Tesla hires HoloLens designer from Microsoft augmented reality program

> But nonetheless, Tesla has been rumored to be working on an augmented reality system in the form of a heads-up display for the Model 3. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been referring to the interior controls of the vehicle as “spaceship-like” and the prototypes unveiled earlier this year didn’t feature any instrument cluster.

That's reassuring. One of the things about the model 3 that bothered me was that there was only one display between the driver and passenger. It seemed very weird to have to look way off to the side to read the instruments. If they can add a heads-up display, that's a great improvement. If they can make the focal distance appear to be past the windshield, that's even better. (I've heard that it takes our eyes longer to refocus from far to near and back than it takes to physically move our eyes down and up when we glance at the dashboard.)

I expect another eventual step in the evolution of the automobile to come with the introduction of head-mounted displays so that the driver can "see through" the car without obstruction. Windows could be made smaller or go away entirely to make the car stronger and more survivable in an impact, and perhaps cheaper as well.

I hope this means that we will have new posts on Andrew's blog (Minimally Minimal). Microsoft asked him to remove nearly all of his new posts related to design thus some of his last articles (e.g. about the Xbox One S) have been online only for a week or so.

I need to play devil's advocate here -- and hoping everyone will stop and think about this in a more practical way for a minute. This has less to do with VR/AR, and more to do with pre-existing overlap:

o What if Tesla is interested in improving sensory accuracy for its self-driving vehicle program?

o What if Tesla is interested in Hololens' pixel greying on transparent surfaces?

This seems like the most viable use of this kind of tech in a car. In an extreme case I could see something like head/eye tracking on the windshield, though that isn't in any way guaranteed or even necessarily practically useful.

Improving external sensor accuracy, or even pixel shading on transparent surfaces, however, is probably a FAR bigger overlap between Hololens and Telsa, than anything for augmented reality. Hololens has immense requirements for sensory precision and pixel blacking, and I could see why Tesla would look to an industry expert to carry over any useful architectural guidance for that.

Certainly interesting, especially as ODG partnered with BMW to bring AR to the Mini about a year ago [1] which appears to have not really gotten much commercial success. I could go into why but that's a broader conversation about AR interfaces today.

We also demoed a "see in your driveway" low poly Tesla long ago [2] which is better used for consumers to evaluate before purchase.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfvLpyHDAx4

2. https://youtu.be/9kavmNwOeF0

Musk's businesses may be spread too thin. The Solar City merger was iffy; that's a bet Solar City can beat China on solar panel price.

Tesla needs to get their production line for the Model 3 going. They need to develop self-driving that works in the real world. The Gigafactory battery factory, which right now just has the battery assembly line moved from Fremont, needs to be finished.

Space-X needs to get their launch rate up so they can stop losing business to other launch providers. They need to finish the man-rated Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule. They also need to get the Falcon Heavy, which has slipped from 2014 to 2017, to first launch. There's also the Texas launch facility, which has slipped.

Musk has a lot of expansion underway, and most of it is behind schedule. Not a good time to go off in search of the next cool thing.

As someone who doesn't own a car anymore I was fairly shocked recently at some of the stuff that you find in current BMWs. They do have a HUD-like navigation that's a windshield layover for example. I know they do quite a bit of HCI research. I'll be curious to see how many Tesla employees will pop up at CHI next time around. I think there's some interesting research to be done automotive AR...especially if there's an automated driving component.

Everyone here is focused on what this means for Tesla, but this may be intelligence on what is going on with the Microsoft HoloLens program if senior staff is beginning to jump ship.

What's going to happen with HoloLens? The team doesn't appear to be very large, and it's been stuck in research-land for a while now.

With full self driving, telepresence-from-the-back-seat will be an interesting application. Especially with SpaceX low latency high speed internet, whose phased array antennae should work well on the roof of a car.

The employee in question is also the person that made that [Microsoft rebrand concept](http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next-micro...) from a while back.

That would go very well with the feed from the surrounding cameras of the new Teslas. Wonder if the new chips can support the AI and Hololens like

Tesla is leading the market like Apple did with it introduced iPhone. They define the standards which others follow.

Display on a car's flat windshield as opposed to the Hololens pair of glasses that is essentially around your eyes looks interesting (challenging).

He also worked on the Xbox One S and is pretty much the most interesting product designer around now. Microsoft should have kept him.