alt.hn

4/30/2026 at 8:16:34 PM

Chinese EVs Can Now Project Movies from Their Headlights

 https://insideevs.com/news/794295/chinese-ev-headlight-movie-projectors/

by mooreds

5/3/2026 at 8:27:55 AM

“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.

by JumpCrisscross

5/3/2026 at 12:37:07 AM

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.

by maxglute

5/3/2026 at 2:43:00 PM

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.

by tjchear

5/3/2026 at 9:46:44 AM

this is objectively a gimmick, but like, pretty cool

i'm glad engineers somewhere are getting to work on fun stupid shit

by throawayonthe

5/3/2026 at 2:01:35 AM

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.

by ninjalanternshk

5/3/2026 at 2:46:31 PM

What if the car in the next lane isn't so courteous?

by amelius

5/3/2026 at 12:16:54 AM

That'll put a whole new spin on drive in movie theaters...

by bennettnate5

5/3/2026 at 8:44:05 AM

Interesting, this tech is already in some chinese EV car models since 3 years ago, so it's not super new.

by fouc

5/3/2026 at 4:05:39 AM

That means they can project advertisements too.

by m463

5/3/2026 at 2:02:35 AM

These EV makers will soon find out they have to set up a team to censor the stuff they can project.

by meyum33

5/3/2026 at 10:12:52 AM

Why? What other projectors do that?

by cassianoleal

5/3/2026 at 9:48:33 AM

yeah because chinese projectors are famously censoring projected content

by throawayonthe

4/30/2026 at 11:12:59 PM

American IP Lawyers are gunna be having some interesting thoughts now... ;)

by justinclift

5/1/2026 at 2:03:16 AM

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

by xprnio

5/2/2026 at 11:44:47 PM

Legal or illegal doesn't matter if lawyers can smell profit (and the smell of money covers any odor of moral or immoral).

by drivingmenuts

5/3/2026 at 12:38:45 AM

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.

by ksherlock

5/3/2026 at 12:35:49 AM

s/Chinese/Huawei

It’s 2026. Headlines don’t have to obfuscate brands behind the country of origin.

by SllX

5/3/2026 at 5:12:42 AM

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

by Markoff

5/3/2026 at 5:24:05 AM

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.

by SllX

5/3/2026 at 8:24:14 AM

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.

by Markoff

5/3/2026 at 9:16:12 AM

Or the one who wrote the headline sucks at his or her job. Occam’s razor saves you from geopoliticizing lazy headline writing practices.

by SllX

5/3/2026 at 12:11:23 AM

Why would you want that?

by some_random

5/3/2026 at 12:21:37 AM

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.

by maxglute

5/3/2026 at 11:56:08 AM

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.

by quickthrowman

5/3/2026 at 11:36:22 PM

Conditions get narrow in asia, plenty of roads with poor marking. Marginal remote roads with poor marking or lighting, i.e. my friend highlight was during through windy remote country road with zero lighting and projectors outlined lanes clearly. Otherwise pretty gimmicky for good drivers. But these are on highend cars, plenty of less useful decorative options for 1000s in that category.

by maxglute

5/3/2026 at 12:51:29 AM

Ads

by garbawarb

5/2/2026 at 11:20:14 PM

Now if only this car I'm sitting behind in this traffic jam had a nice big white screen mounted in the back ...

by amelius

5/2/2026 at 11:33:30 PM

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.

by stavros

5/3/2026 at 12:16:23 AM

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.

by kelnos

5/3/2026 at 2:03:56 AM

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 ;-)

by hogehoge51

5/3/2026 at 2:36:07 AM

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.

by olyjohn

5/2/2026 at 11:39:14 PM

>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!

by anonym29

5/2/2026 at 11:44:04 PM

This is almost like Onion levels of parody how much better Chinese EVs are than American ones

by zzzeek

5/3/2026 at 3:40:45 AM

Because they demoed a feature absolutely nobody will buy?

by cosmicgadget

5/3/2026 at 2:13:29 PM

Yes because it sounds completely exaggerative and ridiculous

Hence the Onion

by zzzeek

5/2/2026 at 11:22:45 PM

I wonder what movies the Audi and BMW drivers tailing 3 inches behind me will play when this drops.

by joe_mamba

5/3/2026 at 12:01:08 AM

[dead]

by oomuinio

5/3/2026 at 2:18:39 AM

This sounds like it was written by the CCP. Chinese EVs = futuristic tech. American EVs = much shame.

by VegaKH

5/3/2026 at 2:45:02 AM

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

by bdangubic

5/3/2026 at 3:23:16 AM

Usa allowed Japanese and German cars. Maybe one day they will allow Chinese cars also.

by naveen99

5/3/2026 at 8:30:00 AM

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.

by JumpCrisscross