Automotive is Becoming a Driver for Display Technology
Blaze Display Technology Co., Ltd. | Updated: Nov 27, 2018
In past decades, cars and display technology have had a strange relationship. While a lot of car information systems rely on a visual representation of certain data, these readouts were basically all mechanical dials. The automotive industry was especially careful in selecting new display technologies.
For example, for the longest time they used vacuum fluorescent displays (VFD) instead of LCDs. This had a lot to do with the temperature sensitivity of the LCD technology. For critical information like speedometer readouts, for a long time LCDs were considered not suitable, reflecting temperature limitations in the lower as well as upper range. Only after developing suitable LCDs did the automotive industry start to change its acceptance. It all started with clock displays and began to take over other information display tasks in the instrument cluster. In recent years more progressive automobile brands started using LCD and other technologies like OLED in the instrument cluster. The latest and most regarded application was the Audi dashboard completely realized in OLED technology. Compared to the decades before this technology adoption went rather quickly.
Another aspect that made the automotive industry an important player in the display industry was the the rise of the entertainment displays. First displays attached to the front seats for the entertainment of the rear passengers were aftermarket solutions that quickly became standard features in high-end cars. With the integration of the smartphone interface into the car entertainment system, screens were also installed in the front dashboard. All in all, we saw a dramatic increase in display area used in every car. While this trend started in high-end cars, it has quickly shifted to mid and lower range vehicles as well. The latest development in this regard was the Tesla Model 3. This car has no traditional dials or buttons at all, everything is presented and controlled from a large, centrally located touchscreen display.
Some market researchers see in the automotive industry the strongest driver for the development of the display industry. In the last few weeks we have heard from several automotive brand about their plans to look add even more developmental display technologies in the future, like the Jaguar, Land Rover as well as VW. All in all, the automotive industry is becoming more of a driver for new display technologies.