Automotive interior: please take a seat in a high-tech living room…

“Automotive interior enhancement is becoming a key segment for electronics and semiconductor industries.” asserts Pierrick Boulay, Solid State Lighting and Lighting Systems within the Photonics, Sensing & Display division at Yole Développement (Yole).“Following the aforementioned regulation trends, the in-cabin sensing market will observe the highest CAGR until 2025, at 63%. This segment will reach US$2.6 billion in 2025, with driver monitoring systems representing 73% of this revenue”.

In this context, the market research & strategy consulting company investigates disruptive sensing, lighting & display technologies. Its aim is to point out the latest innovations and underline the business opportunities.
Released today, the Automotive Interior – From Lighting to Sensing and Display Technologies 2020 report provides a comprehensive overview of the Sensing – Lighting – Display technologies that are currently used or under development for interior car applications. This new analysis delivers a detailed description of the industry, with relevant market data on key in-cabin applications like sensing, lighting, and displays. It provides an in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape with a detailed analysis of the in-cabin value chains, players and their strategies and trends. Including market trends, revenues and forecasts, supply chain, technology trends, challenges and technical roadmaps, key technical insights and analysis regarding future technology trends and challenges, Yole’s automotive study also underlines the E/E architecture of a car.
What are the economic and technological challenges? From sensing to lighting, including display, what are the most important expected growths? What is the status of the competitive landscape? Who are the most innovative players to watch? What are the supply chains per applications?
Yole has combined its extensive sensing, lighting, and display expertise to presents today its vision of the automotive interior industry.

As analyzed by Yole’s team in the new Automotive Interior – From Lighting to Sensing and Display Technologies 2020 report, there is clearly general trend that has been going on for many years, helping the OEMs to personalize their interiors. That is the interior lighting market, which will increase 45%, from US$3.1 billion in 2020 to US$4.6 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 8%. The COVID-19 crisis’ impact on vehicle sales will not be felt as much by the interior lighting market since there is increased content in newer cars.
The same trend can be observed in automotive displays. Clusters have been digitizing, infotainment systems have been going the full flat-panel display route, and all that while observing an increased average panel size, bringing market value to US$15.5 billion by 2025. Of course, LCDs will keep dominating the market but emerging technologies like miniLED and microLED displays will gain share, reaching 13% penetration rate in interior displays by 2025.
“And alongside regular displays for clusters, mirrors, or infotainment systems, we shall expect microdisplays to be increasingly adopted rate through augmented reality HUDs,” comments Pierrick Boulay from Yole. “This will allow for a secure and comfortable solution for drivers.”

The automotive industry has been taken over by the C.A.S.E paradigm: Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electrical. And in that context, the connectivity, autonomy and sharing megatrends are changing car interiors. This can be traced back to two major industry drivers: improving safety while improving comfort. Though this may appear to be a dichotomy, this can all actually be linked within the car interior. Both comfort and safety are fed by displays, interior lighting, gesture recognition, particle monitoring and monitoring systems in general, be it for drivers or passengers.
According to Martin Vallo, PhD, Technology & Market Analyst specialized in solid-state lighting technologies, within the Photonics, Sensing & Display division at Yole: “By 2022 in Europe and 2024 in the United States, driver monitoring systems are expected to become mandatory, as the level of distractions felt by a driver has reached a climax. Phone conversations, texting, emailing, watching movies and so many different elements that have helped increase the comfort for drivers, as well as their passengers”.
Driver monitoring systems will be also necessary for advanced automated driving features, to take control from and return it to the driver. They will also avoid misuses of such functions like Tesla’s users misuse of the Autopilot feature. As the industry moves towards more advanced levels of autonomy, driver needs and the car’s environment have been pushing the boundaries, bringing us more advanced interior designs. And the automotive OEMs are trying to differentiate themselves through advanced personalization levels. This includes adding displays, removing buttons and fine-tuning interior lighting. Bringing us to an automotive cockpit that can be as much an entertainment zone as it can be a working zone. This completely brings the living room to the car.
But as with the home, how can the car user interact with all these elements, ensuring as ergonomic a user experience as possible?