- Continental presented its E Ink Prism display at CES 2025
- Single app covers entire dashboard of a car
- Continental Says Gen Z EV Buyers Want to Express Their Personality
This year’s CES 2025 show in Las Vegas has been packed with display technology, whether it’s gigantic head-up displays that fill a vehicle’s windshield or stretchable display technology that could one day lead to a more immersive viewing experience at home. .
But Continental, the famous tire maker but also a prolific innovator in vehicle technology, made a much more design-based argument for introducing even more screens into future vehicles.
Its customizable emotional cockpit with E Ink Prism display harnesses the power of ePaper and eReader technology, but sees it grow into a massive 1.30 m long, four centimeters (4.2 ft x 1.6 in) unit. high that covers the entire dashboard of a vehicle.
Designed to allow future EV owners to personalize and update their interiors with a variety of austere black and white designs, Continental says its E Ink Prism display also has additional benefits for EVs in that it does not require backlighting. and constant power.
Power is only required during the brief moment when the screen changes from one image to the next, which could help improve efficiency and improve battery life.
During a demonstration at this year’s CES, the company showed how selected content remained visible even when a vehicle was parked, suggesting it could also introduce the technology to other outward-facing areas of the vehicle.
Continental says the first generation of its displays, which are more than capable of displaying real-time driving information such as remaining range or current speed, can only offer images in the black and gray color scheme, but says there will be full color variants. offer in the near future.
Analysis: A low-tech gift in a high-tech world
Light, thin, durable and highly efficient, ePaper displays offer a unique, low-tech answer to the current trend of outfitting automobile cockpits with more touchscreens and high-definition head-up displays than your local Best Buy branch. .
Although currently limited to grayscale output, future full-color variants could provide an elegant way to change a vehicle’s interior with the push of a button.
Of course, the look won’t be for everyone, but I could see it working on something small, bold and modern, like Renault’s recent R5 EV or even Mini’s iconic city car.
The fact that it can display images, graphics or text elements permanently with minimal power requirement is also a big advantage for electric vehicles, where every opportunity to conserve energy is considered a big advantage.
Unfortunately, the likelihood of us seeing it this way in a production vehicle is slim, as I imagine many manufacturers would see an ePaper display as a cost-effective alternative to the current series of high-definition displays, which could make the image cheaper. of the brand. .
A shame, because it’s a neat aesthetic that would certainly stand out from today’s crowd of homogeneous and often highly sanitized car interiors.
