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CES 2018 was again a step forward in digitalization of automotive and Qt was more strongly presented than ever before (see our event page, listing some of the demos). The major trends of the event were even bigger screens, an increasing number and variety of different screens, and further integration of digital assistants. One of the less publicly visible items was the rollout of solutions for functional safety in digital clusters. On the floor, you couldn’t miss the number of electric bike concepts from very different manufacturers. It was our pleasure to demonstrate all the hot topics in our demos too. Surprisingly, the most commented on demo was not the great digital cockpit or fancy cluster with its 3d graphics, but the low-end e-bike demo – “how on earth is the UI so fluid without any acceleration?” It was the true proof of concept. You can see the details and the story behind the demo here: https://youtu.be/HoHE7tbsUMw.
Our partners were again strongly presented at CES 2018. As typical hardware and OS vendors were actively promoting the support for our technology with nice “Built with Qt” stickers and onscreen implementations. Some experts were even able to spot the hidden gems, i.e. implementations without the logo. The “Built with Qt” solutions presented ranged from technology demonstrations and concept cockpits to production-ready cars. The best examples you can find by looking at the QtProject Twitter account (https://twitter.com/qtproject). Based on the quick poll with Qt participants, no clear winner demo was awarded. Personally, I would like to test the Aston Martin with the Qt cockpit demoed by QNX Software Company.
It is clear that the new MBUX is the industry benchmark in terms of both technical and user experience. Also, we were asked by multiple customers how it has been done and which technologies were used. Furthermore, the following week has just made the voice stronger – the whole industry is seeing MBUX as the new benchmark. Fortunately, the Qt strengths resonate well with it. We have a toolchain covering both 2D and 3D UI-designs, Qt making collaboration of designers and developers very iterative and the ecosystem is widespread with a variety of solutions available. We are looking forward to the automotive year of 2018 with great concepts from all continents. It is less than 360 days to CES 2019!
