Audi has filed a patent application with the European Patent Office for a bendable in-car display, which gives it versatile mounting capabilities. It can display information or reflect it on a surface such as the windshield, but what makes it unique is its ability to bend around corners, offering a more adaptable and dynamic design for vehicle interiors.
Corner-Bending Capabilities
Head-up displays, movable in-car displays, and bendable screens are all known quantities and have been around in some form or another for a while now. Smartphones with curved or folding displays and curved TVs have proven the technology, but Audi is now applying this to in-car displays. The patent application’s drawings illustrate a display that can bend around corners, offering more mounting opportunities, and allowing one to bend it around a supporting structure in the vehicle interior.
Advantages of the display include:
- Unique in that it can bend around a corner
- More mounting options
- The ability to reflect its information on the windshield like a head-up display
- Extendable to rear-seat entertainment purposes
Practical Innovation or Pricey Gimmick?
We’d like to see more details of this patent to determine whether it will have widespread appeal. There is certainly something to be said for a display that is adaptable to any kind of vehicle interior and gives you flexible mounting options, but this might not be enough of an advantage. It will depend on the pricing to a large extent. If it’s affordable enough, it might be a viable alternative for a stand-in head-up display in a car that’s not equipped with one, provided all the required information can be displayed clearly on it.
