At Car.HMI Europe in Berlin today, Ceres Holographics, in collaboration with Eastman, unveiled the industry’s first fully integrated windshield featuring multiple holographic optical elements (HOEs) inside a single laminate construct. At the event, the partners are showcasing a concept demonstrator kit that provides OEM HMI (human-machine interface) and UX (user experience) designers an opportunity to experiment with the capabilities of transparent display HUDs (headup displays) and understand what and where information can be displayed.

“Through deep technical collaboration with global supply-chain expert Eastman and our ongoing engagement with top OEMs, we are now ready to bring an automotive-grade holographic transparent display HUD solution to market,” said Andy Travers, CEO of Ceres. “With increasing concerns about safety distractions caused by other types of in-car information displays, such as large pillar-to-pillar touchscreens and other ‘look down’ displays, this HUD technology presents a viable and attractive alternative.”

The innovation employs Ceres’ HoloFlekt technology to produce films with multiple HOEs laminated inside windshield glass using Eastman’s proprietary lamination techniques. The manufacturing process copies each custom-designed and individually mastered HOE into the windshield-sized photopolymer film. The new capability is said to deliver a cost-effective and scalable manufacturing process to produce multi-display HUD areas on any glass surface. Once in the car, content is projected onto the windshield by a compact, discreet LED projector within the vehicle’s instrument panel for each display area.

“We have been working with Ceres for several years to understand the implementation requirements for their HOE films to be integrated in automotive-approved windshields in a scalable way,” said Romain Delorme, Global HUD Segment Market Manager at Eastman. “After having produced several proofs of concepts of single HUD display for OEMs, we believe this current implementation of multi-HOE films for transparent displays expands the possibility even further and will be attractive to OEMs who want to differentiate their vehicles, enhance operational safety, and upgrade the overall user experience.”

Each display area containing a “specifically programmed” HOE can be customized to OEM specifications for size, position, and viewing angle and enables the industry’s largest field of view HUD with the greatest system geometry flexibility. According to Ceres, the unique capability can only be achieved through holography, which delivers precise light manipulation beyond any traditional optics capability. The company’s digital mastering technology and the HoloFlekt replication capability add further dimensions of configurability, a rapid design process, and cost-effective manufacturing for scaling.

 

The transparent opportunity

Vehicle displays and HMI experiences are rapidly evolving, with Gen 2+ touchscreens proliferating. There are more of them and they are getting bigger and more distracting. Legislators and safety advocates are taking notice, and the OEMs recognize that change is needed.

New Euro NCAP tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate, physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes-off-road time to promote safer driving. The organization is saying it is not going to give cars five-star safety ratings if automakers are forcing users to take their eyes off the road to make functional changes like adjusting the mirrors, according to Travers, who briefed Futurride earlier this year.

In general, the trend has been to move all displays up closer to the driver’s line of sight, and safety and related legislation will accelerate this trend. OEMs are increasingly looking at windscreen displays as part of coming Gen 3 displays for safety, with heads up and eyes forward; immersion, with large glazing elements for technology on demand; and decluttered interiors, without instrument clusters and other distracting screens.

BMW is a notable proponent of this concept, with CEO Oliver Zipse reportedly convinced that distracting center-console-based displays will soon be history. His company is preparing for a new world of displays that are much more intuitive and windshield-based, demonstrated by recent concepts like the i Vision Dee and Vision Neue Klasse that preview its important next-generation production cars. Other forward-thinking OEMs have similar visions.

Travers says there is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity in holographic transparent automotive displays to be shared with new and willing supply-chain partners. He adds that his company is engaged with multiple OEMs, with a minimum viable product having been validated and something they’d like to see in their cars.

Ceres is looking to raise Series A funds to scale the company to meet SOP (start of production) in the 2026-2027 timeframe for some of the more aggressive automotive OEMs. The company’s technology can go into any vehicle with glazing, so other classes like heavy trucks can benefit.

“We have roughly a 60/40 split in terms of engagements with automotive and trucking OEMs,” he said. “We’ve done prototype products for three of the largest trucking manufacturers in the world, one of them in the U.S.”

In the more vertically oriented truck windshields, conventional optical HUDs are challenged to reflect light off the windshield to the driver’s eyes instead of the ceiling. With holography, the film can be designed to better guide the light in the direction needed.

 

Better performance and space efficiency

A conventional optical HUD uses a PGU (picture generating unit), a small projection screen in the bottom of a HUD box, and a combination of lens-shaped mirrors to magnify the image upward to reflect off the windshield into the driver’s eyes. According to Travers, conventional HUDs are very inefficient, with only about 2% of the light from the PGU getting to the driver’s eyes. Their performance is limited in bright sunlight and for drivers with sunglasses. To get the larger fields of view that OEMs are demanding, HUD boxes can take up a prohibitive 25-30 L in space-limited dashboards.

For Ceres’ holographic display, a small point source (without the large-volume HUD box) projects information onto the windshield hologram film that directs light into the driver’s eye. It is bright enough for the driver to see in all driving conditions. That’s the major advantage of technology, according to Travers.

“We reflect about 30%, so about 15 times more of the light,” he said. “Use of these holographic optical elements gives you the ability to have super bright displays.”

The company has partnered with Texas Instruments for its DLP (digital light processing) projection technology and expanded a technical collaboration in 2021 with Covestro and its Bayfol HX for the HoloFlekt technology.

“We believe Covestro Bayfol HX photo polymer is about the best in the world,” said Travers. “There isn’t any equivalent film that’s got as much transparency and low haze, which is very important for optical quality.”

The Ceres process involves laying up the master around a production machine drum in the order the customer needs them in the windshield and running blank film through it to produce the finished holographic film. That goes to Eastman, which applies the film between the PVB (polyvinyl butyral) layers laminated inside the glass.

“That process has taken us over five years to develop with Eastman,” said Travers. “The whole thing is manufacturing ready. That’s why we’re going to the market with this demonstrator.”

The demonstrator at Car.HMI provides a simulation of a possible driver/passenger experience, and the same unit can be used by OEM designers to develop other safety, operational, and infotainment content working with conventional physical or haptic controls before availability of a real prototype vehicle.

 

The sky’s the limit

At this stage of development, Ceres’ customers are mostly OEMs. However, the company is talking to several forward-thinking Tier 1 suppliers, and the OEMs with prototype cars are inviting Tier 1s in to educate them to start taking control of the system design for future cars.

In general, HUDs have been growing in size and getting more sophisticated, with OEMs asking for more in the pursuit of safety and a better experience for users around the cabin. According to Travers, customers have been asking for HUDs that are as big as possible, with the current driver field of view about 40 x 8 degrees covering an area of nearly 600 x 250 mm (23.6 x 9.8 in). His company is going bigger than that, with prototypes now that are double that size.

Since glazing is all around the cabin, the sky is literally the limit for the enhanced HUD passenger experience, with the expansion of the concept possible to the side, rear, and roof. Ceres has already created prototypes with side-window holograms and projectors built into headliners projecting light down and then to the passengers in the back. Side-window prototype customers include a Japanese Tier 1 and a trucking company.

However, challenges remain for the adoption of the new Ceres technology and the associated supply chain.

“The supply-chain infrastructure is the major challenge now, especially when there’s so much sunk investment into touchscreens, OLEDs, and LCDs,” said Travers. “At the moment, the industry is recovering, getting a return and all that investment into those displays, but we believe that the legislation and the desire to get the drivers looking forward, heads up for safer driving is going to drive the demand for these transparent displays.”

The company is also hoping the release of the hardware development kit will encourage new display innovations.

“In addition to the technical implementation details, we are committed to educating HMI and UX designers on the potential of this new transparent display medium,” concluded Travers. “We are confident that if we give the world’s best developers the parameters of the possible, the needed development tools, and a ‘blank canvas,’ they can drive and accelerate new levels of innovation in content and HMI, which will enhance safety and the user experience.”