Automotive OLEDs: introduction and industry news

China-based EV maker Zeekr introduced the 2024 Zeekr 009 model, a 4/6/7 seater MPV. The new model has two OLED displays: a 15.05" 2.5K flexible OLED main front screen, and a 17" 90Hz 3K ceiling-mounted passenger screen. The 15.05" OLED display seems to be the same display used in the 2024 Zeekr 001 model.

The 2024 Zeekr 009 will feature several seating options, NAPPA leather seats with headrest speakers, ventilation, heating and massage functions, exclusive lounge-chair mode, 30-speaker sound system and high performance - it reach go from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds and has a driving range of up to 740Km. Zeekr plans to start delivering the all-new Zeekr 009 to customers in China next week, starting at 439,000 RMB (around $60,000).

According to a new report by Business Korea, LG Display is finalizing the development of its 3rd-gen tandem-stack automotive OLED technology, and aims to start mass producing these panels by 2026. LGD believes the new panels will improve the brightness and efficiency of its OLEDs by 20% (compared to its current 2nd-gen tandem OLEDs).

LG Display believes it is leading the industry with its tandem OLED technology (and we tend to agree) and it hopes to accelerate its technology development to widen its lead. LG Display is enjoying a lead in the automotive display market with its OLED solutions and has already achieved design wins with many companies, including Genesis, Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac and GM.

Since Samsung started mass producing AMOLED displays in 2007, most people believe that the company is not only the leader in OLED production capacity, but also in the performance of its displays. In most cases, Samsung has been the first company to develop and manage to mass produce the most advanced OLED displays, and the first to adopt the latest OLED materials, architectures, and processes.

There are some signs that this could be changing, although honestly it's a bit too early to know. In May 2024, Apple launched its first OLED Tablets, and according to reports, Apple chose LG Display as its main supplier, ordering around 60% of its iPad OLEDs from LGD (with all of the 13" model orders going to LG), and the rest from Samsung. Later it was reported that Apple had to delay the introduction of its 2024 iPad Pro devices as Samsung faced low production yields and could not deliver displays in time.

China-based Tianma had an impressive booth at Displayweek 2024, showing numerous OLED and microLED displays and prototypes.

For the automotive market, Tianma showed three new display prototypes. First up is a 13" slidable OLED, with an embedded touch panel, aimed towards car dashboards or center controls.

During Displayweek 2024, Visionox demonstrated many OLED display technologies and panels, and also an interesting microLED prototypes (produced by its subsidiarity Vistar).

Visionox is in the final stages of development of its ViP maskless display production process, and the company showcased some nice ViP smartphone panel prototypes (the technology can be used for any panel size). ViP offers a high improvement in aperture ratio (69% up from 29%) which results in low power consumption and brightness (up to 4X according to Visionox), improved lifetime (up to 6X), improved PPI and more.

BOE had a large demonstration at Displayweek 2024, showing several display technologies and many new panels and prototypes.

First up we have a slidable OLED display, one of the largest we've seen, at 31.6". The display offers a resolution of 5944x1672, a sliding distance of just over 260 mm (BOE says its the world's longest) and a sliding radius of 5 mm.

LG Display demonstrated its latest OLED display prototypes and commercial panels at Displayweek 2024. The company showed flexible panels, automotive displays, transparent OLED, gaming monitors, a 10k nit microdisplay and more.

So first up, LG Display shows its automotive Advanced-Thin-OLED (ATO) displays, which are produced on glass substrates and use a tandem structure. These OLEDs are lower in cost compared to LGD's flexible automotive p-OLED panels, but still enable low-weight and thin profile, and the excellent image quality of an OLED display. The smaller display was a 12.3" 2400x900 (209 PPI) 1,000 nits panel, while the other panel was larger at 17" 1920x2560 (188 PPI).

Samsung Display had a rather large booth at Displayweek 2024, showing its latest OLED displays and technologies. Samsung showed several displays - including foldable smartphone panels, laptop and tablet displays, two QD-OLED displays, its 9.4" round automotive AMOLED, and more.

One interesting display was a panel that combines a foldable and a rollable display, that can open up to an impressively large display. Samsung brands it as a Flex Note Extendable Display.

Japan-based Sharp Corp, an LCD display industry pioneer, announced that it will stop all of its large-area LCD production by the end of 2024. Sharp's Osaka-based factory was the last LCD TV fab in Japan, and it will be turned into a data center run by its subsidiary Sakai Display Products Corp.

Sharp says that its current midterm plans are strengthen its home appliances and office equipment businesses, by incorporating AI technologies. It also plans to sell its semiconductor business. Sharp says it will focus its remaining small/medium LCD display business on the automotive and VR sectors.