After introducing a six-person self-driving box and a frickin' ridable drone concept last year, GM's latest luxury self-driving EV idea is much more grounded. The InnerSpace concept looks like a futuristic car from the outside—but inside, there's a two-seat loveseat surrounded by one of the widest screens we've ever seen. There's no steering wheel or pedals, of course. Instead, there's a built-in ottoman and a compartment for slippers and a blanket. Where GM's going, you won't need any sort of manual control.

Even stepping into the car seems like something from science fiction: the doors pop out, while the large windshield/sunroof rises up. As usual, concepts like the InnerSpace are a way for car designers to flex their muscles and imagine what future vehicles could actually be like. While it certainly seems out of reach for most people, perhaps Cadillac's more affluent clientele would be intrigued by owning a personal spaceship. At least it's better for the environment than full-sized luxury SUVs. 

“Electrification and autonomous driving will fundamentally change the role of vehicles and the experiences customers have with them,” Bryan Nesbitt, GM's executive director of Global Advanced Design, said in a statement. “We’re exploring where that will go with these innovative concepts, envisioning mobility as an ally of wellness, giving customers the ultimate luxury, more personal time rather than taking it.”

As someone who hates the act of driving, but lives in a place where I can't avoid it, it'll be interesting to see how car makers turn these self-driving concept vehicles into a reality. And maybe after getting these wild designs through their systems, they'll show us more concepts for self-driving family EVs.

HTC Vive has revealed a wrist tracker for its Focus 3 headset. The device is 85 percent smaller and 50 percent lighter than the Vive Focus 3 controller.

The brand says the wearable can track your arm from fingertips to elbow. The Focus 3's cameras can monitor LEDs for standalone tracking. As such, attaching the Wrist Tracker to an object allows the headset to track it with six degrees of freedom.

With the help of high-frequency IMU (inertial measurement unit) data and an advanced kinematic model, Focus 3 will still know the exact position of your hand and wrist when the tracker isn't in the cameras' line of sight. It can predict your pose too, so if you, for instance, reach behind your head with a tennis racket to play a smash shot, the headset should still have a good idea of what you're doing.

The Vive Wrist Tracker will be released in early 2022, starting in the US. It costs $129/€129/£119. HTC Vive also revealed new accessories for the Focus 3, including a multi battery charger and charging case, in part to reduce downtime between sessions.

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Many ride hailing drivers won't have to mount their phones in the near future. Google is partnering with Lyft and Kakao Mobility to bring their driver apps to Android Auto sometime this summer. If you work for either service, you'll accept and navigate rides directly from your car's touchscreen. This won't help you much if you're a passenger, of course, but it will give drivers a much clearer view of the route ahead.

It should be much easier to use wireless Android Auto if you are driving. Motorola is releasing a $90 MA1 adapter on January 30th that enables wire-free use on cars where Android Auto is already available.

The additions come alongside other car-related integrations unveiled at CES, such as starting and unlocking BMW cars, UWB car door access from your pocket and key sharing. Google Assistant car control and YouTube are also coming to compatible cars from Volvo and others. While it will take months for all of Google's plans to unfold, it's evident Android is about to play a more important role in vehicles — whether or not you're at the wheel.

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GM’s BrightDrop has secured additional orders for its all-electric EV600 and EV410 delivery vans. Walmart has reserved 5,000 of the vehicles from the company, Brightdrop announced on Wednesday. Like FedEx, which received the first part of a 500 vehicle order from BrightDrop at the end of last year, the retailer hopes to have an all-electric delivery fleet by 2040. Walmart said it will use the vehicles as part of its InHome delivery business. In 2022, the company plans to expand the availability of the service to 30 million US households by the end of the year. Walmart estimates its first vans from BrightDrop could be on the road as early as 2023.

Alongside the news from Walmart, BrightDrop announced that FedEx had reserved priority production for 2,000 additional EV600 delivery vans, and could order as many as 20,000 more over the next few years. The all-wheel-drive EV600 has 600 cubic feet of cargo storage space and can travel up to 250 miles on a single charge. It also includes auto-locking doors and motion-activated interior lighting.

GM and BrightDrop aren’t the only companies providing electric vans to some of the biggest parcel delivery companies on the planet. In 2020, FedEx ordered 10,000 EVs from UK-based Arrival. Meanwhile, electric transport startup Rivian is producing 100,000 delivery vans for Amazon.

E-Ink technology has proven itself useful in many applications since its advent in 1997 — from digital whiteboards to laptop displays, even personal accessories. At CES 2022, that technology finally made its way to the automotive industry as BMW unveiled an e-ink vehicle exterior that can change colors depending on weather and traffic conditions, or just the driver's mood. 

In answer to your first question, no, this futuristic feature is nowhere near production ready despite appearing at the show on a live demonstration vehicle, dubbed the BMW iX Flow featuring E Ink. 

The electrophoretic coloring material itself is applied as a vehicle body wrap but works just like it e-ink displays do in your Kindle. The wrap is embedded with millions of microcapsules each containing a negatively-charged white pigment and a positively charged-black pigment. Depending on the setting, applying an electrical charge to the material will cause either the white or black pigments to rise to the top of the microcapsule, changing the vehicle's color in moments. 

While the current iteration can only swap between a pair of colors, the palette could eventually be expanded to display a rainbow's worth of differing shades. "This gives the driver the freedom to express different facets of their personality or even their enjoyment of change outwardly, and to redefine this each time they sit into their car," Stella Clarke, Head of Project for the BMW iX Flow featuring E Ink, said in a prepared statement. "Similar to fashion or the status ads on social media channels, the vehicle then becomes an expression of different moods and circumstances in daily life."

E-ink exterior displays could also prove useful in more practical applications such as changing colors depending on the weather to increase a vehicle's battery life (and therefore, range) in cold climates or reduce the need for air conditioning in balmy weather.

GM's electric vehicle debuts at CES 2022 involve much more than just the Chevy Silverado. The automaker has teased plans for Blazer and Equinox EVs that would respectively arrive in spring and fall 2023. The Equinox should be relatively affordable, too, with the compact SUV expected to carry a starting price around $30,000 before tax and incentives.

The company was shy about technical details, but did say the Equinox would be available in LT and RS trim levels, and sell to fleets as well as everyday customers. The design (above) isn't a radical one given Chevy's existing EV aesthetics, but it is considerably more aerodynamic than the current machine.

The two extra models make sense in light of GM's electrification strategy. If the company is going to exclusively sell EVs by 2035, it needs to make affordable rides that fulfill the roles occupied by current mainstream cars. That means augmenting or replacing its most recognizable models, not just launching ground-up designs like the Bolt or Cadillac Lyriq. While the Blazer and Equinox won't be as exciting as flagships like the Hummer EV, they could easily form the backbone of GM's lineup in the near future.

Ubisoft is bringing its game subscription service to Xbox. Ubisoft+ is currently available on PC and cloud gaming services like Google Stadia and Amazon Luna. Subscribers can access more than 100 Ubisoft titles (as well as DLC and monthly bonuses) for a monthly fee. The lineup includes titles like Assassins Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion, Far Cry 6 and Riders Republic.

The publisher didn't provide a timeline for bringing Ubisoft+ to Xbox. Nor has it revealed pricing. The PC-only subscription is $15 and a PC and cloud plan is $18 per month. It's unclear whether Ubisoft will offer a console-only plan.

When Ubisoft+ does arrive on Xbox consoles, it will join a subscription service from a rival publisher. EA Play, formerly known as EA Access, has been on Xbox since 2014 (and PlayStation since 2019). Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can access EA Play titles at no extra cost.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Extraction will be available on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass when it debuts on January 20th. Along with up to two teammates, you can take on hordes of aliens in the tactical shooter, which is based on a Rainbow Six Siege mode called Outbreak. Siege is already available on Xbox Game Pass and via cloud gaming on Game Pass Ultimate, and it's coming to PC Game Pass on January 20th as well.

Instagram has started to test the chronological feed it promised last month. The company has started to test the new versions of its feed, which will allow users to switch between chronological and algorithmically-sorted feeds, says Instagram chief Adam Mosseri.

Mosseri first shared plans to bring back a chronological feed in December during a Senate hearing on Instagram’s impact on teens and kids’ mental health. The company later confirmed that it was working on two new versions of its feed, one called “favorites,” and one called “following.”

In his latest comments, Mosseri said that Instagram will soon allow users to toggle between three different feeds: home, favorites and following. Home will be similar to Instagram’s current feed, which ranks posts based on what you're likely to be interested in, while “favorites” will be a dedicated feed for the friends you care most about. “Following” will be a chronological feed just for accounts you follow, much like Instagram’s default feed prior to 2016.

Screenshot via Twitter

“We think it's important that you can get to a chronological feed, if you're interested quickly and see the latest that has been posted by the accounts that you follow,” Mosseri said in a video.

Importantly, the “home” feed will also see significant changes. Mosseri said that the main feed would “have more and more recommendations over time.” The company has already been testing adding recommendations from non-followed accounts and Reels into its main feed, so it sounds like Instagram plans to double down on these efforts. Last week, Mosseri said the company was going to “rethink what Instagram is” in 2022, and would focus on Reels and building more tools for creators.

For now, the new feed changes won’t be rolling out widely. Mosseri said the new feed tests “are already out or going out over the next couple of weeks,” with the “full experience” expected to launch for everyone in the “first half of this year.”

Volvo will debut “Ride Pilot,” its take on a Tesla-like autonomous driving feature, in California, the automaker announced on Wednesday during CES 2022. Once it’s approved for use on highways, Volvo says it will offer Ride Pilot as a paid subscription add-on for a new electric SUV it plans to reveal later this year. It will later bring the feature to other markets globally.

The company worked with Zenseact and LiDAR developer Luminar to create Ride Pilot, and it’s currently testing the feature in Sweden. As you might guess from Luminar’s involvement, Ride Pilot will utilize LiDAR technology, an approach that puts Volvo at odds with Tesla. CEO Elon Musk famously called a “crutch” during a 2018 earnings call. According to Volvo, Ride Pilot will utilize a Luminar LiDAR sensor complemented by eight cameras, 16 ultrasonic sensors and five radars to enable the software to judge depth. In combination

“When we say self-driving, we mean self-driving. So this will be a feature or function where the car is actually responsible for the driving so you will not need to keep your hands on the steering wheel and you will not need to keep your eyes off the road,” said Martin Kristensson, head of AD and mobility at Volvo.

Developing...

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Volvo says it will be the first automaker to offer direct integration with Google Home in its cars. You'll be able to control certain functions remotely via Google Assistant. You might tell your phone to lock the doors or ask a smart speaker to start warming up your car as you're getting ready to leave home.

Two-factor authentication is needed for "more sensitive commands," like unlocking the doors. You can also learn info related to your car through Google Assistant.

More features will be added later, such as the option to schedule charging. Volvo will roll out Google Home integration in the coming months. To use it, you'll need an Android-powered infotainment system that's connected to the Volvo Cars app and a Google Assistant-enabled device.

It's not the first time we've seen integration with connected home platforms in cars. GM and BMW owners can control smart home devices from vehicles with built-in Alexa, while Samsung and Google brought a SmartThings dashboard to some models with Android Auto. Still, Google Home is one of the more prominent connected home platforms around. If you have a smart speaker with Google Assistant enabled, these features might come in useful.

In addition, YouTube will be the first video streaming service on Volvo's infotainment system. You'll be able to download the app from the Play Store. The automaker offers unlimited data in certain markets, so you might be able to watch as many videos as you like without worrying about busting your data allowance.

For safety reasons, you'll only be able to watch YouTube videos on the screen when the car's stationary. That will ensure Volvo avoids the kind of controversy Tesla was embroiled in recently, when it emerged that games were playable on the infotainment system while a car was moving. The company said it would disable that option after the NHTSA said it was looking into the matter.

Other apps that Volvo owners will soon be able to download to their infotainment system include navigation apps Sygic and Flitsmeister; charging apps ChargePoint and Plugshare; and parking services SpotHero and ParkWhiz.

Earlier this week, Volvo announced it will use Qualcomm's car chipsets to power the infotainment systems in Polestar 3 and its upcoming electric EV. The automaker claims Snapdragon Cockpit Platforms will make the systems more responsive and more than twice as fast.