In the same vein as “Where is my flying car?”, I bring you, “Where are the automobile Heads Up Displays (HUDs) that were promised 30 years ago?”
Before you say there ARE cars that you can order with a HUD, there really aren’t that many, and they tend to be the most expensive models the car company makes. And I know you can buy aftermarket HUDs on Amazon.com that will work on almost any car, but if they are safer for drivers than regular displays, why aren’t they standard on all cars these days?
Is it a costs issue, and would it drastically increase the price of a car, or are they really not any safer than a standard display? When I first say them on military planes and some expensive sports cars, I thought they were pretty cool.
BTW, if anyone owns a car with a HUD perhaps tell us whether you like having it or not.
I have a HUD in my car. And yes it’s a flagship model of a prestige brand, albeit a few years old now.
I don’t really think it does much useful for me. I have it on, and look at, but I’d be just as happy to look at the instruments.
In cruise it shows me the speed limit and my speed. I can get both those data items off the main dash display. I mostly don’t use the car’s nav features except to give me an ETA. I sure don’t pay any attention to its “advice” on when to turn or which lane it thinks is ideal. And I sure as hell don’t really care what the speed limit really is. I’m driving off the rest of traffic and my gut, not some stupid sign.
There are people who can’t leave their own driveway without help from their navigator app. Those benighted fools might well embrace a nav-HUD. Although I suspect their eyes are already overwhelmed by the sight of the world moving outside their car and they’d prefer to take nav “advice” via verbal instructions. Which I utterly hate and have never turned on. Whether the car’s system, or my phone’s.
The HUD in the jets I flew for work before retirement? Now THAT was a godsend. Me & HUDs in cars? Meh. IMO it’s a gimmick looking for a use. There’s just not enough info a competent car driver needs in front of their face.
Data is displayed via a system that make what appears to be a simplified virtual dashboard display out in front of the car hovering in space. If you’re looking at the car in front of you, the HUD image is out there somewhere near their tailgate / rear window. The idea is to keep your eyes on the road while still knowing what’s going on with the car. No focusing down and in on the car’s screen(s).
In my car’s case it shows current speed limit, current speed, a warning for closure rate or tailgating, plus other alerts for problems. As well, if you have the nav system enabled with a destination it gives mileage to the next turn, the direction of turn, and as you approach the turn, a graphical depiction of the best lane to be in.
We have a 2015 Corvette (we inherited it from my late father-in-law). It has a heads-up display, which looks pretty much like this in use; my understanding is that there’s a projector in the dashboard which projects the image onto the windshield.
And, I agree with @LSLGuy : at least for me, it’s more gimmick than anything else. Then again, I don’t drive the Vette on racetracks. Unlike being in a fighter jet, or in a race car going well over 100mph, the time “lost” in glancing down at the dash for a fraction of a second to check my speed is probably not that problematic.
67? In a Corvette? I hope you were in a parking lot, not on a highway!
ETA: unrelated to that joke …
If you put my car in race car wannabe mode now you get RPM info, suggestions for shift points and traction limits, etc. All kinda useful stuff for a racecar on a track. Not so much for Mom dragging the kids to the grocery store or driving to work in rush hour traffic.
I flew into Toronto one time, and the rental company didn’t have what I reserved on the lot. So they upgraded me to a late-model Chevy Camaro. It had a HUD. It told me everything I could get from the dashboard dials, and was more of a distraction than anything else.
TL:DR - Just because the technology is available doesn’t mean it’s desirable.
When I worked with Ford in the 80’s, they had two new bits of technology they were sure would become winners - the “insta-clear windshield” and a completely digital dash display.
The windshield had a microscopic layer of metallic compound in it that didn’t obscure the view and could conduct heat. Turn it on and you’d clear a fogged windshield in seconds, and defrost an entire windshield almost as fast. It was something of a miracle, until the windshield broke or cracked. A replacement cost, IIRC, about 10x as much as a standard windshield. Insurance companies balked at the cost and drivers balked at the deductible. Drivers wound up replacing broken windshields with standard glass models, and the insta-clear just faded away.
As for the all-digital displays, it turns out a lot of drivers preferred an analog display, especially with the speedometer and tachometer, where they could see the rate of increase/decrease rather than a rapidly changing set of numbers.
Do you think they are safer than driving with a typical display? If it’s safer to keep your eye on the road and not having to glance down, and it doesn’t cost that much extra per car, I don’t know why it isn’t available on most cars, instead of just high-end models. When cruise control with automatic braking came out was it only available on higher-end models?
We have it in both our cars, and turned it off each time within a week. I don’t have a problem stating within the speed limiter, and just find it very distracting.
Auto manufacturers have always introduced new features on their higher-level cars. For one thing, those buyers are more likely to splurge on the latest thing. For another, if there are bugs to work out, you’d rather face a recall of 40,000 Cadillace Escalades than 555,000 Chevrolet Silverados.
I rented a BMW and didn’t even know it had an HUD until I happened to take my sunglasses off. It just disappeared with sunglasses on. If it’s a choice between HUD and sunglasses, I’ll take the sunglasses.
On the one hand, you can more quickly see your speed and other info.
On the other hand, the HUD is a distraction that focuses your attention away from much more important things.
If you completely fail to notice that a kid has kicked a ball into the street because your eyes are focused on the imaginary numbers floating up above your hood, is being able to quickly see your speed really a safety benefit? It’s more like the opposite.
The more information you put on your HUD, the more useful it is from an information and navigation point of view. At the same time, that’s more information that distracts you from the road and the world around you.
There are pros and cons to HUDs. They aren’t universally a safety benefit. Far from it.
I really want a good HUD to feel confident operating self-driving mode in a car. Some cars put a little dot on the windscreen for every car/pedestrian/bike that it recognizes. IMHO, it should be a mandatory feature for level 2 self-driving. If there are objects I see that I know the computer doesn’t see yet, I can put myself in a heightened state of awareness to be ready to wrestle back control from the car. Some cars display their understanding of the world on the in car dash but I’ve found it’s tiring to go back and forth between two views and check they correspond.
Another cool HUD feature that some cars are introducing is “AR turn directions” which will overlay the GPS turn info directly onto the road in front of you. Again, a great quality of life feature in urban centers where there could be a number of streets quite close to each other and it’s nice to know exactly which street I should be turning into.
This seems like it would be one of those features that don’t age well with the automobile, like navigation.
I don’t buy new cars, so I always end up with technology that is a few years old. This means that when I am using it, it is yesterday’s news. In the case of navigation systems, the crappy service GM wants me to pay dearly for is nowhere near as nice as using my iPhone over CarPlay. You can guess which one I use.
