New Mercedes E-Class, world’s first to use LG’s SPM display  

LG Display Co., the world’s leading organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel maker seeking to cement its market leadership, is supplying its automotive display fitted with the industry’s first switchable privacy mode (SPM) to Mercedes-Benz Group AG’s new E-Class model, according to the auto and display industries on Tuesday.

The luxury German car brand is the first finished car maker in the world to employ the South Korean display maker’s advanced automotive display technology embedded in liquid crystal display (LCD) panels.

The new E-Class is its first full-change model in seven years and hit the European market in July.

The SPM controls the front display screen's viewing angles to prevent the driver from being distracted by the side view of the passenger seat display. It dims the brightness of the screen to block the driver's view. It was first unveiled at CES 2023 earlier this year. 

This is expected to be an especially useful feature in the new E-Class models armed with a massively wide front display, dubbed the MBUX Superscreen, which enables passengers to enjoy various entertainment activities from games to movies, or even engage in a video conference.   

But as the passenger’s screen could distract the driver, the SPM technology blocks the driver’s view with a dimmer light on the passenger seat screen while in-car cameras detect if the driver’s eyes divert to that screen while driving.

THE BIGGER, THE BETTER

Along with advanced display technologies like SPM, LG Display is also betting big on larger-size automotive OLED panels, demand of which is expected to grow.  

It is currently mass-producing 32-inch OLED panels and plans to commercialize 50-inch OLED displays by 2027.

The 50-inch screen is a pillar-to-pillar display that is big enough to cover the entire dashboard to enable viewing of content and information on one screen.

According to the auto and display industries, carmakers are expected to opt for one big screen, instead of multiple screens, in one car.

The size of the automotive display is forecast to grow to 50 inches in 2028 from the current average of 11.3 inches.

With its more advanced and larger automotive displays, LG Display hopes to further widen the gap with its rivals in the automotive display market.

LG Display commanded the largest 51.7% of the global automotive display market in 2022, followed by Samsung Display Co.’s 41.2% and China’s BOE Technology Group Co. with 7.1%.

With its market leadership, LG Display has deepened its ties with Mercedes-Benz, with which it has partnered for two decades.

The German car maker first incorporated the Korean panel maker’s displays in its cars in 2004. LG Display also started supplying its plastic-OLED (P-OLED) panels for Mercedes’ S-Class in 2020 and then premium electric vehicle models such as the EQS SUV and the EQE sedan.

Ola Källenius, chairman of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz, last month visited LG Display’s R&D center in Seoul, where he learned about not only the SPM LCD but also other automotive panels such as the 34-inch large-size OLED, the 18-inch slidable OLED and transparent OLED panels.  

Write to Ye-Rin Choi at rambutan@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.