Tesla is developing a bezel-less display technology with ‘holographic’ feature

Tesla is jumping on the bezel-less display craze and it looks like the automaker is not satisfied with the development in the industry as it is developing its own bezel-less display technology.

Some people forget that Tesla was an early adopter of the large touchscreen display.

It’s 2009 Tesla Model S prototype featured a large touchscreen display. That was even before the launch of Apple’s iPad, which really popularized the use of larger touchscreen displays.

With Model S and Model X, Tesla didn’t have to worry much about bezels because the large 17-in screen is embedded into the dashboard.

However, Tesla went with a more minimalistic approach with the Model 3’s interior built around a 15-inch touchscreen display sticking out of the dashboard.

This display features a relatively large bezel:

Last year, we saw some early design mockups of Tesla’s planned Model S and Model X design refresh.

The idea is to make the interior more similar to the Model 3’s interior, but it also featured a bezel-less center display.

Here are some of those design images:

The design refresh appears to have been delayed to next year, but it looks like Tesla really wants to bring this bezel-less design to its vehicles and it doesn’t plan to rely on other people’s technology.

Tesla filed for a new patent application for a display screen with holographic glass around it that can “reduce or eliminate the visibility of a boundary between the displaying portions of the system and the non-displaying portions”, which is more commonly known as a bezel-less display.

The automaker describes the technology in the new patent application released today:

“An exemplary system includes a display screen including a plurality of pixels forming a first periodic structure and a frame surrounding at least a portion of the display screen. The frame may include a holographic structure having a second periodic structure. The first pitch of the first periodic structure may be within 0.5 percent to 20 percent of the second pitch of the second periodic structure.”

Here’s a diagram of a regular system compared to Tesla’s new technology:

Christos Gougoussis, a Tesla Senior Staff Engineer, is listed as the inventor of the design.

The engineer’s résumé is as impressive as it gets. He has a Ph.D. in physics from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris and he is an expert in quantum physics.

Before joining Tesla in 2016, Gougoussis worked for Tesla supplier Saint-Gobain where he worked on a variety of glass and thin-film technologies.

While Tesla would obviously want to use the display technology developed by Gougoussis in its in-car display, it could technically be used in other devices

The patent application shows drawings of mobile phones and tablets.