One of the “smartest” tech gadgets of the day was a Mercedes-Benz

What does storage have to do with cars? Well, just like any cloud enabled device, storage is at the core…and cars are no different.

Smarter cars are all the rage at CES this year…the idea that the car is quickly morphing into tech gadgets (albeit one of the more expensive).

That is what I gleaned from the Mercedes-Benz keynote – my first assignment at CES this morning.

“Just like a smart phone can be so much more than a means of communication – a smart vehicle can be so much more than a mode of transportation.”  – Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman – Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz

Dr. Z, as he is called, took us through Mercerdes-Benz vision for not automobiles, but auto-mobility  (I gotta tell you, his keynote was packed with tweetable quotes, I could not keep up. Good thing we got a transcript of the presentation at the end). Back to this auto-mobility concept….the car has finally become a digital companion, and Mercedes-Benz laid down the law with their Declaration of Automotive Independence which includes 5 “freedoms”.

• Freedom of Time:  With Mercedes 2nd generation Mbrace technology, the car talks to the cloud and vice versa.  Daimler backend servers with secure VPN connections feed applications and updates from the cloud – to the car, and vice versa…automatically.
• Freedom of Speech:  The car will understand us, our habits, choices, predict our moves, and interact with our social networks.  They will become a greater extension of ourselves.  Sound familiar?  Smart phone, tablet, ultrabook…
• Freedom of Access:  Car2Go service provides access to cars to get from point A to point B. And, Car2gether is a P2P ride sharing program where you can buddy-up with others needing to go to the same destination.
• Freedom of Energy: Exactly as is sounds…electric, hydrogen…the post-oil era.
• Freedom of Information:  Think of it as crowd sourcing applied to traffic. Cars will be able to warn each other of delays miles ahead, as well as dangerous conditions (e.g. icy roads) all in the name of managing the the over 1 Billion cars we will have on the road in the near future.

When we typically think of tech gadgets, we think handheld communications devices, gaming devices, now smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks…but if you paid any attention to some of the stuff in the North Hall of the LVCC…the car just might be the next great frontier for CE and technology.

Stay tuned on seagate.com/ces.

Even more from CES.