Groundbreaking Display Technologies Take Center Stage at CES 2025
The 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been a hotbed of innovation in automotive display technology, unveiling advancements that promise to revolutionize the driving experience. From holographic Head-Up Displays (HUDs) to transparent MicroLED screens and sophisticated privacy features for passenger infotainment systems, the future of in-car entertainment and information is taking shape.
Holographic Head-Up Displays: A New Era in Driver Information
Two prominent companies, Hyundai Mobis and Ceres Holographics, showcased their versions of holographic HUDs at CES 2025. While they don’t project 3D images like Princess Leia, these displays significantly enhance the driver’s experience by providing brighter, more visible information directly on the windshield. The key to their technology lies in the holographic optical element (HOE), which diffracts light to create a clearer, more focused image visible only to the intended viewer.
Hyundai Mobis, in collaboration with Zeiss, has developed an analog-produced HOE layer applied to the inside of a Kia EV9 windshield. This technology boasts a resolution of 1152 x 576 and is illuminated by a DLP projector positioned just 9.8 inches away, allowing for more compact packaging. Hyundai Mobis aims to launch this technology as early as 2027.
In contrast, Ceres Holographics, teamed with Covestro and Eastman, has digitally produced their HOE using an optical photopolymer layer known as Bayfol HX. Their innovative HoloFlekt machine can create edge-to-edge HOE designs ready for integration into Eastman Saflex windshields. Ceres targets series production by 2028 and has already overcome significant challenges, such as developing a windshield laminating process that preserves the HOE’s optical properties while meeting safety standards.
Transparent Displays: Redefining In-Car Entertainment
MicroLED technology, now making its mark in the automotive sector, enables the creation of transparent displays that can be laminated to or integrated within glass surfaces. This innovation opens up new possibilities for in-car entertainment and information display.
AUO, a Taiwan-based display manufacturer, demonstrated a vehicle equipped with thin, transparent, touch-sensitive MicroLED displays across the panoramic roof and rear side windows. These displays can create immersive experiences, such as fireworks displays or starry night sky simulations, with a light transmissibility of 55% in the clear state and an impressive 2% when displaying black.
Continental offered a more cost-effective solution for exterior advertising on vehicle windows using a small roof-mounted projector and a laminated film in the glass. This technology can reduce visibility from outside to 5% when displaying black, and when combined with sound transducers that use the door skin as a speaker, it creates an engaging experience when the vehicle is parked.
Advanced Privacy Features for Passenger Screens
As passenger infotainment displays become more prevalent, the need for technologies that prevent drivers from being distracted by these screens has grown. Rain Technologies, born out of the RealD Cinema company, has developed switchable privacy displays that can be integrated with standard LCDs, OLED, mini-LED, and micro-LED displays.
Rain’s technology features a proprietary backlight and multiple optical layers, including a liquid crystal polarizer that can switch the screen’s visibility on and off from the side in under a millisecond. When in privacy mode, the display can show a black, metallic, or logo image, reducing visibility from a 45-degree angle to as low as 0.3%.
These innovations showcased at CES 2025 are set to transform the automotive industry, offering enhanced safety, entertainment, and information display capabilities that will redefine the driving experience in the years to come.
