Chinese EVs Can Now Project Movies from Their Headlights
Comments
JumpCrisscross
tjchear
I remember reading a research about using a projector like headlights with a high resolution camera that can capture the position of each raindrop and selectively turn off projection on each raindrop’s position in real time so you can still see clearly at night without being blinded by the reflection from the raindrops. It’ll be cool if they can incorporate that once this headlight projection tech becomes widely available.
maxglute
Friend really likes the laneway lines feature at night but noted practicality is correlated with proliferation. Can't have too many of these on the road crossing streams with light pollution.
throawayonthe
this is objectively a gimmick, but like, pretty cool
i'm glad engineers somewhere are getting to work on fun stupid shit
fouc
Interesting, this tech is already in some chinese EV car models since 3 years ago, so it's not super new.
m463
That means they can project advertisements too.
bennettnate5
That'll put a whole new spin on drive in movie theaters...
meyum33
These EV makers will soon find out they have to set up a team to censor the stuff they can project.
cassianoleal
Why? What other projectors do that?
throawayonthe
yeah because chinese projectors are famously censoring projected content
ninjalanternshk
The demo video saves the most impressive for the very end — the “go ahead and cross, pedestrian” light. Remains to be seen how well it works in the real world but it’s cool nonetheless.
amelius
What if the car in the next lane isn't so courteous?
justinclift
American IP Lawyers are gunna be having some interesting thoughts now... ;)
xprnio
Since when is playing a movie off of a projector illegal? Projection is not necessarily distribution, just as playing local media files is not necessarily piracy. I will definitely be grabbing my popcorn for the legal show though
justinclift
> Since when is playing a movie off of a projector illegal?
Heh Heh Heh
While I totally agree with you, the promo pictures showing a movie being played "outside" will give serious vibes like this does for music:
* https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/playing-music...
drivingmenuts
Legal or illegal doesn't matter if lawyers can smell profit (and the smell of money covers any odor of moral or immoral).
ksherlock
Not to mention American adtech execs. If you think being blinded by oncoming halogens is bad, wait until they also burn ads into your retinas.
SllX
s/Chinese/Huawei
It’s 2026. Headlines don’t have to obfuscate brands behind the country of origin.
Markoff
it says Chinese in the title and even if it didn't say, it's already expected any innovation to EVs will for sure not come from EU or US
SllX
I’m criticizing the title, not the HN submission title.
Your other point is fair, but what I’m getting at is that there’s no reason to obfuscate. If Huawei did something cool, and they did, the publication can be more forthright about it rather than letting Xiaomi or BYD share in that credit incidentally.
Markoff
I assume Huawei is not cool anymore (since Trump banned them and sinophobic western countries adopted his baseless stance, US should have monopoly on spying their allies) and only Tesla and BYD can be mentioned in headline, sometimes only Tesla to God forbid not promote Chinese brands.
SllX
Or the one who wrote the headline sucks at his or her job. Occam’s razor saves you from geopoliticizing lazy headline writing practices.
some_random
Why would you want that?
maxglute
The driving gimmick (which works well at night) is light carpet mode that projects car width, braking distance, lane guidance etc, it's like following racing line in forza. Once you throw in projector, might as well as pitch movie night.
quickthrowman
That sounds useful if you’re drunk, otherwise I don’t see the point. The road I am driving on has lines on it, I know how wide my car is, and how long it takes to stop.
garbawarb
Ads
amelius
Now if only this car I'm sitting behind in this traffic jam had a nice big white screen mounted in the back ...
stavros
My BYD has a 15" screen, it's very very nice for watching films/shows while waiting/charging/whatever. I even play Expedition 33 (and other games) on it with an Xbox controller via Moonlight.
kelnos
And I'm sure no one ever abuses that by watching a movie while driving...
As much as I generally don't love technology taking a paternalistic attitude toward restricting what happens on the infotainment system, I really don't think it's a good idea to offer a feature like that, unless it only functions when the car is stopped and not in gear.
hogehoge51
Tv reception has been a near standard feature in Japanese car info infotainment systems for decades. The digital tv standard includes "wanseg" for mobile tv reception, using a low bandwidth/ low resolution side channel.
Very common to walk past cars stopped at the lights and see tv showing everywhere. they dont turn it off when they start driving either ;-)
olyjohn
Yeah and everybody here in the US has their phone mounted right in the middle of the windshield, blocking half their view, and it's usually playing tiktok or some stupid shit.
anonym29
>It's [sic] can also project interactive games for kids (like hopscotch).
That's exactly what we need, to teach little johnny to go play out in front of the running car!
zzzeek
This is almost like Onion levels of parody how much better Chinese EVs are than American ones
cosmicgadget
Because they demoed a feature absolutely nobody will buy?
zzzeek
Yes because it sounds completely exaggerative and ridiculous
Hence the Onion
joe_mamba
I wonder what movies the Audi and BMW drivers tailing 3 inches behind me will play when this drops.
oomuinio
[dead]
VegaKH
This sounds like it was written by the CCP. Chinese EVs = futuristic tech. American EVs = much shame.
bdangubic
If Chinese EVs were available for sale in the US every single US car company would close down (even after government bailouts) within 2 years
naveen99
Usa allowed Japanese and German cars. Maybe one day they will allow Chinese cars also.
JumpCrisscross
The way to do it is with quotas. 100,000 vehicles per year per manufacturer with a country cap of 10% of previous year’s total passenger-vehicle sales (the latter currently 15+ million in America).
Then you slowly ramp up those limits over time to e.g. 200,000 and 20%. Enough to give consumers respite and producers a taste of the true competition. But not so much of a shock as to cause a mass extinction.
bdangubic
they won’t. china is so far ahead with (won’t get it why and now)… they are making their way though into Cali ( https://nypost.com/2026/04/29/us-news/high-tech-chinese-cars... ) but I suspect the Gov will intervene sooner rather than later
“The U.S. just recently allowed adaptive headlights”
My most-surprising takeaway is that anybody regulates headlights in America. The runaway-brightness problem is real, well known and totally ignored.