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Park your BMW with a wave, 3D instrument clusters, and more

Remote parking your car with a smartphone app is so 2015. In the future envisioned by BMW, you can park your car by giving it hand gestures. Meanwhile, the car will sync with your smart home and display traffic information on your hallway mirror. It's all part of a giant list of concepts and technologies BMW is bringing to the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show. Let's break down some of the big ideas BMW's bringing to this year's CES. Park By Waving Actually, you don't even need to wave to get this i3 Concept to start moving. From inside your house, simply picking up the key can signal your connected garage door to open and tell your car to pull out into the driveway. Out in the wider world this concept takes automated parking a step further than current in-car parking assistance systems. Once a spot is found, the driver gets out and waves at the car. The i3 then does all the movement on its own. What's the benefit of watching your car park instead of sitting inside while it parks itself? Not much, other that the ability to fit into narrow parking spaces. But I'm a sucker for automation like this, as long as it works better than those infernal foot-kick tailgate opening systems. The Bumper That Snitches For You If you have a car already covered in cameras, why not use them for more than parking? Bumper Detect is BMW's take on the valet-mode recording in the Chevrolet Corvette. But instead of filming any motion, BMW's system monitors the body and bumpers for any unexpected impacts and immediately captures the footage. An alert goes to the driver's smartphone via the BMW Connected App, with available live streaming images. Samsung Smart Things And The Smart Home The i3 on display at CES intergrates Samsung's Smart Things app into the iDrive controller. This allow you to use connected smart home features inside the car, like turning off lights or adjusting the thermostat. BMW's vision further into future integrates the car into the home even more with what the automaker calls Open Mobility Cloud. You can call it a personal assistant or an evil digital spy, depending on your perspective of this kind on technology. In any case, Open Mobility Cloud uses predictive algorithms to plan the day and give relevent information through BMW's smartphone app or – in a super futuristic way – a Mobility Mirror inside the house.

Top Gear drag races the BMW i8 and M4 to decide the future

The BMW M4 and i8 represent two every different expressions of the performance car. The M4 relies on its turbocharged six-cylinder combustion engine to spin the rear wheels. Conversely, the i8 packs a turbo three-cylinder and electric motors for its cutting-edge all-wheel drive system. Top Gear is the latest publication to put the pair together to find out which ethos is quicker. We saw Germany's Auto Bild hold a similar race last year, and the i8 scored a clear victory there. We don't want to spoil the winner of Top Gear's attempt, but we can tease that this sprint ends in a photo finish. Pick your favorite, and then watch the video to see which performance coupe takes the checkered flag. Related Video:

As US exports top 2 million, is America becoming the world's source of cheap cars?

North American auto production is booming with 2014 figures just shy of the of the 17.3-million vehicle record set in 2000. With more models being built on the continent, even more are being shipped overseas. Factories in the US exported 2.1 million cars last year – the highest number ever. About half of those went to Canada and Mexico, but more than ever have been heading to places like the Middle East and China. The upswing comes in part from from after-effects from the Great Recession, according to The Wall Street Journal. With a weak dollar and lower production costs after the financial crisis, building vehicles in the US was relatively cheaper and more competitive in the world. At the same time buyers around the world are going crazy for crossovers. According to the WSJ, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are already exporting the majority of their US production of these models overseas. Both automakers have also announced investments to expand production further here to send more vehicles abroad. Even Honda has been shipping more models out of the country than it imported here. There is a concern this international strength could start slowing because the dollar is strengthening against other currencies, though it's too early to know what the actual effect of this could be, according to the WSJ. "Of course, we closely watch currency exchange, but we don't make changes in production or allocation based on temporary fluctuations in the exchange rate," Ford North American boss Joe Hinrichs told the newspaper. Related Video: News Source: The Wall Street Journal - sub. req.Image Credit: BMW Plants/Manufacturing BMW Ford Honda Mercedes-Benz exports us auto production