This 'Shy' Car Dashboard Only Appears When You Need It

When driving, you want a display that gives you the information you need to navigate the road but not so much that it overwhelms you. The problem with most display screens in cars today is that they are always there and they are always a distraction.

Continental has conceived of an innovative display solution called the ShyTech display that only shows up when needed. 

“Displays are the central human-machine interface in the vehicle,” said in a press release Ulrich Lüders, Head of Strategy and Portfolio in the Human Machine Interface business unit at Continental. “The design of display solutions plays a central role in the design of the cockpit. Our ShyTech displays herald the beginning of a new age and for us, they are the epitome of the cockpit of the future: digital, immersive, and ’shy’.”

This is a far cry from the increasingly larger screens that are currently being built into cars. Continental argues that in today's screens not every message displayed is relevant in every situation and that large displays without content do not contribute to harmonious cockpit design.

This is why Continental's ShyTech Display  "appears only when it is needed as if by magic."

The press statement does not provide much detail on how the screen works or its specifications. It does say however that it was built to answer two questions: How can sensory overload of the vehicle occupants be prevented despite very large monitors? And: How can display areas that are not used in a given situation be optically improved? 

It also adds that when the screen is not needed it is simply not visible to the human eye which leads us to conclude that the screen does not pull back it simply goes into incognito mode. The invention we must admit is pretty cool. Perhaps that's why it won the CES 2022 Innovation award.