CES 2022: Colour changing cars and remotes that eat wi-fi

One of the tech calendar's biggest annual events, CES, has been taking place in Las Vegas this week. The pandemic and fears over the spread of the Omicron variant meant numbers of attendees were down and some of the largest firms, including Meta, Google and Amazon, pulled out.But there was still plenty of weird and wonderful technology on show.

Here's a look at some of the trends and more outlandish offerings from the show floor.

Where's the remote?

TVs have always been a big draw at CES - with the emphasis on big, as every year they seem to gain more inches. But this year it was a much smaller accessory - the TV remote control - that was garnering the headlines.

In 2021, Samsung added a solar panel to the back of its remote so that it could charge from the sun while sitting on the arm of a chair.

This year, it has come up with a new way to kill off the AAA battery market. Its new version has a tiny antennae that can harvest radio frequency signals emitted by wi-fi routers from a distance of up to 40m (131ft), allowing it to charge even when the sun isn't shining.

Samsung said that the device will be included with new TVs and other home appliances, although not much detail was given on the technical specifications.

Chameleon car

If you have ever grown bored with the colour of your car, then you might like BMW's idea - to change it on a whim.

It showed off how a car's exterior could effectively become ePaper which, when charged with a small electric current, changes colour or creates a pattern.

Its "iX Flow" technology is similar to that which powers e-book readers and covers the car in millions of tiny microcapsules.

The project is very much concept-only at this stage, but is intended to be more than cosmetic - changing to a light colour in hot weather or a dark colour in cooler weather will cut the amount of cooling and heating required inside the vehicle, the firm said.

But some critics pointed out that the system looked to be temperature-sensitive while others questioned the colour choice - currently only available in white, black and grey.