Embedded with this holographic windshield display, Kia’s electric vehicle EV9 offered a unique user experience a live demonstration to CES 2025 visitors.
The key feature of Hyundai Mobis’s new holographic windshield display technology is that it transforms the vehicle’s front window into a transparent screen, without additional device. That means, there will not be any display devices placed in the driver’s and passenger’s seats, but instead, all kinds of content, including driving information, navigation and music playlists, will be vividly displayed at the bottom of the front windshield. From the outside, it looks like a transparent glass window, but it presents a clear display for the driver and passengers even in bright outdoor environments through high brightness and color reproduction.
The ‘holographic windshield display’ technology projects images and videos anywhere on the vehicle’s front windshield as needed. And that’s possible owing to a special film that uses an optical component called HOE (Holographic Optical Element). Unlike a conventional screen, this film uses the principle of diffraction of light (the bending of light from its original path to reach its destination) to efficiently deliver images and videos projected from the projector to the eye position of persons in the driver’s and passenger’s seat. It also offers a privacy display mode that prevents a person in the driver’s seat from seeing the screen before another person in the passenger’s seat.
Depending on where the film is placed, for example, the top, bottom or side of the windshield, this holographic display can be implemented anywhere. Suppose that a user places the film on the side of the windshield: in that case, it can work like a smartphone’s curved edge screen. It is said that the holographic windshield display is the only technology among all in-vehicle display technologies to transform the entire front window into a display as needed.
Hyundai Mobis is teaming up with ZEISS for the development of this advanced and not-yet-mass-produced display technology. Both companies intend to enhance their technological synergy and complete pre-development by the first half of next year, with the goal of launching the product for mass production as early as 2027.
