They say what goes in Vegas, stays in Vegas, but that does not apply when the city is showing off the most exciting new technology that will apparently transform our lives.

Hosting the CES 2023 show, the city was the place for people in all sorts of industries to see what the future might bring, not least in the car market.

Autoweek was among the motoring journals there, observing some very exciting new developments, particularly among electric cars. These ranged from the flashy Peugeot Inception to the Afeela, an electric car made jointly by Honda and Sony, with the latter turning the interior into an all-singing, all-dancing in-car entertainment system. 

There was also a car that can change colour according to the whim of the drives, although that might appeal a bit too much to those seeking to evade the police.

Meanwhile, and despite Back to the Future being as wrong about this as it was about fax machines on every street corner, there was the obligatory flying car.

For all that, there was nothing to suggest that the future won’t involve the occasional need for car windscreen repair work. While airbags, seatbelts, side impact bars and more have made cars safer in an accident, CES 2023 did not bring a reinvention of glass. 

As Bond fans might recall from No Time To Die, even bullet-proof glass can still be cracked and thus impair driver visibility, so while the Aston Martins driven by 007 might have even more (and deadlier) gadgetry than those on show in Las Vegas, it is clear that windscreen repair will still be a part of the future.

For all that many enterprising carmakers will envisage a future that matches up to something seen in sci-fi or spy films, the simple, mundane fact of driving life that chipped stones, falling debris, collisions and vandalism can and will continue to cause damage to windscreens will remain a fact of motoring life.