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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

Yeah heads up displays have to be at least an order of magnitude cheaper to produce, if not more.

1.3 million micro-mirrors per headlight :D God forbids we (Germany) just build good cars that get you from A to B.

That may sound weird, but it's actually off-the-shelf tech for a couple of decades now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Light_Processing It's already the most common projector technology, not something new they're developing just for this.

1.3 million mirrors is actually low-resolution by modern standards.

DLP TV mirror chip from 15-20 years ago had 2M mirrors.[1]

[1] https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dlp1.htm

Depends on the system. The older ones that are still most common are just screens facing up in the dash that reflect off the windshield. They are also nearly 100% blocked during the day for anyone wearing polarized sunglasses, which limits their usefulness. Newer HUDs use lasers and work with polarized glasses, but of course they are a more complicated, expensive technology.

I’m not saying HUDs are great, I’m saying they’re relatively simple compared to this tech.

Yes and no. I believe this technology is an extension of selective darkening headlights.

Essentially, a camera system can detect surrounding vehicles and selectively darken the lighting around them. It means you could effectively always run your high-beams since the vehicles around you won't be blinded.

That’s a much better use of this technology, because it actually exhibits better performance than the technology it replaces.

'79 Lincoln TownCar did that with a single photocell, worked about 80% of the time. The tech is there and it's not expensive and I'd say could easily be improved with multiple low cost sensors.

The selective dimming they're referring to is variable in beam pattern, rather than the boolean high/low beam pattern of traditional vehicles.

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