Chinese EVs Can Now Project Entire Movies From Their Headlights

• China’s EVs are getting a new trick: they can project movies.
• Huawei’s latest headlights offer full-color projection, which adds on to the already impressive driver-assistance capabilities they offer today.
• Meanwhile, American cars are just getting adaptive beams figured out.

The U.S. just recently allowed adaptive headlights, which automatically adjust their beam patterns to avoid blinding oncoming drivers. It’s a welcome development, but U.S. headlight tech is still way behind what’s going on in China. Cars being sold in that country can now project entire full-color movies in front of them as if they were a rolling drive-in movie theater.

Photo by: YouTube

Huawei showed off the newest version of its headlight tech, XPixel, at the Huawei Qiankun Technology Conference at the Beijing Auto Show last week. The headlights now have the ability to project a full range of colors like a giant movie projector mounted to the front of the car. That means the ability to park your car and use the nearest wall to watch your favorite show or movie like it’s some sort of personal drive-in movie theater.

The actual XPixel tech that Huawei is using to underpin the new full-color projection feature has been around for about three years now. Vehicles like the Huawei Stelato S9 already use it, and what’s particularly cool is how the tech is neatly tied into the car’s driver assistance features—meaning that it can help to assist with lane changing by showing a guided path, or even direct pedestrians when to cross in front of the car. It’s can also project interactive games for kids (like hopscotch).

The new version of XPixel, which has full-color capability, will debut in the Aito M9 according to Huawei. The tech is also slated to come to a plethora of other cars, like the upcoming Qijing GT7 shooting brake and Luxeed V9 MPV.

You’re probably feeling a bit of envy if you live in the U.S. (especially after seeing how the driving features function). And that’s okay, I am too.

For decades, the regulations that governed headlights on passenger cars in the U.S. remained fairly static. The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards prevented new tech like adaptive driving beams from being deployed on the streets up until proposed changes were finalized in 2022—but by that time, the rest of the world had already leaped ahead. 

Now headlights are just the latest avenue where Chinese cars are packing in stunning technology at a much lower cost.