Unsure about buying an EV? This Heads-Up Display may someday help

Say you've thought about getting an electric vehicle but didn't want to take the plunge until you were absolutely certain that you wouldn't wind up on the side of the highway with a dead battery. It's a legitimate concern known as "range anxiety," but assuaging that problem involves either manually keeping track of everywhere you go from day to day or actually buying the car and figuring it out as you go along. The AT&T Foundry, a startup incubator tasked with coming up with clever new tech products, has designed a Heads Up Display (HUD) that may sooth the nerves of skeptical EV shoppers. The lightweight HUD can be placed inside your gas vehicle and programmed to mimic the dashboard of whatever EV model you're thinking of buying. As you go through your daily grind, you get a feel in real-time of how far you can drive before needing a recharge.

A bunch of location and motion sensors embedded in the device help determine your speed, where you're going, how much regen you'd use and how much battery you would have left -- and all of this data syncs to the cloud so you can analyze your habits and determine if buying an EV is really the best way to go. The project's still in early stages of development, but if and when it becomes an official product, the devs hope that EV dealerships will hand out the HUD on loan to shoppers for a couple weeks to help them make an educated decision.

Filed under: Transportation, Mobile, AT&T

Comments

Source: AT&T Foundry