- Hi, it's Jonathan Strickland
with How Stuff Works Now.
We are at CES 2016, and
one of the big themes
this year is high tech automobiles.
(hypnotic music)
Now before the show
started, we had heard rumors
that Ford was going to announce
an amazing partnership.
We thought it was gonna be with Google.
It turns out, no, it's with Amazon.
Ford is going to start
to start to incorporate
the Alexa technology in its vehicles.
Alexa is the digital
voice concierge service
that works with Amazon's Echo.
So not only will you be able
to talk to your car and get
real time information about
how your vehicle is doing,
it will actually interact
with your smart home.
So you can tell your car, as
you're driving into the garage,
to open the garage door,
or to turn on the lights,
or to change the thermostat.
It's pretty phenomenal
stuff, all in a car.
Now we're over at the Volkswagen booth,
and Volkswagen has a concept
electric vehicle on display.
Hopefully, to repair
some of the damage from
the clean diesel scandal of late 2015.
This is called the BUDD-e,
which is adorable.
And not only is it an electric vehicle,
it's actually an electric platform.
It has two electric
motors, one in the front,
one in the back, that allows
for a nice flat cabin.
It has lots of weird features, like
wireless inductive charging
for your electronics,
as well as voice recognition software.
And it recognizes, not just
one voice, but multiple voices.
So if you're sitting in the back seat,
and you think you need
some air conditioning,
you can pipe up, and the
car will adjust for you.
It's a pretty awesome concept, but,
will we ever actually
see it in production?
Maybe or maybe not, but I'm sure we'll see
at least some of the technology
make its way into future
models down the line.
Arright guys, now we are
in the booth of Faraday.
This company had incredible
buzz going into CES 2016
because no one really
knew what they were up to.
This is what they were up to,
designing a car from the ground up.
It answers the question,
"What would happen
"if you combined the auto industry
"with a high tech startup company?"
This is what happens, it's
a modular car platform.
So what we're seeing is
a race car concept, but,
the platform underneath
could actually be adjusted
to any number of vehicle
designs, from SUV to compact car.
It's all in a modular
battery formation, so you can
take batteries out if you
don't need that much power.
For a race car, you're gonna soup it up,
you're gonna add more batteries in,
and then you change the
body of the car as well.
Not only that, but they have
modular drive train outlays
that they can put on this thing.
They can make it
autonomous if you want it.
They can make it a connected car.
Pretty much every high-tech
concept you've heard of
for a vehicle could be
incorporated in the Faraday model.
And this is incredibly exciting.
It took 18 month for them
to go from basic concept
to what you see behind you.
That is lightning fast
in the auto industry.
If you wanna talk disruptive
technologies, take a look.
This is it.
Well guys, that wraps up this episode of
How Stuff Works Now,
I hope you enjoyed it.
We're in high gear here at CES.
Keep checking back at
now.howstuffworks.com
for all the coolest
stories going on right now.
(hypnotic music)
