Despite the 2024 CES being a monumental disappointment, there was a notable winner inside the show and amazingly, a winner outside of the show that reinforced the Caffeinated Geek’s CES award for best-in-show. Amazingly, not a SINGLE YouTube star recognized it … it appears to me that a few things were “in-play” for their videos. I’m relatively certain that some were being paid for their “reviews” … looking at things they thought were just amazing, were the same items I didn’t waste a moment of my time looking at. It was pretty obvious to me what these items were in context to the world’s largest high-tech show. Those that weren’t being surreptitiously paid to promote boring/old/ridiculous/useless stuff, decided to showcase what I would consider (around 98% of the time) as junk. The videos I watched had me wanting to scream at the TV a single word … IDIOT! Another useless and not-so-cute robot bringing a cheeseburger to your table, isn’t earth-shaking tech. I wrote to several of these “experts” that the viewing public would better served if they didn’t attend CES, or hire someone who actually understands what is being shown and explain it to them. Bear in mind, I’m talking about some of the largest tech channels on YouTube. One of the YT stars has over 18,000,000 viewers and from watching his videos, he’s as clueless as even the smallest YT “tech” channels …
These YT posers aside, there was a obvious winner … and that was in the West Hall. Actually, it wasn’t a single company … the fact that so many of these particular companies DID understand what true high-tech advancement was at relatively the same time, from a profession not particularly predisposed to world-changing tech was pleasing to me. So, the winner is: Electrification of essentially all machinery for heavy construction. To build a high-tech world you need factories, labs, warehouses, roads, drainage and much, much more. By converting to the construction of an all-electric fleet, everything mentioned earlier can be built faster with much lower cost, safer personnel and greater reliability. The truly vast amounts of multiple different liquids, chemicals, filters, fittings, difficult time-consuming manual labor and expensive parts does nothing but hurt productivity. Electrification fixes all of these problems in one fell swoop. The implications of this are nothing short of mind-boggling. Musk is known for his quick construction times … think about how much faster a factory could be completed if there were no constant petroleum-powered machinery breakdowns or time wasted just trying to keep the bulldozers and earthmovers maintained. The fact that some of these “heavys” can be remotely controlled means fewer accidents and less fatigued workers. The “Fatal Four” leading causes of construction deaths (falls, struck by equipment, caught between objects and electrocutions) account for over 60% of all construction-related deaths according to OSHA. The implications are obvious even to the most uninitiated. The highest death rate of any industry is construction … take away some of those causes and productivity goes up as well.
As I began putting in my 45+ miles of walking according to my pedometer, I immediately noticed that there were Tesla autos everywhere. Like EVERYWHERE. So many in fact, that I first thought that Musk was flooding the streets with his cars during this high tech show as a show of force of Tesla. Literally, you couldn’t look at Las Vegas Blvd. and not see multiple Tesla’s … 24hrs a day. And it was a pretty convincing demonstration of “tour de force” for Tesla.
Finally at one point my feet surrendered, and I called for an Uber. An extremely clean, new Tesla Model 3 showed up to my surprise. Talking to the driver, I found he was one of their top drivers and as such he had been given the right to lease a long-term Tesla from Hertz at an extremely favorable rate that even included insurance. As I took more Uber rides, 100% of the drivers said they would NEVER own another gas-powered car again. One driver told us he loved the car so much, that he returned the leased car to Hertz and bought one directly from Tesla. It was then that I realized from what I’ve seen at the CES West Hall with electrified heavy machinery and the professional Uber drivers professed love for Tesla cars that petroleum vehicles are little more than an anachronism now. Notably, not a single car manufacturer at CES displayed anything powered by gasoline.
With heavy industry adopting electrification, the circle is complete for ground travel. You can now use electricity to move groceries … or mountains …