex Cranz?

  Can you vacuum with it?

• 34:35Speaker 03

  It doesn't have the vacuums.

• 34:37Alex Cranz?

  Okay. Well, it's even it's sucking. Like, I don't, I just don't know if you can suck other things. So we saw, we saw that TV movie guy, we saw that TV. But you also saw like a lot of, I feel like we saw a lot of like light stuff happening behind the TVs. I know we talked about Govee earlier, but there was a couple of other people doing that, that Philips Hue. What if we have lights behind the TVs?

• 34:59Speaker 02

  That's a big theme this year. I think there were like six maybe announcements around TV, audio, gaming, syncing. So yeah, the Govee sync box Nano Leaf had one, which used a camera. And then there was one from Twinkly, which is an Italian company. And that was, that's an app based one, which is similar to the Philips Hue app based one. But the Twinkly's costs $0, whereas Philips Hue's costs $130. But you know, they only work with their own light systems. So there's Philips Hue has a lot more options when it comes to immersive lighting. And then I think there were a couple of others and there are some that already exist.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  So now it seems like everyone thinks that everyone really wants flashing lights when they're watching TV. Chris, I don't know. What do you think?

• 35:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, this whole market is so fascinating to me.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I've done it once and I liked, like I tested one box and it was kind of fun for some movies, but I probably only turned it on once or twice after, you know, doing the testing because, you know, you don't watch the nightly news and see like black and red sort of flashing in the background. It is, it's really quite specific for certain entertainment. And then obviously gamers, I think gamers are really the, the market, no?

• 36:16Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, I don't really know anybody who like has these lights in their home.

• 36:21Alex Cranz?

  Oh, I definitely do.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  Certain people definitely do. Like there are, yeah, like I know a ton of people who don't. So.

• 36:26Alex Cranz?

  One out of four super nerds on this call has it. That is a small percentage of the wider population.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  The problem I have though is you can't sync it. Like I have a framed TV, so it doesn't really go with the whole lifestyle TV trend. There's definitely two diverging things here. So we got the frame because I love the idea of it not looking like a TV, but then I can't fit my lights, LED light strips behind it because it's on the wall and it's like this thin. So yeah, I mean, you can do it with other lights, but it seems more suited to gaming monitors, honestly, than to, than to TVs. Um, I know Thomas Ricker tested it out, tested out the Govey one, and he really liked that, the older Govey one. Now this is a new version, I think. But it's definitely a trend syncing with your content and audio. It's not just, so it's

• 37:15Speaker 02

  visual and audio. And the key difference here between say like what you can do with Philips Hue music sync in the app and doing this on the TV for all of these products is that it uses software to go across multiple lights. So like you can buy a light strip with a microphone and just sync that light strip to the beat if you want, one little light strip. But this way you can go across the entire ecosystem. So you could have your whole house flashing in the beat with the beat, which I might have to do for Halloween next year. That would be fun.

• 37:46Alex Cranz?

  It's, it's the worst thing in the world. I've done it and then it's just like, I just realized I'm too old. I was like, if, if I was like set, if I was like 18, 19 in a dorm room, it is the coolest thing in the world. I feel like so awesome, but I am about to hit 40. I am so like, no, I want my house to look like a house, not the inside of my computer.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Right. Not a disco party.

• 38:13Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 38:15Alex Cranz?

  But this, I was going back to like, this was how Philips Hue started, right? Like, it was originally, they had, they had these lights on the back of Philips TVs, like 10, 15 years ago, and they realized there was no market for it, and nobody bought them, and they got, like, or a few people, you know, a quarter of the nerdiest of the nerds bought it, and, and nobody else, and then it went away. And so I'm like, is it coming back just because it's easier? Just because more companies have figured out the secret sauce that Philips had all those years ago? Like, why is it back again?

• 38:46Speaker 03

  I think the less you need hubs and like all these accessories, like, that makes it more enticing. Like, if you don't have to like hook up, hook up like 10 things to make it work up and sync up. So the easier it gets, the more tempting it is for everybody, I think.

• 38:58Alex Cranz?

  That's fair, that's fair. You can actually, you don't have to put your camera, like, pacing at your TV all the time. It can just natively out of the back of the TV. Well, what kind of, so you saw, I know some of the other things you were kind of excited about. Uh, the CES was, we, we saw Roku announce their own TV sets, which I was less enthusiastic, but you seemed pretty enthusiastic about. So I'm willing to fight with you on the Vergecast now, if you want, Chris.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  I didn't even bother going and looking at their smart home stuff. They had all their smart home stuff out there, and I was like, okay. So I'll fight with you, Alex.

• 39:30Alex Cranz?

  Thank you. We're here to gang up on Chris. Andy, you have to, you have to side with Chris, okay?

• 39:35Speaker 03

  That's fine with me. Uh, so I think it's not so much a case about like the actual TVs themselves. They're going to be fine, decent TVs, but like more so Roku making its own TVs, quote unquote, like, we don't know who's making these. We thought it might be TSL or Heisen, and apparently it's not. So it could be like a Foxconn situation, or who knows? But the fact that they're like coming in now, like, apparently it wasn't enough to sell. They said like one out of every three TVs sold in the US, as is runs Roku software. And so now they want to like come in with their own TVs on top of all of that. And they're going to be priced like super aggressively. And, yeah, it's going to be pretty fascinating to see like, just like what happens throughout the industry. Because like, what are TSL and Heisen's going to do now? Like, are they going to still make Roku TVs at like very similar price points? Or like, will they go all in on Google TV now? Because Google making its own TV seems...

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Pretty unlikely, but I don't want to speak too soon. Who knows?

• 40:22Alex Cranz?

  Like Apple making their own car. Because like Roku, the reason that we know who TCL and Hyacinth are, the reason they've come as close as they have been to being like name brands that we all recognize in our homes is because of Roku, right? Like, these were two smaller Chinese TV manufacturers that nobody had heard of. And they were like, okay, our first inroads are gonna be on Roku. Is there like, were you seeing like friction there between these companies now that Roku's like, we're doing it on our own?

• 40:47Speaker 03

  That's a bit too early to say, I think. But like, all the TVs that were announced by TCL, this, the CS, those are only Google TVs, and also Hyacinth's the same thing. So all they showed off were Google TVs. Now, they come in waves. Like, sometimes TCL will do like a phase of like Google TVs, and then comes spring, they'll do Roku. So it's like, too early to say like what the ripple effect's gonna be. They know obviously that Roku is coming into like their, their space, and

• 41:10Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  we'll see like how good the TVs are, I'm very curious about. Because like TCL and Hyacinth make very phenomenal TVs for like $800, $1,000. So not sure that Roku can really like top them, just coming right out of the gate, but we'll see what they can manage. And I think, like, I'm not sure how it's gonna matter. Jesus.

• 41:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  I'm not sure if it's gonna matter if they don't actually like beat TCL or Hyacinth, like, based on, you know, just like sheer picture quality, because they're gonna be in like every Walmart and Target and be priced super aggressively. So I think they'll make a dent.

• 41:41Alex Cranz?

  That was like a big part of their selling point with those original TVs, right? Like, they were like, okay, you don't know who TCL is, you don't know who Hyacinth is, but we, you know Roku, and we worked with them to make sure the picture quality is good. So it's kind of like they're doing that again, but they're like, but we don't want to even partner with these brands. We just want our name on it. Shh, don't care about who it is.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Right, yeah. So they're gonna be out this spring, and they're coming like a ton of sizes. They start very cheap, and then even like the 75-inch model is like well under $1,000. So.

• 42:07Alex Cranz?

  Oh, wow.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. So they're, they're coming full force.

• 42:10Alex Cranz?

  Are you gonna be just surrounded by TVs when I get to the office? Softly weeping under your Roku pile.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  That is very likely. Come April, it's always that time of year where they start, they start coming in. So we shall see how they end up. But plus like Roku now, they can like have a full stack. They can like do all this advertising stuff. They already do a ton of advertising. That's like a huge part of their business and now they have the full stack of hardware and software. And so that just gives them even more power and control.

• 42:37Alex Cranz?

  Was there anything besides Roku that really just got you excited as far as TVs go? Despite it being kind of a meh, all right, year for TVs?

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Probably the Samsung QD OLED. I think it's kind of super fascinating how like within two years, Samsung displays kind of come into the OLED market and like beaten LG display at it. The QD OLEDs.

• 42:56Alex Cranz?

  Really?

• 42:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. So like it's more vivid color and the color brightness is better. So like it gets brighter and it looks better than LG's do. Samsung TVs still don't do a W vision, which is like their one like major come on already. Let's, let's just do this. I mean, you have, they've got Atmos, but no vision. So it's like they're just saving that for one year where there's nothing else to announce. And they're like, okay, now we have W vision as well. But like, so they said the, the QD OLED can reach up to 2,000 nits of brightness, which is like right up there with the very brightest mini LEDs. And like granted, that's just like one small part of the screen that's going to hit 2,000 nits. But that's like way better than, than where things were even like two or three years ago. So then like a very short time period, yeah, these OLEDs have gotten very, very good. So that's the TV I'm probably most excited about.

• 43:41Alex Cranz?

  So for years now, it's always been like, if somebody says, I want to buy a TV and I don't want it to be like a TCL or a Hi-Sense, I want to spend some money. You just say, go get an LG OLED. Are you, are you now saying maybe go look at those Samsungs?

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Samsung was great last year too. That was their first model last year was the S95B. And then Sony had their like top, top, top, and they use the same panel as Samsung, but Sony has better processing and like better sound and speakers and stuff like that. So if you want like the absolute best TV, Sony is usually the way to go. We didn't see them at CES this year. They didn't do TVs. They had a car, which we'll cover shortly, but they kind of, they kind of punted their TVs to later on. So we'll see what's coming from them pretty soon.

• 44:20Alex Cranz?

  All right. Well, speaking of, we're going to zoom to another break. And then when we're back, we're going to talk with.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  Alex.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  When is it enough?

• 44:29Alex Cranz?

  We're gonna talk with Andy about cars.

• 44:32Speaker 04

  Just don't say, "Start your engines."

• 44:35Alex Cranz?

  Start your...

• 44:36Speaker 04

  No.

• 44:37Alex Cranz?

  Damn it, I can't do it now. All right. Time for a pit stop. Yes. We're gonna take a pit stop and when we're back, we're gonna talk about cars. See you soon.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  If you're looking to hire, you need Indeed. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 45:36Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 45:57Speaker 08

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.

• 46:22Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

• 46:35Speaker 05

  This series is presented by EY.

• 46:42Alex Cranz?

  And we're back. Andy.

• 46:44Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 46:45Alex Cranz?

  How's the drive? How are the cars?

• 46:47Speaker 04

  I thought this year was surprisingly great for cars.

• 46:50Alex Cranz?

  Even though we had the big goofy concepts?

• 46:53Speaker 04

  Even that, because who doesn't love a big goofy concept? I mean, everyone loves, you know, a bunch of like, you know, a pastiche of like ridiculous ideas mashed together in the shape of a car. That's, that's, that's what's fun about CES is just looking at goofy concepts and imagining, you know, what is possibly something that could end up in an actual future production vehicle? And I think this year was, was, was a good year in terms of that. And we also got some, some actual cars, some real life cars that we'll see in real life in the future alongside the, the color changing cars and the, the weirder stuff. So for, for that reason, I thought it was a good balance between like actual legitimate, like this is going to be something that you could potentially end up buying in the future.

• 47:38Speaker 04

  And also just like, here's a little bit of a, you know, a whimsical bit of imagination for, for, for you to take with you. How about a color changing car? That, that would be great, right?

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Are you saying we're not going to get a color changing car? Cause that's what I want. I love that idea.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but it seems very unlikely that you could actually have a production car that's covered in e-ink. It just seems, I know you, Alex, you tell me, as soon as there's a hailstorm, like, what's going to happen to that car?

• 48:07Alex Cranz?

  Your car will look so sick and so busted.

• 48:12Alex Cranz?

  Like, no, no, no, this is the aesthetic.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  If that's what people want, if they're willing to take that risk in order to have a car that, that has 32 different color options as the BMW iVision D purports to have, then yeah, why not? Who knows?

• 48:27Speaker 02

  I loved, it felt very Back to the Future like though, right? And they change car colors in that or in some like sci-fi movies. I love concepts like this that feel like we could actually get something we've seen in the movies.

• 48:38Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Speaker 04

  It felt very like old school CES. Like I was like, oh yeah, people remembered what this show is truly about. And it's about presenting ridiculous concepts that probably don't have much chance of ever being a reality, but are still super fun to look at and think about and talk about and share videos about. And, you know, it makes us feel good and warm and fuzzy about the future.

• 49:03Alex Cranz?

  Well, we talked a bunch last week about the Aphila.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  Ah, the Aphila.

• 49:08Alex Cranz?

  The Aphila. But what were the cars that like, what were the concepts that you were actually excited about? Was it the Aphila?

• 49:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I, I think legitimately that the Aphila is a very, is an interesting concept because well, first of all, you've got Sony, who has not previously ever made a car. Deciding suddenly that they are going to make a car with Honda, uh, which is a company that has a ton of experience making cars. And it seems kind of like a natural pairing between the two of them, uh, to work together on a, on a production vehicle. So that's exciting. This is a new brand, a new name. It's ridiculous sounding, but then again, you know, all car companies tend to be named after like white dudes. So why not just have like a completely name made up name to name a car company after too? Like it's that, it's not too outlandish to think that we're just like making names up.

• 49:57Speaker 04

  I mean, that's, that is what branding is all about is just inventing a new word by sticking a vowel at the, the, the front and end of the word feel. Sure. Why not? So I think that that's exciting. I think Sony has a lot to offer the car space, uh, especially when it comes to things like computers, electronics, entertainment, sound system, and you know, all infotainment, all of the things that CES is typically about. You know, sort of like the future of the in-car experience in a lot of ways. And I think Sony has a lot to bring to that conversation, which I think is really interesting. And, uh, and they've, they've set a production schedule for themselves. They say in three years, we'll have this car. It's going to be available. You'll be able to drive it. You'll be able to buy it.

• 50:38Alex Cranz?

  But is that real?

• 50:40Speaker 04

  I mean, like, maybe it's, it is like, you know, it's, they're not just like some fly by night company that can like make up deadlines for themselves too. I mean,

• 50:48Alex Cranz?

  They're not displaced. Yeah.

• 50:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. And Sony is a gigantic, you know, uh, global conglomerate that has shareholders and expectations. And like, you know, and they're, and they're not run by a guy named Elon Musk. So they're, you know, they potentially have like a little bit more of, I think, a little bit of credibility. I think when it comes to, uh, say the stuff, I mean, like Chris, you tell me, you know, when Sony, Sony obviously didn't have any TVs this year, but when they come out and say that they were going to do something, they tend to follow up on that for the most part. Right?

• 51:16Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 04

  And, you know, the PS5 is now apparently like readily available to anyone who wants to buy it. So it stands to reason that they'll have a car eventually too. So. I think that's kind of exciting, you know, like a brand new brand, a new company that has not previously been in this space. Now, there's a lot of, I think, challenges along the way. I think we've, we've seen companies come out that are non-car companies that say that they want to make cars and it has not worked out. So wait for them. I mean, Dyson is like the one that sort of springs to mind immediately when they said that they were going to make an electric car. And everyone's like, oh, sure. Yeah. You, you made of a really cool vacuum. Why, why wouldn't you be able to make a car? And so just because you make an amazing TV or a console or something like that does not necessarily translate into

• 52:02Speaker 04

  the, the business of making a cool car. But again, Honda, you know, Honda does make cars. So.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Well, because they're working with an actual car company, it makes it like 80% more likely to happen.

• 52:13Speaker 04

  I agree.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, it gives it, it gives it some cachet.

• 52:16Speaker 04

  And Honda's not going to like, you know, stake its name on a project that I think ends up flopping this, you know, with like, you know, necessarily as well. And I think that they have a stake in this to make sure that it happens. And Honda is a company that's also working with one of the biggest car companies in the world, GM, on electric car technology. So there's like a lot of through lines here that could be really interesting, I think, depending on how this exactly shakes out. So I think that that's exciting.

• 52:44Alex Cranz?

  Could it also just end up being like that very first iTunes phone? It's like Sony Ericsson or something was just like, and we had iTunes on it. Bam.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. The rocker.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  I don't know. I, I think like, if you went up to somebody who has like a PS5, but you can drive it. Like that's like, people would be very excited for something like that. So I think that there, you know, there's maybe like a little bit more like, kind of like as a foundation potentially. But then again, the car itself was a little silly looking. It was not like the most like, design wise, it was not the most like a resting vehicle that I had ever seen. It looked like

• 53:21Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 04

  a mashup of like a Porsche 911 and a Lucid Air. So it was not, they were not breaking new ground, design wise, but at the same time, maybe that's good. Maybe like, you know, they're setting their sights, you know, somewhere more realistic. They're not trying to reinvent the wheel necessarily. And I think it's, it's there, there's a strong possibility that, and if I turn out to be wrong, then you can bring this podcast back and shove it in my face and show me how stupid I sounded.

• 53:47Alex Cranz?

  We're just gonna play clips of it if you're wrong.

• 53:51Speaker 04

  To humiliate me. I would welcome that.

• 53:53Alex Cranz?

  Well, what other concepts did you see that you were like, kind of excited about? Or it doesn't have to be concepts, it can also be real cars that we know will actually exist next year.

• 54:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, so like Volkswagen came with a real car. They have the ID.7, which is a family-sized sedan, their next global EV after the ID.4, which has been on sale for a number of years. And I think it's kind of cool that it's a sedan. I mean, that's not something that most carmakers are proposing these days, especially American carmakers. And we saw that with Ram at the show, where they had their Ram 1500 Revolution, which was a big-ass truck. And that makes sense, because Americans love their big-ass trucks. But here comes the Germans, and they're like, oh, but what about the sedan, yeah? And I think that that's kind of cool, because I think like, they can't all be giant, humongous trucks with

• 54:44Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 54:45Speaker 04

  batteries as heavy as a Honda Accord, because then you're kind of negating the whole idea of electrification. The industry is shifting to electric. If they're all trucks, we're just going to end up in the same place that we are today with a lot of environmental disaster, basically, because of the mining that needs to take place, the effect that these heavy vehicles have on our roads today. They're way too heavy to really, our road infrastructure already sucks at supporting Ram 1500s and their ilk. And I think the fact that a battery-powered Ram 1500 would be exponentially heavier than the gas-powered one is just gonna, you're gonna see sinkholes across the nation as a potential outgrowth of that. So I thought it was cool that Volkswagen was like, hey, what about a sedan?

• 55:30Speaker 04

  I don't know, we'll see how well that sells in America. But I think like, you need to have all the form factors. If we're gonna be like, an electric car world now with no more gas, that's gonna take a couple decades to do. And they can't all be trucks and SUVs. There needs to be a mix of form factors. And the sedan is obviously, I think, a very important one to keep in the mix. And so I'm glad to see Volkswagen's keeping, keeping the torch lit for the sedan, the family sedan.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, honestly, the EVs are never gonna take off until you take, until you get the soccer mom into the EV. And right now, there is not a decent vehicle for a family.

• 56:04Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  I have, I don't, and you know, you really

• 56:08Speaker 02

  We're the ones on the road all the time.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I know. We need a minivan, too. There needs to be electric Honda Odysseys, electric Chrysler Pacificas, you know, Kia Sorentos. There needs to be all the beaters and the jalopies and the junkers. We need all of those to be electric because that's the only way we're going to get like carbon out of the situation altogether. And obviously, we need bikes and scooters and like smaller form factor vehicles as well. And there were a lot of those at CES and there were some cool ones to see. I think Cake, which is a

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Great band.

• 56:40Speaker 04

  A great, a great 90s band, but also a great Swedish electric motorbike company. They released at the show a pretty cool looking e-bike that's for the US for the first time. Really great looking. The design is awesome. I know Thomas Ricker has tested out one of their vehicles in the past. He's really excited about this new one that they've got coming out. So more smaller form, sedans, obviously, but also more smaller form, weird smart cars, neighborhood, electric vehicles. There were a lot of those at the show, too. And I think that that's, you know, like a neighborhood full of electric golf carts that can go 30 miles per hour would be a really interesting concept that you'll never see.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  You know, that's actually my neighborhood.

• 57:21Speaker 04

  Well, do you live in the villages in Florida?

• 57:23Speaker 02

  I was like, that's my, that's my mom's neighborhood currently.

• 57:28Speaker 04

  But we need to get our seniors into electric golf carts. And so those are, those are a good way to do it. Those were like the main concept, I would say, the BMW color changing car, the Volkswagen sedan, the Ram truck. And there were some other, there were some other ones as well. But I thought most of the show was focused on what's going on inside the car. Screen stuff, tech stuff. We were seeing like Chrysler and reimagining sort of the cockpit. BMW was like, hey, how about no screens, but your windshield is an AR screen. And everyone went, no, that's a bad idea.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Bring the Pontiac S-Tag back.

• 58:07Speaker 04

  Because we need to see through the windshield so that we don't run over people. And if I'm getting notifications about all of my, you know, I'm getting Slack notifications on my windshield while I'm driving, that doesn't, that doesn't seem safe, but it's an interesting concept. Uh, and that's what CES is all about is interesting concepts.

• 58:24Alex Cranz?

  Well, and this is, we've, we've still got the, the Detroit Auto Show coming up pretty quickly, right? And that's where we'll see the more actual.

• 58:32Speaker 04

  Actually, no, they've, uh, they've moved the date of that. It used to be right after CES, which was always, uh, fun for all of the auto reporters and their, uh, deteriorating health. Uh, but now they've moved it to the, the summer. I think that Detroit realized they can't compete anymore since CES has become such a car show over the years, that they just threw their hands up and said, screw it. We're going to move the show to the summertime. Um, so now it's Detroit in the summertime and you know, auto shows in general have like waned in relevancy over the last decade or so. But CES still stays, has remained, I think, a pretty relevant auto show. And, uh, I don't think the pandemic has really, uh, had an effect in that, in that respect. It's still, is still a pretty great car show, and I think it's going to remain, uh, a really important car show, I think, moving, moving ahead.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  Well, and they have tractors and boats and stuff then.

• 59:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:21Speaker 04

  It's like. All manners of moving, moving vehicles. There were electric boats, there was tractors. Yeah. I mean, like, that's, you know, I thought it was a positive development to see that, that, you know, the, the electrification shift and also more AI focused, uh, software applications were also making their way into it's like beyond like the consumer vehicle and into more industrial and commercial applications. Um, which I think is really interesting, especially for autonomy. Uh, because that's like, when you think about like a tractor, you don't need a guy sitting in a tractor, driving that back and forth across the field. A robot could very easily handle that type of situation. So that's a really interesting application.

• 1:00:01Speaker 04

  I think a lot more realistic application than your robot taxis and your Tesla full self-drivings and things like that is something where you've got like a contain, you know, sort of like a very well-defined operational domain, like a field, like a soybean field or a cornfield. Like that makes a whole lot more sense to, to, uh, have an autonomous driving bit of software, uh, doing that as opposed to your Tesla Model 3.

• 1:00:27Alex Cranz?

  Well, there was, I will say, I was watching NBC this weekend after the show and there was a whole segment about autonomous electric race cars.

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:37Alex Cranz?

  Did you, did you check out the, the autonomous race cars?

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  I have not personally checked it out, but I've, I have been pitched by the Indy Autonomous Racing Organization many times and they, they seem like it's really, they've, I'd love to check that out someday. They're, they're an exciting organization. They, yeah, the, the, all the vehicles are driverless. They operate, obviously on a, on a racetrack and it's all about speed, which is not something that you typically see AV developers focused on. They're all focused on safety and following the rules and making sure that we don't run over pedestrians.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  This is just go for it. Knock everything over.

• 1:01:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. And the racing guys are like, let's just make this go as fast as we possibly can, which is kind of exciting. And I think you're starting to see like motorsports are like really kind of like gaining prominence in the US, especially with like the popularity of F1. And then you've also got obviously Formula E, which is I think gaining a lot of popularity as well. So this is like, this could be like a next, a possible next step beyond Formula E autonomous racing vehicles, I think is a, is a very cool concept. And to be, maybe like, you know, they'll get picked up for like a Netflix series or something someday.

• 1:01:42Alex Cranz?

  But like, would you really watch two computers just race each other? Isn't that just like watching the bots in Mario Kart race each other?

• 1:01:50Speaker 04

  People watch the robots fight, right? Isn't there like bot wars?

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say robot wars.

• 1:01:54Speaker 04

  Robot wars. People love-

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  I watch my vacuums fight each other. It's so much fun.

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  People love that stuff. So the idea, because like, there is like, there are human, there's still a human element. Like somebody had to develop the software and the vehicle. There are people behind this robot that are, that are racing on the track. And while there may not be a guy in the car itself, like there is still some sort of human element that was, you know, and human ingenuity and, uh, you know, all the effort and work that went into making those, those cars drive themselves that I think you can still celebrate and feel excited for.

• 1:02:25Alex Cranz?

  Well, you almost got me excited about autonomous racing. So well done. Hell, yeah. All right. Well, you guys have got to go recover from an absolutely exhausting, but very awesome CES. I'm going to let you guys go. This Friday, we are going to be back with another episode of The Vergecast. And next Wednesday, we will be back with even more CES coverage. This time, we're going to be joined by Monica and Victoria, talking all the wearables and all of the laptops and tablets and stuff. It's going to be a lot of fun. But for now, you can find everybody on Twitter. Andy is at Andy J. Hawk. Gin is at JP2E. And Chris Welch is at Chris Welch. I'm at Alex H. Krantz. Stay classy. Have

• 1:03:10Alex Cranz?

  fun. See you on Friday.

• 1:03:12Nilay Patel?

  Peace.

• 1:03:21Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge. And Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web, and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 1:03:43Speaker 08

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, you won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online. And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.

• 1:04:07Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  This series is presented by EY. If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month end close, it's time to get Brex AF, agentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at brex.com/af.