VAN BUREN TWP.–Visteon Corp. (Nasdaq: VC), the automotive cockpit electronics technology company, today announced new technology called MicroZone that offers significantly higher graphics performance than traditional LCD displays.
This new, patent-pending high-dynamic range display technology offers high contrast and brightness and wide color gamut that enables automotive displays to achieve parity with consumer mobile devices with life-like imaging capability.
Designed to accelerate the development and commercialization of more energy-efficient, cost-effective digital displays, MicroZone is considered the first automotive display to offer superior optical performance without sacrificing automotive reliability. Since it is based on mature LCD technology, it passes rigorous automotive qualification requirements without susceptibility to burn-in.
“Next-generation automotive cockpit displays need optical performance that is competitive with mobile devices that consumers have come to expect,” said Sachin Lawande, president and CEO, Visteon. “MicroZone is the first display technology that offers premium optical performance at a competitive price point for automakers, without sacrificing reliability or life-span. In that sense, microZone is an effective alternative to OLED for automakers.”
MicroZone offers these next-generation display performance requirements.
* Wide Color Gamut: Today’s automotive displays achieve 75 to 85 percent of the NTSC (National Television System Committee) color space. MicroZone can render more saturated colors, up to 110 percent NTSC. A wider color gamut enables microZone technology to reproduce a greater range of the visible color spectrum, and is compliant with the DCI-P3 color standard for HD.
* High Contrast Ratio: Legacy LCD contrast ratio maxes out at approximately 1,500:1, and black is never really black. The microZone contrast ratio is at least 100,000:1, which is about 65-70 times higher than a typical LCD screen.
* High Brightness: With OLED technology, displays max out at approximately 600 candelas per square meter (brightness level). By comparison, microZone can achieve brightness comparable to a traditional LCD technology.
MicroZone can meet these performance targets at a power consumption on par with traditional LCD technology due to technology developed at Visteon.
“MicroZone surpasses traditional display technologies across several critical categories, including color gamut, contrast and brightness levels,” said Qais Sharif, Visteon vice president, display product line. “This is especially important as vehicle manufacturers look for new ways to reduce power consumption in the cockpit without compromising color contrast, quality and brightness.”
At CES 2020, Visteon will host demonstrations of MicroZone at its booth (Central Plaza, Pavilion 13), where it will also showcase solutions to speed the transition to an all-digital vehicle cockpit and, ultimately, autonomous driving.
Digital cockpit displays are becoming larger, curved and flexible, with multiple displays integrated with a glass cover lens that gives the entire system a seamless and high-quality look and feel.
Also at CES, Visteon will show an enhanced iteration of DriveCore, its open, scalable platform for addressing multiple levels of vehicle automation, with a focus on Level 2-plus. DriveCore consists of the hardware, in-vehicle middleware, and PC-based software to enable sensor fusion and process AI/machine learning algorithms for advanced Level 2 functionality.
These cockpit innovations establish a consistent human-machine interaction (HMI) experience between the driver and vehicle, enabling vehicles to seamlessly enable advanced automated safety functions, which will help smooth the transition from Level 2-plus to higher levels of autonomy.
Visteon will introduce an updated DriveCore Studio development environment announced earlier this year, which allows developers to leverage Microsoft Azure Cloud – Microsoft’s global, hyper-scale intelligent cloud solution – to develop, test and validate autonomous driving algorithms. This new version allows developers to compare two automated driving algorithms simultaneously, helping meet the computing demands of Level 2-plus systems.
CES 2020 will mark Visteon’s 21st year as an exhibitor, making it one of the longest-running show participants in the automotive industry.
Headquartered in Van Buren Township, Visteon has about 10,000 employees at more than 40 plants in 18 countries. Visteon had sales of $3 billion in 2018. Learn more at www.visteon.com.