Will Heads-Up Displays ever become common in production autos?

Interestingly, I understand HUDs are absent on Teslas except as aftermarket gear, but there’s at least one of their models that completely lacks any behind-the-wheel gauge set so everything is off to the right in the big flatscreen. So if you want to know your speed you really need to look away from where you’re going (I know, I know… what they want is for you to let the system take care of it. But still…)

I do agree though as mentioned before that generally the cost-benefit equation for HUDs doesn’t make the cut for most mass market cars at this point in time and that in practice there’s the distraction risk for much of the driving cohort of focusing on the display itself and losing track of the “big picture”. Though I do like markn_1’s idea though of a HUD that flashes at you mission-critical warnings like oil pressure loss or overheating or extreme low fuel/charge if/when they happen, but otherwise is only “on call” to show you speed/range data when/if you ask for it.

In a jet the image is focused at infinity and you’re looking out at the far distance “through” the data.

In a car the HUD image is focused out about where your front bumper is.

So as you’re e.g. cruising down the freeway with another car 100 feet ahead you must refocus your eyes on space about at your front bumper distance to clearly see the HUD info. At which point the car ahead is fuzzy and/or doubled. Back and forth. As one gets older that refocusing happens more slowly than it does in a young person.

The idea that you can see and process the HUD info effortlessly while being totally focused on distant objects and other vehicles and such is simply untrue.

The net effect of having a HUD in a car, and especially a busy one with lots of gee-whiz info, or worse yet moving info, is to in effect invite the driver to stare at their very interesting hood ornament while driving. We all know people who drive like that. It isn’t very safe.

My IMO bottom line: The idea sounds like an unmitigated safety win. The reality is much more safety-neutral. Due both to a less than thorough implementation, and due to the untrained, untrainable, and undisciplined nature of so many drivers.

A HUD in an aircraft makes sense, because you do a lot of things that involve rapidly changing numbers. and having to constantly look down is a hassle.

For instance, it’s common to be told to turn to a certain heading. When turning you have to monitor the changing heading, airspeed, altitude, etc, because they are all affected by the turn. Being able to see it all in front of you is very helpful.

In a car, there’s really nothing like that. Checking your speed on the dash is fast and trivial. It’s not really much of a distraction at all, compared to, say, having to find the tiny defrost button in a maze of similar buttons while driving on the frrway with your window frosting over, or trying to hold your phone and scroll to the playlist you wanted while driving.

In fact, Tesla gets away with putting all your information off to the side with no instruments in front of you at all. I haven’t heard people complain about the usability of safety of it over time.

Actually I did not misunderstand. I did not think you were advocating that. I was pointing out that it appears as though there are many drivers who think they can see just fine given the existing lighting but don’t realize that their lights are needed in order to be seen.

My apologies. I did not mean to accuse you of taking that position.

This same argument applies even more extremely to the dash then, where the focus adjustment is much greater. Any person who has focusing problems should strongly prefer a HUD to a dash.

What? It’s a common complaint of the Model 3/Y that there’s no dash and looking over to the side is distracting. There’s a thriving market of aftermarket dashes for Teslas for precisely this reason.

Tesla owners are a self-selected group*, of early adopters, gear-heads, and computer nerds.
No wonder that you haven’t heard complaints.


*( The same kind of people who love every upgrade of Windows, and proudly say, “I was able to get it working pretty well. It only took me a couple of days of tweaking, and now it even hooks up to my printer like before.”)

I think part of the problem is that the technology isn’t really developed quite like many people would want it to be.

My MIL’s SUV has a HUD, and when I drove it, I didn’t really care for it. Not because I’m against HUDs or anything, but because it was displayed down low on the windshield- maybe 10 degrees above the angle that it takes to just look at the gauges.

So I was still looking down, just not quite as far. I’d have preferred it to be more like the flight-sim HUDs I’ve used - compass heading across the top of the viewing area, speed on the left, and maybe the gas level and water temp on the right (instead of altitude). That would have required projecting onto an area probably 2-3 feet wide, and 2-3 feet tall though, which might be beyond what they’re currently able to do. Or maybe less, if they can track where you’re looking and display it there automatically.

Another thing to consider is that with analog gauges and enough experience with a vehicle, you can keep an eye on the needle position of the speedometer without actually having to look directly at it. For example, on my truck, 60 MPH is vertical, 50 and 70 are on either side about 10 degrees off, 30 and 80 are about 20 degrees off, and so forth. So if I’m driving, and I’m looking at the road, I can still see where the needle is in rough terms, at least in the somewhere between 30-40 range without having to actively look at the needle and the scale behind it.

Most of the rest of the instruments are not actually critical in-the-moment. I mean, I have a tachometer, but I also have an automatic transmission, so I don’t care much about it. The gas gauge isn’t something I have to look at particularly often, and the same for the water temperature.

So in a sense with the speedometer needle, I’ve kind of got a HUD already.

Now if they could integrate it with your navigation and do some AR-type stuff, that might be cool. Like show the route superimposed on the road in front of you with turns, and what-not. Or showing school zones as say… purple roadways when they’re active or something like that. Speed traps up ahead would be nice too.

Our Model X has HUD. (and gauges where you’d expect them). We don’t use the HUB.

No worries. The important thing is that neither of us are confusing everyone else.

I had not considered the idea that people are driving around with lights off semi-deliberately, actively thinking them unnecessary. But you may well be right that material numbers of people are doing that. And, as you say, not realizing that being seen is at least as important as seeing. So my eyes have been opened by this exchange too.


I suppose an inverse variation on this same idea is the many cars with blindingly bright headlights and, mostly for for trucks, mongo auxiliary LED lightbars and such.

They may in fact be increasing their ability to see the road details at night and hence their perception of their safety. But by blinding so many other cars around themselves, they are decreasing total safety near themselves and probably increasing their likelihood of being run into. Which is the opposite of their perception of their situation.

I have automatic headlights in my car. Recently someone else drove it and turned the lights to manual, so they didn’t come on when it got dark.

It was really hard to tell in the city. The combination of the daytime running lights and the always-lit dashboard hid the fact that the headlights weren’t on quite well.

I see people doing this fairly regularly. Their headlights look dim, and when they pass you see they have no taillights on. They are running on their DRLs and don’t realize it.

I made that mistake in a rental car once. The car I had at the time had automatic headlights, so when I got in my rental after dark and saw the dash all lit up, I assumed that car had automatic lights as well. It really wasn’t noticeable driving around the well lit airport roads. But after I left the airport and started driving on a dark, rural highway I realized I couldn’t see a damn thing. I pulled on the turn signal stalk to try to activate the high beams, and they just flashed for a second. Then it dawned on me what the problem was.