UK’s Envisics gets $50m to develop in-car augmented reality heads up displays

A British start-up has raised $50m (£39m) from carmakers to develop augmented reality displays which can project information such as a car’s speed and directions on to a windscreen.

Milton Keynes-headquartered Envisics raised the funding from backers including Hyundai, General Motors and SAIC Motor.

Chief executive Jamieson Christmas said the funding round “certainly gets us pretty much to production. We’re delighted that it enables us to very much realise our vision to scale the company and further invest in the technology.”

The technology works by simultaneously displaying holographic images at different depths of a display, adjusting the display according to light levels in the real world. Envisics uses lasers to project the images, a technology which the company says wastes less heat and power than competitors.

Augmented reality displays using Envisics technology are expected to be used in the Cadillac Lyriq, General Motors’ new electric car expected to enter production in 2023.

Raising the funding during the pandemic was “excruciating,” Mr Christmas said. “It was extraordinarily challenging, it definitely slows down the process substantially,” he added.

The business chose to skip traditional investors so that it could raise funding from carmakers.

“We deliberately did not seek money from institutional investors but were deliberately looking for investment from potential strategic partners that could help us accelerate the adoption of this technology and really realise our dream to revolutionise the experience within cars,” Mr Christmas said.

The company now plans to double the size of its workforce and will open new offices in Asia and mainland Europe.

Envisics previously supplied holographic dashboard technology to Jaguar Land Rover from late 2014 which it used in its augmented reality dashboard.

Sung Hwan Cho, the chief technology officer of Hyundai, said: “Hyundai Mobis will jointly develop autonomous driving specialized AR HUDs with Envisics, targeting mass production by 2025. We will proactively present the next generation AR HUD to global automakers with increased safety and convenience to avoid distracting the driver.”