Blue? Black? Red? AMOLED panels will allow you to change the color of your car's 'paint' in seconds
La Jaguar – Land Rover is adapting the technology used in curved TVs and flexible wearable devices to develop AMOLED panels for cars, so that they can be personalized with the touch of a touchscreen.
The use of this technology called LESA (Lightweight Electronics in Simplified Architecture) will lead to the construction of car interiors totally without buttons. Inside we will also have large wraparound dashboards and outside body panels that change color (and will essentially be curved and huge AMOLED screens).
The technology, which uses printed circuit boards on non-metallic materials, will also be able to significantly reduce the size and weight of on-board electronics, making it possible to add many more systems than would be sustainable today: including additional displays and solar panels for feed everything.
It is designed as a drawing, it is printed as a vase
LESA has a strong vocation for use with CAD software to design: the designer sets up LEDs and systems on a sort of 2D "paper model", and then "folds" them into 3 dimensions to test their performance.
Once this design process is complete, the part can be fabricated with the circuitry already printed inside.
Jaguar Land Rover has already used the technology to create an aerial control panel prototype. It weighs 60% less compared to a conventional design and has one sensationally lower thickness: 3,5mm instead of 50mm.
The timing of commercialization is not entirely clear yet, but the company has big plans for it. “Healthcare, aerospace, consumer technology and military industries. Fields that are already exploiting the benefits of structural electronics and our research is leading the way in the automotive sector by bringing it into the cabin for the first time”Said Ashutosh Tomar, Technical director for research in Jaguar Land Rover.
