as we race through the new car tech in las vegas, and then bring it safely to a stop. but is anyone actually in the driving seat? plus, what's up with this shop? we are at the supermarket that has something very strange in store for you. hey, welcome back to the consumer electronics show in vegas. we have cars for you this week, lots of them. one of the biggest draws at the show in recent years has been the motor hall — so lara, are you ready to get your driving shoes on? i am revved up and ready. ok, so on your marks, get set and go! every year, ces is full of concept cars. often outlandish ideas as to how we're going to be on roads in future. maybe that will be having a chat to your vehicle... do you like it? yes. sounds good. ..0r turning the back into a really impractical and uncomfortable living room. this year, though, there was at least one idea with a somewhat more convincing purpose. what i'm filming here is a concept that hopes to be able to create uncrashable cars. i am getting in this vehicle which is embedded with lidar sensors, which should stop it from hitting the luckily pretend child at the end of this track. beside me is a tesla which is already been fitted with a system that is in most new cars which uses cameras and radar to hopefully prevent it from hitting something if an accident is likely to happen. but there is limitations. this feels horrible. you so just want it to stop. it gets really close. and it has quite a jolt, obviously, but we haven't hit the child. whereas the tesla... that was quite something. this technology has already been built into cars right now as a safety function, and in the future could be used in autonomous vehicles too. this tesla and other cars with current collision avoidance systems have their limits as to what they can prevent. accidents still happen, but lidar has the potential to raise the bar — even in low light. there's a general assumption right now that automatic emergency braking or collision avoidance systems are a solved problem on cars. but the reality is the opposite, people still get into car accidents all the time, and this is despite now the substantial majority of new vehicles being produced with assisted driving capabilities. the reality is, you would think it would be easy to build system that willjust prevent you from hitting the thing right in front of you, but that's simply not the case with these existing camera and radar systems. luminar�*s laser sensing technology measures how far away objects are, perception software interpreting the data, feeding what it finds into the control software that tells the car how and where to stop. and because it is using lidar, should also workjust as well in low light. you take a look at most of the autonomous vehicle companies that have been out there. they have generally been stuck in this r&d mode, you have these giant roof racks full of sensing systems and a supercomputer in the trunk that's there to run the thing, where the objective is to try to replace the driver altogether, and take a passengerfrom point a to point b in a ride—hailing robo—taxi—like environment. but the thing is what we're doing is not about that, it's about actually making the drivers better, giving them almost superhuman capabilities to be able to actually save lives and have something that has an opportunity to do this today, as opposed to decades from now. and another thing many drivers might like right now is an electric car with better range. well, mercedes unveiled the vision eqxx, a concept car capable of up to 648 miles on a single charge. that could take you from berlin to paris. it says that it's made possible due to a higher density battery, lower weight, 117 solar panels on the roof and better aerodynamics. it took a bit of work then! of course, it will be up to others to certify the range estimate independently, and those extra miles mean there are some compromises, with a top speed of only around 87 mph. not that you should be driving any faster anyway! this particular model won't be going on sale, but mercedes say that many of the features are going to be added to theirfuture evs from 2024 or 2025. meanwhile, here's something that caused its fair share of attention. this bmw changes colour! it's a colour changing car! and to do so, it uses e—ink, the same as an e—reader. what we have here is the world's first real colour—changing car. the technology e—ink is amazing. we know it from the e—readers and kindle, it's very low energy, its sunlight readable and it's just colour change, there is no light or led backlight or oleds, it is just colour change. so you just need a little bit of energy to change colour, and absolutely no energy to hold it so it is stable and as an engineer that's a wonderful property to have. the driver can manually choose to change colour, or you can do it via the sensors that are embedded in the vehicle — so you can have a temperature sensor that when it's hot the car will be white, and when it is cold it will be black, or you can have a light sensor which changes colour at night time. why would anyone want a colour changing car? it's a really good question. and aside from the obvious cosmetic aspects and the coolness aspects, which is the first thing that people kind of comment on when they come in, we see self—expression as something important, you know? it's like you choose your clothes, you choose your car, the ability to show yourself with your vehicle is a nice feature. but in addition to that, we can show useful information — so in europe, car sharing is very big and there are a lot of car sharing cars on the street, and to see if a car is free or if it is charged — you would usually have to whip out your phone and take down your mask and put your face recognition on and get the right app, and there are a bunch of steps to take — we think it's beneficial if you can just look at the car and you know it's free, or you look at the car and know it is charged, or you know, have all kinds of useful information on the side of the car. so there could be an actual purpose, apart from driving around wrapped in a copy of war and peace. and finally, here's a car is one that wants to use its power to post on social media. this is the indi one, and it is very keen to show off its supercomputer. it's capable of high quality mobile gaming and even has vr connectivity — not that that is much use to the driver while driving. its power also means it can be very productive for work on the go. this car isn'tjust about the supercomputer, though. it is also covered in cameras. on the outside there is one at the front and back. internally, there are three as well. and if you are so inclined, you could post yourjourney on social media. yes, if getting from a to b is an interruption to your constant posting, or the thing you actually want to share is yourjourney, then this car has the solution. from the social media side, it's interesting now because so much of our life is shaped by instant media, whether it is news or social—related, and with our product, you know, when you talk to influencers they get really excited, because for the first time, they can real—time, at any time in their day or movement through the city in their vehicle, they can basically treat their vehicle as an extension of their mobile phone or their home pc. but also, the idea of archiving that type of information, and for those of us, you know, thinking about using the same type of hardware for our families, being able to document those moments in the car with the kids when they are learning to sing their first songs or the family singalongs or even discussions with the teenagers in the car. i'm sure they'd love that! but for looking at the baby in the back, this camera probably does beat the usual mirror. so while every feature on every car, clearly won't be for everyone, at least there are plenty of new ideas out there to make our roads safer and smoother. and to get us noticed if we want to be. spencer: meanwhile, in a galaxy not too far away, i'm waiting for another ride with a difference. lara: don't tell me, - a self-driving taxi ordered by an app? actually, no, not quite! not this time. this is not an autonomous car. it is being driven remotely by bill reeves, from the comfort of the headquarters of halo in las vegas. bill's setup is almost indistinguishable from a video game. he is using standard game controllers and a fancy monitor. but the view he sees is not computer—generated. the car he is driving is actually real, and the passenger he is tasked with picking up is actually me. the next surprise is that i am not being driven, i am driving myself now. and the pitch is that while we wait for a world full of autonomous cars which are driving around, picking people up, taking them where they want to go and dropping them off and going off to do otherjobs, remote—controlled cars can do some of that work. and that means that some people may not need to own a car. ok, i'm here. the halo headquarters are less plush offices and more a rented house on a quiet street, very much like the start—up pads you find all over silicon valley, where companies live and work together. now remote—controlled cars are not legal everywhere, obviously, but nevada is one of the states that famously allow testing of this kind of technology. which means bill is one of the very few people who have driven a car without being in the driving seat. what does it feel like driving the car that you are not in? it's a very interesting experience. you're missing the road feel. you lose some of the tactile environment sitting here, not in the car. but the camera system is actually better than if you are sitting in the car, so where we have placed the cameras actually gives you, if you are pulling up to an intersection, so we can see around corners actually better with this console than we can sitting in the car ourselves. and you pull up to those intersections when you are like leaning forward, trying to look around the corner? we can see those. everything is right there, so i don't have to twist my head or move, everything happens very quickly because your eye movement is much faster than your head movement. do you feel the added pressure and responsibility of, you are not in the car so if you put it in a ditch, you are not going to get hurt, but at the same time, does that make you feel more removed from the situation and also more responsible for what happens? i think the more responsible is what i feel, because you really want to make sure you are the best of the best, right? you want to be the guy that makes all of the right decisions and makes all of the right turns, because you are representing the company in this fashion. now, as i said, the vision here is to persuade some people that they don't need to own a car — they can just call one when they need it. when you buy a car, it is parked 96% of the time. we barely drive it. you drive about one hour a day and 23 hours it is sitting in the parking lot. why notjust remotely drive the passenger when they are in there? why give them thatjob? number one is liability for us, right? when a customer is inside, we need to make sure the ride experience is extremely smooth and the pilot has to always be engaged in the car. now, that pilot, if we take them out and let the customer drive, the pilot can now transition to a different vehicle to move that car. so one more pilot can now manage multiple cars in the fleet. so there is a big clue on the bonnet as to what network you may be using to connect, connect bill to the car. do you need 56? do you need that kind of low latency and high—speed connection? having 56 gives us the latency that we require to make a smooth experience. but to be honest, 56 is not deployed all over the world yet, so we make sure our cars work on lte. now, i've used ag and it's not always reliable, it's not always fast enough to stream video, let alone control a car. it does not sound safe enough to drive a car over any mobile network. absolutely. one of the secret sauces that we have engineered and patented, product that we've built... love a secret sauce. we all do — is the ability for us to switch into multiple networks and carriers. so we piggyback off multiple networks to make sure every single packet, or data packet, that comes from all of the cameras that we have in the car gets to the destination. halo will initially target urban areas with very good mobile coverage, but if the signal does drop out anand tells me the car is programmed to come to a stop, diagnose the problem and call someone else if necessary. and, as if to prove how well the car can perform, last friday, bill got to take the halo carfor a more extreme lap or two, as it became the pace car at a pretty unusual race. it is really a cool experience to go around the racetrack, you're kind of by yourself so some of the obstacles we run into and we're worried about in the urban environment are not on truck. we just have to worry about hitting the wall! so it's going to be like a video game, you've got the video game controller, if you put it into the wall, nobody gets hurt but you don't get a second life? you don't get a new car. no, well, i have to fix the car — so i definitely don't want to hit the wall. a unique place carfor a unique event at the las vegas motor speedway, where we willjoin richard taylor in the pit lane in a couple of minutes. hello, hope you are ok today and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week over 80 groups signed an open letter to youtube asking it to improve its response to this information. the co—founder of now meta owned whatsapp is taking over as the new ceo of rival messaging app signal. and france has birthed a unicorn in the form of backmarket. the company, which sells refurbished devices, was valued at 5.1 billion euros. staying with the fixing theme, in a bold move championing the right to repair movement, microsoft have made its own teardown and repair video for its surface laptop se. normally videos like this are made by third—party sites like ifixit — a gentle reminder though, be gentle if you do go down the diy route, and seek advice if you don't feel competent. two los angeles police officers were fired for pursuing a snorlax in pokemon go. court documents show the in—car camera recorded them playing the augmented reality mobile game, instead of responding to a call. though that particular pokemon is relatively rare. and finally, plucky mars rover perseverance ate rather a bit too much over the holidays. nasa jpl said the vehicle gathered a few too many rocks during a routine core sample collection. here is its selfie of those pesky pebbles caught up in the martian machinery. they are trying to fix it as we speak. let's hope perseverance lives up to its name. this is the indy autonomous challenge. the clue is in the name — look carefully, you'll see there is no—one at the wheel. instead, these sensor—rich hot rods are essentially entirely preprogrammed supercomputers. each is differentiated only by software custom—designed by nine engineering student teams. this is the million—dollar beast that has been given to each of the teams competing, and course it is chock full with a ton of different technologies. three lidar, three radar, six cameras, gps and bleeding—edge processing. today the teams are making iith—hour tweaks to their algorithms ahead of the final showdown later in the week. the race winners will claim bragging rights and a $150,000 cash prize. in practice though, the teams are incredibly collaborative. they understand there is a far bigger prize at stake for us all as they race ever closer to a driverless future. people are watching us race, and people are watching us do all these races, so i guess in a way you are kind of increasing public trust towards autonomous vehicles. because someone sees hey, this car's travelling at 180mph around a track, with other cars on the track, and avoiding other cars, maybe they feel more comfortable in getting in an av vehicle and having it drive them from their hotel or their house safely. this is a practice day but on friday what is going to make this race truly groundbreaking is that the teams will be flying around the track, notjust to compete on seeing which car is the fastest, but also if they can pass each other at increasingly higher speeds. passing is incredibly important, because it showcases how autonomous vehicles can perceive one another, can determine when to pass, when to overtake, and we are going to need to do that in regular highway driving if people are in different autonomous vehicles, they are going to have to encounter one another at high speeds. and it has never been tested out, no—one has ever done high—speed passing of autonomous vehicles ever in the world, so this is going to be a real first. so race day is here. the original multi—car head—to—head contest proved a little too ambitious in these covid times, so this is a knockout contest between two cars at a time, each taking it in turns to pass each other safely at high speed, until one car fails to overtake and gets eliminated. and all does not quite go according to plan. ouch — it is going to be a pricey fix. organisers say crashes like this are par for the course, as the tech matures. but won't they also dent consumer confidence? i don't think so. the main advantage of it is trying to develop the technology. if you are able prototype something at 300 kilometres an hour, when you are running at urban speed of 30 kilometres an hour, you have a safety margin that allows you to safely adopt these kind of algorithms. finally, after two plus years in the making it, culminates in a few crucial minutes on the track and a winner is declared. so what to do with the prize money? we spend a lot of money to do this, it is very intensive, i have a big research team with phd students, we invest a lot of money, and so it is for research. there is a sense that this is an historic milestone, but also a recognition it's just a waypoint on a far longer journey that lies ahead. eventually we will get to the point where it is real head—to—head racing with multiple teams. so we are already taking off—the—shelf technology and making it better, and soon those technologies are going to find its way into autonomous vehicles that you and i are going to be riding in the future. now, having been to vegas every year since the beginning of time, i thought i had seen everything here. but it turns out there is something new this year. you know area 51 is near here, and it's kind of weird. yeah. well there is now area 15, which is also all kinds of strange. and we sent chris fox to check it out. ooh! i have popped out to do a big shop at the most talked—about supermarket in las vegas. i have heard the prices here are to die for. but at this supermarket, nothing is quite as it seems. omega mart looks just like a regular supermarket. they have got food and drink you can actually buy, but everything has been infused with a secret additive—s, and the ceo walter dram hasn't been seen for a while. i actually think there could be a mystery lying just beneath the surface. stepping through one of the shop's portals takes you to another dimension, where more of the mystery unfolds. but what you do there is up to you. there is a story to immerse yourself in, using one of the store's loyalty cards to track your progress, or you can simply treat it as a very instagrammable multisensory playground. more than 300 artists have worked on creating the experience, with more than a0 projectors providing some of the visuals. in the parallel dimension i met drew dicostanzo, and asked him whether this was more art or escape room. i think it is both of those things and more. it is really whatever you make it. i am not going to tell you how to experience omega mart, what to do, it is like an open world video game, and we're going to reward your explanation and play. there is a lot of opportunity to take a good instagram photo, how much of the design was making something like this instagrammable? social media is massive for us. because obviously there is all of the posts, the user—generated content that people provide. we are full ofjust draw dropping art throughout the 52,000 square feet of this exhibition, but really, that is just scratching the surface. as you start to wander and explore these different areas, you will start to discover there is a story, there is a few different narratives that are happening. there's mysteries to solve. and if you dive even deeper down the rabbit hole, you can go through some rfid progressive digital gameplay that will take you a couple of hours to hack and unlock secrets throughout the entire exhibition. drew, what inspired the omega mart? it is something that started as a small backyard art project, that evolved eventually into this huge project that took three years to create. it took 325 artists from concept to opening, and we have everything from digital creators, sculptors, painters, experiential artists, all working together to create this narrative and build it out. so really giant process that took a long time. while the traditional high street has struggled in the internet age, the omega mart is thriving, and the company is already planning an expansion to this immersive experience, and opening some others. so the next time you're out shopping, do be on the lookout for any suspicious looking wormholes to another dimension. that was chris — that looked right up your street. absolutely, it is so weird and wonderful and brilliant, give me a weird supermarket and i am all over it. do you want to come? sure! all right, we'll go, that's it from us from las vegas this week. as ever you can keep up with the team on social media, find us on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter at @bbcclick. thanks for watching, we will see you soon. bye— bye. hello. while some of you saw the sunshine today, there was a lot more cloud around across the country, and that will have a consequence for tonight, in that it will not be anywhere near as cold, so not as much frost around, and certainly less in the way of fog, too, and it's all because of what's happening out to the north—west of us. an area of high pressure is clearing away, allowing these weather fronts to approach in. this one bringing some showers across the south, this one bringing some wet and windy weatherfor a time in scotland, especially. now, we go into the night with most starting dry, but those shows develop across the southern areas, and then outbreaks of rain pushing southwards across scotland, northern ireland. could see strong to gale force winds for a time in the north, and overall the breezy night here. that will keep the frost to pay for many. temperatures by and large above freezing. as you can see, very little blue on the map, but there could be the odd pocket of frost, and also fog to take us into the start of sunday. so, this is the set for sunday. got high pressure trying to build in again from the west, but for the time being, this weakening weather front to be working its way southwards, bringing the bulk of the morning rain across northern england and north wales, after it's quickly cleared away from scotland and northern ireland, leaving a dry, sunny day for many, but blustery, with a few showers in the far north. that cloud and patchier rain pushes through wales and the midlands during the middle part of the day, and then into the far south later on, by which time very little rain on it. winds still light across many southern areas on sunday. a blustery day across the north, but the winds aren't coming off the atlantic, so, if anything, it will be a milder day on sunday compared with saturday. temperatures a degree or two above where it would normally be at this stage injanuary. but as we go into sunday night, you can see clear skies across much of the country, lighter winds the further south you are. that will lead to some fog patches, and the blue appears back on our temperature chart, an indication of more widespread frost to take us into the monday morning commute. there will be temperatures in the towns and cities just above freezing, but one below it in the countryside, and that's because we've got high pressure in places. towards the south—west of the uk, and with winds lightest here, wales, south—west england, could be some lingering fog patches through the morning. elsewhere, most places will have a dry day. lots of sunshine around on monday, cloudy as conditions in the far north of scotland, as related shower or two. most, though, will be dry. temperatures not far off the seasonal average at this stage in the year. as for next week, well, after that sunny start to the week, there is the chance of some more cloud and some breezy conditions with outbreaks of rain in scotland, northern ireland, on tuesday and wednesday. that clears the way, temperatures drop a little bit, but overall we go back to where we are now, with many places dry by day. some frost, fog forming by night. bye for now. this is bbc news. these are the latest headlines in the uk and around the world. as details of lockdown parties in downing street continue to emerge, some conservative mps say they're being inundated with messages from angry constituents. the leader of the opposition says it's now in the national interest for borisjohnson to go. we are witnessing every day the broken spectacle of a prime minister mired in deceit and deception, and unable to lead. novak djokovic spends the night in an immigration detention hotel in melbourne, ahead of a court hearing to decide whether he'll be deported from australia. lawyers for virginia giuffre want two people in the uk to give evidence in her civil case against prince andrew. the duke's legal team argue ms giuffre �*may suffer from false memories�*. prince andrew has repeatedly denied allegations of sexual assault.