The other night I went to a new taillight bar that opened in town, Bette’s Blinker Bar, because they had a promo where you could get up to three free shots if you can drink them out of a Bugeye Sprite taillight lens without spilling anything. I managed to do two rounds of this thanks to careful application of a fake moustache, so six shots in, I was pretty well buzzed. Maybe that’s why what I saw then hit me so hard and with such gravity: a picture, sent to me by a friend currently in China, of the taillights of a Huawei AITO M9. What I saw in those taillights was the realization of a simple dream I’ve had for years. Big things are happening in the taillight world, and they seem to be happening in China.
My friend who sent me the picture was Derek Powell, who is shooting a documentary out there, as part of a series for Motor Trend. He’s aware of my automotive kinks and fetishes, so when he saw the taillights of that AITO M9 doing something unexpected, he grabbed a picture.
The picture was what you saw above, but just for giggles, here’s another one:
See those hearts there? Sure, it may seem silly and frivolous, but what’s really going on is a big deal, one that’s been loosely toyed with before, but I don’t think has ever really been fully applied to the taillights of a mass-market car before. It’s the ability to show custom images and patterns in an LED matrix display that makes up the taillights.
I should mention it’s not just heart-lights, which has the unfortunate (?) side effect of putting this Neil Diamond song into my head:
There seems to be a variety of animations and images that can be displayed, and, if this ad is any indicator, actual text as well:
I don’t read Chinese, but I’m assuming that character has some sort of significant meaning? I tried my translation app, and it’s not getting it, either, so if anyone reading this knows what that character means, please let us know in the comments. I’m curious if it’s safety-related or just something fun.
Now, Audi has been doing something like this with their DRLs, but those have been very low-resolution “displays,” and don’t really have the communication potential afforded by taillights, which you’re far more likely to be staring at for any length of time. Also, I did propose the idea of being able to send custom displays to a matrix lighting system last year:
…of course, I suspect carmakers would be hesitant to give that level of control to people, who have a collective history of drawing dicks on all sorts of things.
The Huawei system seems to allow for selecting one of a number of animations or images that can be displayed; you can see it in action in this video:
I cued up the video to the section with the taillights, but the M9 seems to also have a matrix system up front, where it can be used to adapt the shape of the beam and, it appears, actually project some simple images onto the roadway? That’s very cool.
American taillight laws are pretty restrictive, and I think there are some rules against animations in taillights; however, sequential turn indicators are legal here, and that’s a form of animation, so there may be ways to implement things like these. As far as images and shapes, as long as the basic taillight functions are present and are of the minimum required surface area, color, and brightness, there really isn’t a reason why custom graphical taillight images couldn’t be used.
I’ve long felt that taillights were trending towards actual displays, and I think there’s some genuine safety advantages that can be had from being able to communicate more than just color and light. Braking intensity, warning messages, clearer turn indication, there’s a lot of possibilities here. We’ve even seen it in action on Hawaiian public buses, of all things, already:
Apparently in Hawaii if you let a bus merge ahead of you the driver can press a ???????? button pic.twitter.com/DFbwmuWdWW
— andi (e/alb) (@Nexuist) February 14, 2024
I hope what Huawei (and other manufacturers) are doing with matrix-display taillights takes off. This could be an exciting new taillight frontier, and I’m all for it.
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