That’s part of the fun and excitement of this yearly exercise, where our team puts together predictions for what’s to come. Even with our best analysis of current trends, industry experts and Ouija boards, there’s no way to see it all coming.
Our tech columnists look ahead to electric cars that don’t break the bank, earbuds that gauge your health, a fix for social media’s harms, package deliveries from above and more.
What we can say confidently is that 2022 will be full of excitement for new technologies (see: mixed reality and home robots), continuing discussion of tech’s impact on our world (see: social media and sustainability) and plenty of curveballs because lately it feels like all curveballs.
Here’s our list:
EVs on the cheap
The days when people hunting for an electric vehicle had only a handful of choices are over. By the end of 2022, U.S. car buyers could have more than 100 different models to choose from. And many forthcoming models will be more affordable than what was available just a year or two ago.
EVs still make up less than 3% of passenger vehicles on U.S. roads, and research suggests price will be key to their wider adoption. (Another key is infrastructure. America has only a fraction of the public fast chargers experts say it will need.)
Globally, the average sticker price of EVs has declined 30% from 2015 to 2020, even as average range has increased 45%, says Scott Shepard, a principal research analyst at Guidebooks, a corporate consulting firm. He expects that trend to continue in 2022, with at least four more models of EV priced below $40,000 arriving in the U.S. market.
The Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck (with a starting MSRP of $39,974) may prove instructive. Ford had to close preorders for F-150 Lightnings after receiving nearly 200,000 of them; 75% are buyers who had never purchased a Ford before, according to the company’s latest earnings report.
Meanwhile, Nissan slashed the starting price of its venerable Leaf EV to $28,375 from $32,620, making it less expensive (after a $7,500 federal tax credit) than a comparable conventional 2022 Honda Civic hatchback. Many other models with starting prices under $40,000 from Chevrolet, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Mini and Volkswagen
Microsoft made a mouse with recovered ocean plastic. Apple’s latest iPhone and iPad models contain recycled materials. Amazon’s new Echo display, also made with recycled plastics, saves energy while idle. Every major tech keynote in 2021 featured a pro-climate component, and there will be much more to come in 2022.
The sector has arguably a larger carbon footprint than the aviation industry, and tech companies are working to reverse course with sustainability efforts that now include the design of our phones, tablets and computers.
Sustainability also means holding on to the same devices longer. “The real problem is that the industry develops products with very short time, that are hard to repair and that go to landfills,” said Magali Delmas, professor of management at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Device makers are attempting to address that, too. Apple is launching a self-service repair program in early 2022 to allow customers and independent technicians to repair devices using genuine Apple parts, a move Right to Repair advocates long lobbied for. And Dell recently showed off Luna, a concept laptop with fewer screws and no fan for maximum repairability.
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