Automotive OLEDs: introduction and industry news - Page 22

BMW has been developing OLED automotive lighting for many years, and in 2015 BMW has announced now that they are starting to produce the M4 GTS, with its OSRAM-made OLED taillights in very limited quantities.

BMW is yet to release a serial car with OLED lighting. The company's latest concept car, the Concept 8 Series, does use OLED taillights as can be seen in the photo above, though. The new car has lot's of new design ideas - and BMW aims to include about 80% of these when the car enters the production stage.

Audi unveiled its flagship luxuries sedan, the new Audi A8 - which will go on sale towards the end of 2017 in Germany. This car includes several new technologies - including the first Level 3 assisted driving (which can drive completely autonomously in slow traffic jams).

The new A8's front lighting uses HD Matrix LED headlamps with Audi laser lighting, and the rear lights use OLED lighting. It's not clear whether the OLED lighting is optional as was the case with Audi's first OLED car, the 2016 TT RS. The new A8 also includes an OLED display for passengers in the back that can be used to control the car's infotainment systems.

A new video shows LG's large SID DisplayWeek 2017 booth. The video begins with some displays we have seen before - LG's latest wallpaper OLED TVs and its Crystal Sound OLED system, but then continues to show some new displays.

LG demonstrated two flexible OLEDs for mobile devices - a 5.5" QHD (1440,2560, 538 PPI) panel and a 5.7" FHD (388 PPI) panel. Both are plastic-based and are conformable (edge-type). The displays offer a brightness of 350 nits. LG says the 5.7" FHD is now in mass production, while the 5.5" QHD will be ready in Q2 2017 (which means it's should already be in production). The video also shows a glimpse of LG's "VR displays" - but no details are given (this was for some reason labeled as confidential).

Today we published new versions of our market reports - that cover the flexible, transparent, VR/AR, microdisplays, automotive and graphene OLED markets. OLED-Info provides comprehensive niche OLED market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about the niche market, and can be useful if you want to understand how the OLED industry works and what this technology can provide for your own industry. The reports are now updated to July 2017.

The OLED for VR/AR Market Report:

• Why OLEDs are adopted in almost all VR HMDs
• What kind of displays are required for VR and AR applications
• What the future holds for the VR and AR markets
• Current and future VR and AR systems

The report package provides a great introduction to the emerging VR and AR market, and details the role that OLED displays will have. Read more here!

Yeolight Technology (which was spun-off Visionox in May 2015) developed a 0.1 mm flexible OLED panel. This is a red OLED panel that is specifically designed for automotive applications.

The light emitting area is 13 cm² and the whole panel weighs just 1 gram. Yeolight says that the panel uniformity is over 90%. The panel uses a "special organic polymer" that Yeolight developed and used new materials, package structure and processes in order to improve the lifetime and durability of its new panel.

Pioneer demonstrated new automotive OLED prototype applications at CES Asia 2017. First up are these beautiful OLED taillight prortotypes, which use flexible OLEDs that are bent to create these 3D shapes.

Pioneer also demonstrated an updated version of its transparent brake light system, which was first unveiled in January 2016. The idea is that the brake light can be embedded in the back window of the car to create a beautiful design that is safer as it enlarges the back field of view compared to current brake lights.

In March 2017 Konica Minolta and Pioneer announced that the two companies are set to merge their OLED business unit, and on June 1st the new 50:50 joint venture, called Konica Minolta Pioneer OLED, was officially established.

Konica Minolta says that the new company will take charge of all business and product planning, product development, production technology development and marketing functions of both companies' OLED lighting business to drive its initiatives.

Yeolight Technology (which was spun-off Visionox in May 2015) developed a new bright Amber OLED panel. The panel's size is 85x85 mm (active area 76.5x76.5 mm) and its color temperature is 2000K-2600K. The efficiency is >70 lm/W at 2,000 cd/m2 brightness. The lifetime is over 20,000 hours.

This new panel is still a prototype - but Yeolight says it can already be mass produced at the company's 2.5-Gen production line.

AUO demonstrates several OLED panels and technologies at SID 2017, and the excellent video below walks through these displays with lot's of details.

First up is AUO's foldable 5" 1280x720 (295 PPI) high color gamut (95% BT.2020) display announced last month. JJ Lih, AUO's R&D manager, says that the company expects to have this display in mass production within 2 years. The panel is only 1 mm thick and the bending (folding) radius is 4 mm.

Last Month Hyuandai's premium sub-brand Genesis unveiled a concept car, the GV80 SUV, that featured a long curved OLED display - 22" in size, which we assumed was supplied by SDC. The Korea Herald reports today that Samsung is in talks with Genesis to supply OLED panels for its automobiles.

It's not clear if this first deal involves flexible OLEDs as was demonstrated in the GV80 or whether it will involve regular rigid OLEDs. The Korea Herald reports that Samsung is strongly pushing for a comeback into the automotive market with a range of technologies including displays, batteries and even the Tizen OS.