As more automakers embrace larger and larger in-car screens, you begin to wonder just where they can put them in these vehicles. While some have come up with a folding panel design (BMW!), Hyundai and its Mobis technology arm have developed a screen that will not only produce a large image resolution, but will also stow in a truly innovative way and really reduces the space it takes up when it does—by rolling the screen up.
You see, the major problem when using screens for infotainment and providing a high image quality is that the screen itself must also get larger. Well, unless you’re the size of an ant, that is. And while folding a screen up into the roof is an option for larger vehicles like SUVs and minivans, it’s just not an elegant design path for the interior, taking up a lot of valuable interior space, and you need to find a way to fold such screens up without hitting anyone in the process.
What if there was another way than folding the whole screen? What if, instead, you could roll it up like a scroll? Due to innovations in Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) screen technology, that day might be coming soon and Hyundai Mobis is working on just that innovation for the automotive market.
What Are OLEDs?
The reason this is now possible? OLED technology, which has been around since the 1950s. However, much like lithium batteries, we’ve never really had the technology to take full advantage of OLEDs and produce them. Unlike LCD or even traditional LED screens, OLEDs work by having an organic (aka carbon-based) semiconductor layer that projects light through an emissive material layer (or layers) that controls the color. Using an organic semiconductor, they can be fabricated on plastic substrates, making them a flexible and far cheaper alternative to LCD and traditional LEDs by using less expensive and more pliable materials like PET (the same plastic used for drink bottles).
Using these pliant materials also makes OLEDs safer in impact-prone environments—like, say, cars!—as they are shatter-resistant. And OLEDs consume less power by being able to truly turn off when displaying black and not requiring a backlight like LCDs and LEDs do, and thus are lighter than those other display elements. There are other advantages (like color grading, brightness, etc), too, but regardless, this is the same screen technology you’re seeing used in modern flip and folding phones and computer monitors that now bend to the user’s desired radius and, just like the apps you use, will be something that will come to your car. There are many good reasons why this technology will be a benefit to you.
A Modern Screen For The Modern Age
The great news is that we’re not talking about a tiny display that’s only usable to an insect. Instead of being a diminutive size with blocky screen resolution, Hyundai Mobis is showing off a true QHD screen that can be sized up to 30 inches or more for higher resolutions. Then, when you’re not using it, the screen rolls up into itself and fits into a space less than five inches in depth. This diminutive size also means these screens can be used anywhere in the vehicle, from the dashboard to the seats to the ceiling, depending on the needs defined by the OEM. It doesn’t even need to only roll up or down as the roll-up display can also be mounted sideways and extend outwards.
You can unroll any portion of the screen to meet the needs of the mode you’re using, too. A full screen could be used for watching movies when the vehicle is off. Or the display can roll down to a portion of its size for navigation, or even smaller when you’re looking to only display minimum information while driving. Or the OEM can do anything in between to satisfy display and information needs.
A Roll-Up HUD?
With the added innovation of transparent OLED displays from Samsung and LG, projector-style head-up displays (HUDs) could be replaced with a roll-up OLED screen. For now, though, transparent OLED screens are cost prohibitive and (also for now) are only up to 85 percent transparent and require a transparent substrate, cathode, and anode layers. Regardless, once someone figures out how to reduce these widgets’ cost and increase the transparency and clarity, their space saving (over a HUD screen that pops up) will make them more tempting. Then again if someone does figure that out, it might just be better to make the whole windshield a transparent OLED.
The biggest takeaway from this development is that those huge infotainment screens that we currently see, the ones that look as out of place as a tablet slapped onto the dashboard, might soon be supplanted by newer, fresher ideas. And that’s definitely one trend that can’t go away soon enough. Hyundai Mobis hasn’t given a timeline on when we’ll start seeing these roll-up OLED displays in future Hyundai or other OEM vehicles, but now that this tech has been proven workable, hopefully we’ll start seeing it, ahem, roll out very soon.
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