Motor vehicles are bound to get ever smarter. Mercedes-Benz has a couple of ideas in that direction, mostly concerning the under-exploited front and rear windscreens in its cars. There’s also a bit about making EV charging speedier, but that just sort of… sits there.
Replacing the glass in a motor vehicle with something more exciting, though? That’s something we can get behind. Merc reckons it can spruce up a car’s rear and side windows with something a bit more informative using the power of miniLED overlays.
Mercedes-Benz the rules
MiniLED may be repurposed to convert a rear windscreen “to show brake lights, warning symbols or traffic information for the road users behind.” MicroLED, on the other hand, could be used to add visuals to a car’s side windows. This is, honestly, not a terrible idea. Well, at least until some Mercedes-Benz executive gets the idea that you can charge drivers a subscription fee to stop the car from using its cameras to show targeted advertising to pedestrians. You know somebody at Merc has already thought about this.
More exciting are the German company’s ideas for the front windscreen. There, a special “holographic optical element” overlay (Mercedes uses the acronym HOE without giggling) is being developed. It’ll build on existing projector-based heads-up display (HUD) interfaces to “selectively reflect the wavelengths of light emitted by the projector.”
“This opens additional information and entertainment possibilities, such as displaying context for POIs (points of interest), driving information, or films.”
These displays would be context-sensitive, showing visuals when needed or when they won’t distract the driver. Nobody needs to be watching Top Gear while in top gear, after all. Even if it’s a Mercedes-Benz doing all the driving.
These, and the company’s planned Mercedes-Benz Power Converter (which maintains EV charge speeds up to 800W), are still future technologies. There’s no timeline on when it’ll start laminating new elements into its windscreens, but we dearly hope that they chuck the advert-suggesting executive out of the room before the launch.
