Move over mobile phone: The next ad frontier is windshield

Panasonic Corp demonstrates technology at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas last week, that lets a driver order and pay for fast food through a heads-up display, before pulling off the freeway to collect it. (Bloomberg photo)

San Francisco: The next frontier in digital advertising may be your car's windshield.

Automakers, technology companies and glass manufacturers are teaming up to turn the display that graces the front of an iPhone into the windshield of a car -- one that can show ads, directions and vehicle information to the person behind the wheel.

The advent of connected cars is creating a new sales battleground, and using a vehicle's windshield may be the next way to pitch more products and services to consumers.

McKinsey & Co estimates that mobile and data-driven services in autos will generate $1.5 trillion by 2030. At least part of that will be spent projecting information to drivers and passengers right before their eyes.

"When you think of a person driving and what your needs are when you're on a typical trip, it's food, it's fuel and it's rest stops," said John Butler, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. "Owning the inside of the car is critical, it's really where the money is made. The real value is locked up in the ad opportunity."

Here's how a smart windshield may work. A driver that's close to running out of gas would see an alert pop up that notes the fuel situation and offers to find a nearby gas station. The car's virtual assistant will offer a choice, again on the windshield, of two options, including directions to a station where the driver is eligible for a free cup of coffee -- an ad placed by the gas company that fits with the driver's buying patterns, also known by his smart car.

Panasonic Corp demonstrated technology at CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas last week, that lets a driver order and pay for fast food through a heads-up display, before pulling off the freeway to collect it.

Pairing such offerings with other connected subscription services could generate hundreds of dollars in additional recurring revenue per car each year, according to Tom Gebhardt, the head of Panasonic's automotive business in North America.

"When you start doing payments out of the vehicle, you have to secure those payments somehow, so we're matching the facial recognition with your credit card," he said. "We're really investing in an integrated solution, merging the infotainment system, the instrument cluster and the heads-up display."

Corning Inc is starting to sell carmakers the glass used in Apple Inc's iPhones for windshields and in-car entertainment systems.

It says the durability and thinness of the glass means that any image projected onto it is sharper than onto a typical windshield.

While the product is less than 10 inches wide, Corning is working to expand it to a full windshield-size display.

"They could be here in less than two years," Corning chief technology officer Jeff Evenson said in an interview. "We're making the car much more active to set things up for these kinds of services."

Turning a car windshield into a billboard is part of broader efforts by automakers and tech companies to transform vehicles into connected devices.

Multiple companies at CES last week have announced deals and partnerships that use software, digital voice technology and cloud computing to handle everything from automatically scheduling a maintenance appointment to ordering a takeout pizza while on the road.

Automakers such as BMW AG, Hyundai Motor Co and Toyota Motor Corp already offer basic heads-up displays near the windshield in some models that show information such as the vehicle's speed.

Google parent Alphabet Inc, through its Waze navigation app, suggests nearby restaurants and points of interest during your drive, as does TripAdvisor Inc. The next step is merging these two ideas: projecting points of interest onto your windshield.

Eventually mapping and navigational data could be superimposed onto the road in front of the driver, much in the way that Google Street View currently displays information about an area on a static image.

BMW, Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG acquired Nokia Oyj's HERE mapping unit in 2015 to ensure they were no longer dependent on Google for maps. Intel Corp announced last Tuesday that it had acquired a 15% stake in HERE.

"This is exactly the sort of thing the high-end carmakers are promoting as part of their highly integrated, immersive 'cockpit' concepts," said Richard York, an executive at chip designer ARM Holdings Plc who is responsible for automotive sales.

The question of how the technology is regulated remains open, given concerns about driver distraction. For now, suppliers are eager to promote heads-up displays as safety tools. For example, the speed and location of vehicles in a car's blind spot might be projected onto the windshield.

Boosters also say a windshield display is a safer alternative than drivers taking their eyes off the road to glance down and tap a dashboard infotainment system or check a smartphone.

For many years BMW, Volkswagen and Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc worked with the Munich-based start-up Metaio GmbH to investigate possible applications for augmented reality technology in cars, according to someone familiar with Metaio's business.

"The main hurdle to superimposing an enhanced image for the driver was the 'tracking problem' -- establishing the direction of a driver's gaze and adapting the image projected onto the windscreen accordingly,'' the person said.