Automotive Applications of Liquid Crystal Displays

This chapter provides an overview of the display technologies over the time, starting with mechanical instruments and proceeding to the latest electronic display technologies with the focus on liquid crystal displays. New driver assistance systems must be ergonomically matched with the main communication zones of the vehicle, consisting of a more or less reconfigurable instrument cluster, the head‐up display and the centre console. At the beginning of automotive instrumentation, there were just a speedometer and some warning lamps to indicate status of the most important functions of the vehicle. In the early 1980s the direction of development split into an analogue and a digital branch of information representation. The increase of information presented in the instrument cluster required graphic‐capable modules, able to display any information in a flexible way and arranged according to their priorities.